The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It should be something like "Fear of war motivates politicians to do their job properly"
Simply that losing a major war can mean ultimate removal of the entire political system of the vanquished, even if it does not result in replacement by that of the victor. This is the steepest threat that politicians ever face. This is when all the stops are pulled out, and incentive given to those who "new ideas" might otherwise be discouraged until a larger external threat is looming.
The beneficial element is not the war itself, but the wide & deep threat to the politicians.
This encourages them to unleash the forces of innovation which have naturally been throttled historically to preserve the status quo. These are the powers-that-be, if they weren't that powerful it wouldn't be so.
War is always a net loss. Any small local or focused gains fall mainly to politicians or those politically connected. This is nothing new, it will always be less than 1% of us who have a "Daddy" Warbucks.
For greatest efficiency in creating wealth or innovation, minimize the violence & destruction while doing whatever it takes to make your politicians bend to your will as much as they would to an overwhelming outside force.
Even when threat becomes reality, removing evil politicians pays off much better than merely seeking plunder.
On top of the economy-breaking expense, there hasn't been the usual technology upside from military spending: more surveillance, militarized policing, and ex-PMC cops aren't nearly as much fun as SDI spin-offs.
No I don't have a well-sourced essay for you. Go do some real Depression research. Look up work by multiple economists.
And without ever questioning "growth towards what" and "growth at what cost"...
It's too far a bridge to ask 7 billion people to simultaneously stop desiring things as well - so again the only thing left is growth.
Does one preclude the other? Generally, economic resources are necessary, but not sufficient, for happiness. We still need growth because we do not yet generate enough resources either worldwide or in the U.S., to meet people's needs.
If you question whether that's true about the U.S., consider health care; we can't afford to provide all that people need.
> I wonder what Orwell would have thought about this.
I'm not sure what Orwell has to do with it. Have I been trolled?
I beg to differ. I argue that the US can afford to provide all that is needed, but chooses not to do so. As a fraction of GDP, no one spends more than the US on healthcare; many developed nations spend half. [1] For this spending, we get roughly the same outcomes, more medical innovation, higher profits from running health care operations, and millions of people with poor access to health care. We've chosen profits over people. I could judge the choice, but I'm only here to point out that it is a choice, not some fundamental lack of resources.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...
Sure, and wealthy societies tend to be much more peaceful.
However, the author's theory doesn't point to any solutions, so it is not interesting. I could also point to many other factors that may have changed US (and global) values and priorities aside from wars, so I don't find this theory compelling in itself either.
BEGIN TRANSMISSION----
From the Paratime Economics and Sociology Department, University of New Earth, 2332
Dept of War Studies, University of Mars
Investigation of countries at peace and at war: A trans-worldline study.
Status: Failure
Recommendation: Further study of evolution requested
There has been significant debate over the past n centuries as to whether war or peace is more successful at driving innovation and progress (however measured). Given the recent cataloging of trillions of new worldlines with the advent of our new transworldline sensing technology, we set out to search for the ideal ‘natural’ experiment: two world lines, one where a country was at war, and one where it was not. We initially found practically countless potential pairings, so with high hopes we entered the second phase of our research program. To our great dismay, as we began to filter through potential world lines for a situation where a single country was at war and not at war, we stumbled upon a serious problem--we could find no perfect control! Whenever one country switched from a state of war to another, so did some second country as well!
To make a long story short, despite having direct access to countless possible worldlines, we have been unsuccessful in answering our fundamental question. The state of war and the state of peace, while often considered duals, are in reality ahistorical names we give to the states of societies that come about by long, path dependent processes. We would attempt to account for the interaction effects between society and environment, however our colleagues working in Evolution and Transtemporal studies inform us that they remain decades, if not centuries away from having tools to answer such questions, and they have had a four century head start developing their tools.
We believe that these results would be of interest to researchers and policy makers across the multiverse.
END TRANSMISSION----
tl;dr You can’t possibly measure this.
Another thing to consider is that in the case of a civil war we could simply treat the two parties as distinct states for the purpose of analysis. Yes, there will be some peculiarities such as supposedly being governed by the same set of laws, however if we take only the United States and France as examples, the factions that ultimately developed basically lived under two (or more) distinct sets of laws. I say this because in the US federalism was much weaker before 1865 and in France the class system divided the population and the difference in the treatment of different classes under the law has been argued to be one of the key factors contributing to 1789 (see Tocqueville).
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here...
Reference: "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen", by Frédéric Bastiat, in English [1] and the original in French [2] (Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas)
> This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.
"The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth" "This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies"
How can both of these things be true?
And this Iraq war is but the latest addition of the many conflicts islam nutcases are waging. Outside of Iraq, there's Nigeria, Mali, Western Sahara, Sudan, China, Phillipines, Russia (basically the entire border of where muslims live geographically, actually).
I get the impression that what's really happening is that the US is no longer policing the world, the legacy it got from WWII. The old empires are in the same situation, and we're returning to the historical norm before that. That historical norm was 1.5 millenia of islam versus everyone else war, with more victims than any other conflict in history. Constant civil wars at the edges of muslim territories and regular genocides inside of it. The entire world, from morocco to close to south africa to deep in China (almost up to Hong Kong).
I guess what they mean is that for example, up until they were bought out, the main driver of independant robotics was the DoD. I guess that's what they mean. But outside of the US, Japan, China and Britain I doubt militaries are all that innovative. Hell, I don't know if they are outside of the US, point.
Lack of Discipline.
Lack of Honesty.
Lack of Charity.
It has been argued that patents, as a whole, is a retardant to innovation. These historical facts seems to bear this argument out.