Comment by tekkk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tekkk | Hacker News Reader

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So you're saying we, the rest of the world, are funding your inefficient military budgets and troops sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other? Had US policymakers little more sense in their heads I'm sure they could achieve the same result (dictators around the world not willing to invade their neighbours) and get actually working infrastructure. But nope, let's waste the money on teaching people how to kill and neglect the actually productive projects for the sake of global "peace". And how's that been working so far?

Sure it's hard to assess how much military spending is the "right" amount and how much US prevents unrest on global scale. But let's not kid ourselves, we'd all be better off if we didn't have to spend money on keeping armies. They produce next to nothing on economic growth or scientific progress. We'd be having colonies on Mars if US had spent a part of that money on NASA.

Yes, exactly. You, the rest of the world, are indeed subsidizing this system to some extent, and in exchange, far fewer of your own young people are sitting in garrisons around the world, doing push-ups, playing with guns and yelling each other.

I won't defend US incompetence wrt infrastructure. But I will observe that "spending more" hardly seems to be the problem, as we seem to do plenty of that already. It's that (lack of) stuff we get in return that's the problem.

As far as global "peace", it is certainly true there is still conflict, but from the bigger picture perspective it's been a relatively peaceful half century.

Again I'll point to this chart: https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace. Consider that the y-axis is log scale, and contemplate the WWI and WWII bubbles at the top.

Hmm that's a good point. There's a power balance that would otherwise be filled with for example European countries spending more on their militaries. So in that sense we are paying you for keeping the playing field safe for others. Interesting thought. Still doesn't change the fact that military spending is more or less money wasted. So is it better for you waste that money than us, I don't know. Probably.

But say what if US had reduced military spending after the collapse of Soviet Union by let's say half, would the world be much worse than it's today? From statistical perspective while it seems that there's causation between US military superiority and the lack of conflicts compared to prior decades, it might be as well that the world has just become less warlike. Sure it would suck if WW3 happened though. Anyway, it's not a reason not to fix your infrastructure :).

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