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Comment by RobertoG | Hacker News Reader

Before asking people in developing countries not to have a proper house, we could try to forbid private planes and reduce military spending by half, for instance.

The military use of fuels is just ridiculous. If we are not able to stop "small" and superfluous things like that, then, simply there is not hope.

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Russia has made the military very not unnecessary

When I say the military, I mean, all the military, that's the minimum we the citizens of the world should be requesting.

Anyway, if you are talking about the USA military budget, that's just nonsense. Just check the numbers.

> When I say the military, I mean, all the military, that's the minimum we the citizens of the world should be requesting.

You can ask, but you won't get it. Disarmament, and I don't just mean nuclear, requires a level of trust that simply does not exist, because a relatively small group defecting (in the game theory sense) would be able to conquer the world.

It has been done in the past and can be done in the future. If we can't even do something like that forget about other changes. And I'm not talking about nuclear.

In fact, if your goal is really only defend your territory, you could keep nuclear and downsize all those war airplanes and tanks burning oil, and you would not be worse for it.

> It has been done in the past

What are you referring to? Because this sounds too implausible for us to be talking about the same category of thing.

Our military budget is only so high because we're making up for the rest of the NATO countries' military budgets being too low.

Private planes only? Aren't the elevators energy hungry? Aren't snack producing companies unnecessary?

Are you comparing the utility of elevators to the utility of private jets?

Elevators enable skyscrapers.

I don't know, are skyscrapers better or worse for the environment than lower-density buildings that don't need elevators?

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