I agree. If the US government had used the tens of trillions of dollars spent on the military-industrial complex and wars to invest in manufacturing infrastructure, manufacturing industry upgrades, and labor rights, the US would have remained the world's largest manufacturing power. China has invested all its money in upgrading its infrastructure over the past few decades.
Discussion
There's no conflict between investing in manufacturing and investing in military.
Funds are limited and money doesn't lie. Investing in war is different from investing in infrastructure. Infrastructure benefits everyone, while war benefits only a few people.
It's actually not different as military tech advances drive infrastructure investment. The Autobahn, for instance, was invented to move tanks. The Romans built sturdy roads and bridges, and invented logistics, to move their armies faster. AI, satellite, and drone tech is advancing so quickly because of the Ukraine war. A lot of medical advancement comes from battlefield hospitals.
And etc. Even a lot of seemingly peaceful advancement, like Bitcoin and Nostr, are effectively a form of libertarian insurrection or covert guerilla warfare. Peacetime doesn't lead to invention or infrastructure improvements, it leads to widespread sloth, atrophy, and decadence.
That's where the "hard times make strong men" meme comes from. Those who fight, build. There are only the quick and the dead.
game theory is central to warfare, security of a society, and network security
what makes a peaceful society is a society full of people who are capable of defending themselves
what i will say is that "war" has connotations with aggression, and defence is just security and retribution (retribution means returning what was stolen to the victim of theft).
i'd rather call it antiparasitic technology, what we are doing with nostr and with bitcoin
parasites are the ones who initiate violence, retribution is the same as being deloused.
they are lice, pests, they are a pestilence, and never mind anything else, the cost of health, is constant vigilance against parasites
it's the same with keeping a cat, or a herd of sheep, or protecting a flock of sheep from the wild dogs roaming, looking for a lame lamb to gorge on
We are literally the Shadowy Supercoders. 😁
I assume your keys have been stolen. Probably by Otto von Bismarck?
This is so "that which is seen, and that which is not seen"
What about the opportunity costs, capital consumption, distruption, capital misallocation, and many more negatives of war/fight.
In peacetime, entrepreneurs (and capital) are far more likely to focus on long term investments, research and development.
It's capital accumulation which leads to longer more complex production structures (and innovation/inventions).
And consumers will have more income and will look for new and improved products. Those are again incentives for entrepreneurs.
I'm quite sure this is not exhausted list by far.
I never said that there was no downside to war. Just that major innovation shifts tend to happen during some sort of conflict, so that war industry and industry aren't in conflict.
Don't know if that's true.
I quite sure, however, that all that innovation was at expense of something people actually wanted. Misallocated and perhaps wasted.
All of these things you are talking about are only for the war effort. These are only for a small part. There are some valuable things in war, but the real innovation and infrastructure are obtained from civilian use. I know what you mean. But you may not understand what it means to invest in a country's infrastructure for the time being.
I actually work on big, nationally-significant infrastructure projects and they're always short of funds because peacetime governments prefer spending the money on welfare and companies see maintanence as nothing but a cost center.
Bridges only get fixed, if someone needs to drive tanks over them, and then they get fixed in record time and at any price.
they do also fix the bridges if them being too weak to take the traffic for the supply lines, for almost anything, munitions and weapons are not all of it, they also need clothes, medical supplies
security is a high level issue but what security means for us plebs and for these warmongers are different things
if we see, what i think we will see maybe in our lifetimes, where the operational scope of a security system is at the level of a county or shire, a lot more of those small things that get lost in the big scale get handled
the escalation from state to federal to union level of focus of security leads to a steady decay of the small things, and the thing is that they don't actually realise something is wrong until one day the enemy rolls up and annexes it
security actually is more effective if its decentralised, even if the enemy is large, because the enemy has a scope scaling problem that the small units don't, and if they are chatty with their neighbours, it doesn't require forced central command to work
it is true, that security is the uppermost requirement in all cases, because if it's not attended to, it gets coopted and anexed and infiltrated
This is a tragedy. These tanks and artillery will only go to Vietnam, Iraq, and other war-torn countries. These funds will only build bridges and roads in those countries, not in the United States. These bridges and roads will eventually be destroyed by war. The money used to produce planes, artillery, and bullets will only go into the pockets of a few people in the military-industrial complex.
The tens of trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars in recent decades have been exchanged for planes, tanks, artillery, and bullets. If these expenses were exchanged for student education funds and infrastructure construction expenditures, the problem of insufficient funds you mentioned could be solved quickly.
I don't live in the United States. I'm referring to the crumbling German bridges and trains going off of rails, while a third of the federal budget goes to unemployed and retirees.
The same sadness. Tanks were unable to roll over every bridge and road in the German countryside.
When they aren't murdering people, they are robbing them and giving the money to agitators to maintain their dominance.
Sooner or later they will lop the branch they sit on. And anyway, there might be a really big reckoning coming for them. I believe it is going to happen soon. 150 years of democide is enough to warrant their permanent expulsion. One long foretold.
tesla robots, tesla factories
factories piloted via xbox controller
lithium mines in nevada