Comment by splintercell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by splintercell | Hacker News Reader

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I can't believe you're saying these things in a post Russia-Ukraine war scenario. Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military. Rather they spend money on their social programs.

Can US walk out of this role it plays, and still remain in a beneficial position? This is the biggest raging debate in the US right now. You can check the works of Peter Zeihan (who claims that US dollar will become even more desirable after the US walkout), or Brent Johnson (who claims that, even in a complete decline scenario, US dollar will still maintain its dominance above and beyond everyone).

Either way, Americans are hugely divided on maintaining this world order as it exists, and saying "you guys would lose so much without this", it's just taking a side on that debate.

>Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military.

That makes no logical sense. Why would the US invest so much money to protect its allies, if it weren't the primary beneficiary of it's giant military budget, and instead would mostly benefit its allies and not itself? The US always puts itself and own interests first.

The massive military sector is what gave birth to US's tech sector and the massive surveillance apparatus the US has at its disposal, and allowed it to own the aerospace sector too. All that give the US the biggest soft and hard power globally, and it also trickled down to its economy and to other sectors as well.

Protecting it's allies is just a happy side effect of them fitting underneath the giant umbrella the US has built primarily for itself, and it will never give it up because protecting its allies was never the main objective, but projecting its power.

It can make logical sense, in game theory. For example, you can have two situations:

A) thing A is the most beneficial thing for person A to do

B) thing A benefits person B way more than person A

These are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not exactly arguing for this (I'm not sure if the US or its allies benefits more, and we'd have to define what "benefits" means and "who" benefits etc.. etc.. etc..) I'm just saying this is very obviously possible: where the US having a huge military is the best thing for the US, and also its allies benefit from this MORE than the US benefits from it.

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