Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

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> The big war machine isn't what keeps us safe; that is a fetishization of the military that has always been around as a justification for outsized military budgets.

It absolutely is, please understand that I'm not american, and I believe the US Mil. budget is way, way, WAY over the top. But the opposite, not having any of it, would be even stupider. You have the entirety of history to verify the claim, and giving exemples of countries who don't have it but are covered and defended by those who do does not really dispute it.

> Saying that we've gotten research via military funding also disregards how much more research we could get if it weren't redirected through the war bureaucracy.

Sure, if you're willing to forget the nature of what we are.

The possibilities are not "war and war research" or "no war, no war research, all in scientific research". The human nature of what makes armed conflict happen has been there since before there even was a notion of anything close to "research budgets".

> budget is way, way, WAY over the top. But the opposite, not having any of it, would be even stupider.

Who said anything about not having any of it?

Also, I don't quite grasp what you mean by your second claim. You mean to say that not spending money in military research doesn't mean we would spend it in other research?

I think a lot of what we have today would've been invented regardless of military conflict. Perhaps in a slower fashion, which would've perhaps also been better and more sustainable. Inventing to "save our lives" I think is a given, and assuming we didn't fear each other as much, perhaps we could focus more on our fear of disease, or climate catastrophe.

>>> Sure, if you're willing to forget the nature of what we are.

There's a difference between seeing our nature as "a fact" or seeing our nature as an "evolving one".

History is full of wars, that's for sure. But remember things that makes us "better" like : laws, political structures, structural investment in research, etc.

Now that I'm thinking about it, is there a minimum of military means that is necessary for our "nature" to evolve... (and are we at that minimum right now ?). I don't count nuclear stuff 'cos it doesn't make anybody safer (contrary to warplanes, ships, soldiers, etc.)

It absolutely is, please understand that I'm not american, and I believe the US Mil. budget is way, way, WAY over the top. But the opposite, not having any of it,

All we need to feel safe and be safe is a few nuclear weapons and a couple of oceans, both of which we already have. Everything else is either not a threat, not our problem, or not a military problem.

How can you feel safe knowing your country’s only response for an attack is a nuclear bomb?

In case you haven't noticed, no hostile military forces will attack you if you have nukes. It only takes one to ruin the invader's whole day.

You will still have to deal with the occasional 9/11-style harassment, of course, but it's not as if having the world's most powerful military will prevent that.

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