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Comment by lordofmoria | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting how many of these happened during WWII. The fact that the Pentagon was built in under 500 days is astounding, if you’ve ever walked through the place.

True urgency is really such a key predictor to things getting done impossibly fast, and our brains are great at detecting manufactured urgency.

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I wonder how USA would fare in the face of a real war on the scale of WWII or bigger.

For once, the government would need a real jolt, a voice of a leader, to send a spine chilling message down to every corner of the gov to stand up and get up. This seems impossible in the day of social media and the internet.

Second, the financing machinery of the government would need to be completely replaced with something temporary the 1000x size of DARPA to get things going. Most people don’t know but the marginal tax rate during WWII and well into 1970’s was insanely high, at one point 91%. Reagan reduced marginal taxes from 70% to 28% by the end of his term.

Laws would be slashed or dismantled. Bureaucracy would see the face of reality it has never seen.

Then, the will of the people. Which I feel the most optimistic about. Humans are pretty good at getting together in a war like urgency. Counter point is COVID, but I can imagine every person to be onboard if a nuclear bomb was detonated in New York.

It would be a strangely fascinating thing to witness, as much as I wish no war to ever happen.

35% of the country would cheer if a nuclear bomb went off in New York City.

The real threat to the USA is ourselves, not something like WW3.

like when 35% of America cheered for 9/11? if anything an external threat would unify America.

This isn't 2001. Fox News -- which ironically only became relevant at all because the Bush admin gave them exclusive access during the Iraq war -- has effectively destroyed America's unity in the two decades since.

And also to point out in the parent's comment - an external threat would have to -feel like a threat-. Attacking just NYC wouldn't do it for that 35% of America; it's not a threat to them, but to those 'Demoncrats'. Hell, the de facto leader of that 35% just asked the likeliest person to orchestrate such an attack to share dirt on his political opponents here.

GWB remains a clueless tool to this day, too. Pretty outrageous how much of a pass he gets for being a war criminal.

This never happened. EVER.

> Then, the will of the people. Which I feel the most optimistic about. Humans are pretty good at getting together in a war like urgency. Counter point is COVID, but I can imagine every person to be onboard if a nuclear bomb was detonated in New York.

You are way more optimistic than me. If WW3 breaks out government machinery, military, intelligence are all not going to be a problem at all. Before that though you'd have to align most of the country on what the right side even is. And yes, that includes the side that dropped a nuke on New York ("How do we know they did it? It may have been a false flag operation. Here's a Facebook video that proves it. They anyways deserved it for voting blue.")

Approval ratings of Bush went up sharply after 9/11 [1]. This is a fight or flight response analog of a nation. It is hard to predict but it would be pretty clear once casualties start piling up.

The media would be under sorts of a martial law and things would shut down dramatically.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bush...

The wonks at 538 seem to be of the opinion that the "Rally around the flag" effect is significantly dependent on the opposition party refraining from criticizing the leader(s) in question, at least in the medium-to-long term.

A lot has changed in the last 20 years. What would be the public reaction back then if Bush was making phone calls to Osama asking for dirt on his opponent in the 2004 election?

> I wonder how USA would fare in the face of a real war on the scale of WWII or bigger

...or a major pandemic which is more deadly than most wars?

Pandemics are sort of like a boiling-frog problem. People do not realize immediate risks to themselves. While a nuclear bomb doesn't cause immediate problems to someone in Montana, it is a visceral event just like Pearl Harbor attack that galvanized the entire nation.

> Reagan reduced marginal taxes from 70% to 28% by the end of his term.

And tax revenues rose.

Don’t forget that it also was the catalyst for Executive Order 9066.

British scientists designed a lot of radar tech that their American counterparts simply couldn't get to work properly (when the technology was basically handed to the Americans for free).

A lot of them directly attribute this to the Americans scientists not being at risk of being invaded.

British roadster fans might have some other opinions about why something electrical and British might not have worked.

Good job Randall and Boot didn't go on strike before they developed the magnetron.

British Leyland went bust about 16 years before I was born but the legacy lives on eh

Also "central planning works".

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