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Comment by iamflimflam1 | Hacker News Reader

Imagine how much money is spent on defence. And then imagine the tiny proportion that is spend on basic research that might result in offensive or defensive weapons.

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Personally I can’t imagine not understanding that the defence funding is one of the most essential factors in enabling our modern way of life. It’s been so effective at providing the security needed to produce globalisation and highly democratic societies, that a lot of people have forgotten the reason we need it in the first place. Certainly worth the minuscule portion of GDP we allocate to it.

>enabling our modern way of life

That's kind of their point, though? They're suggesting our "way of life" is backwards in some ways, which I think is a fair assessment.

We find ourselves supporting financially things like what's happening in Israel or Gaza or happened in Iraq or Afghanistan or Sudan or Armenia or Haiti or insert the rest of the list of countries we've coup'ed here. While we fight over whether poor people deserve healthcare, or if school kids deserve not to starve. Over if public education is good or not. Or if women deserve medical autonomy...

None of that is particularly democratic. Globalization happened because rich people wanted cheaper labor in the 'global south' not because of military bases. I don't know that it's obvious military is what's "produced globalization" and "highly democratic" societies. That seems a fairly large keep of faith.

Funding Israel’s conflicts is not a fundamental part of our way of life. The ability to load a huge defenceless cargo ship full of billions of dollars worth of goods and send it anywhere in the world is. The ability to choose how we govern ourselves is. The fact that it’s a reasonable expectation that we will have most of the fundamental needs of life provided to us no matter what is. None of that is backwards, all of it very obviously depends on our defence capability, and regardless of what you think about the quality of western democracies, we have the most democratic and stable societies that have ever existed in the history of our species, as well as the highest quality of life.

Most of the negatives you’ve listed here are a result of other countries defence force inadequacies.

>Most of the negatives you’ve listed here are a result of other countries defence force inadequacies.

If there are inequalities of wealth, and a delineation of artificial constructs like race, religion or nationality, there will result an inequality of military force.

This material inequality is reflected in reality by the negatives I've described. A world where we accept "stronger military = good" naively exacerbates that inequality.

>we have the most democratic and stable societies that have ever existed in the history of our species, as well as the highest quality of life.

I'm glad you brought this up. One might argue the material wealth of our nations is a direct result of utilizing inequity by building a domineering military presence globally. Of the exploitation of colonialism and slavery.

Globalization in capitalism is the will of capital owners seeking more exploitable labor, not some desire to spread an ideology. That material/economic relationships are the oldest dated interactions between continents and societies seems obvious enough demonstration of that fact.

We have indeed made a marked change in quality of life, but on societal scales is the lifestyle 'gains' of the comparative 1% worth the toil of the 99? We have to pay heed to this measure when using any analysis on quality of life or the worth of decisions like military strength.

I'm not a sociologist, I just wanted to add that there is, to my knowledge, no evidence of an innate correlation between democracy, quality of life, and military strength. If you have literature that suggests otherwise I'd be happy to read it.

>Funding Israel’s conflicts is not a fundamental part of our way of life.

The specifics may not be, but the purpose of an extensive global military presence is fundamentally about creating or exploiting these inequalities wherever they arise for material aims. This is reflected by the fact that the action we take is directly proportional to the material value intervention would have to our bottom line.

SA killing Kashoggi or contributing to direct attacks? Cool, long as they got $/oil. Israel doing war crimes? Cool, long as they keep buying their arms from us and their ire focused on those we don't care for. Country getting worked over by our 'rival' ie taiwan or ukraine? Give them all the money and arms.

I'm not even trying to argue the merit of any of these decisions, I just don't agree any analysis is as simple as "stronger military = safer better happier fun time pax romana".

Globalization is not at all designed to exploit inequalities, it is in fact the exact opposite. The purpose of globalization is to increase the efficiency of the global economy, and the effect that has is to minimize inequality. Which is how China has ended up with the worlds largest middle class, Mexico has ended up with a very respectable middle class, and the middle class in India is growing at quite an impressive rate, despite all the other problems those countries have. It is also the reason that hunger/malnutrition and deprivation in general have been on a rather steady downwards trend over the past 80 years, "the 99%" are the primary benefactors of the improvements in quality of life that it has brought with it.

None of this would be possible without the security provided by the militaries of the western democracies. Strong militaries don't cause this outcome, but they are 100% required if you are trying to create it. The only way to prevent all of those bad things that you have the described western militaries doing from happening where you live is to have the protection of a strong military yourself. This is such a plainly obvious fact, denying it is about on par with the "defund the police" rationale. Sure they can do bad things, and that can be addressed, but society needs the military possibly even more than it needs the police.

>Globalization is not at all designed to exploit inequalities, it is in fact the exact opposite. The purpose of globalization is to increase the efficiency of the global economy

That's the way they sell it, we agree about that.

>the effect that has is to minimize inequality.

So that's why we have worse than gilded age inequality?[0] Seems they haven't done too much of that despite their sales pitch. See trickle down economics.

>the 99%" are the primary benefactors of the improvements in quality of life that it has brought with it.

Not what the math says. I agree, in general starvation and what not are technically down. But shouldn't we have aspirations a little greater than "less people are starving to death in a world we drop?" I just don't see what evidence you have other than a correlation

[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/wealth-inequality-billionai...

Israel is a crucial ally in the oil rich and unstable Middle East. If Israel were to fall, or stop cooperating with the US, our foreign policy would be strongly affected.

I wouldn't say its importance is on par with defending global shipping, but it really is up there. That's not to say we, or they, are doing it well. But it's not just a whim on our part.

Israel is ultimately unimportant to every other country in the world, and the argument that they contribute anything to regional stability is rather laughable. What is important is that we contribute to the defence of our allies, but they are an incredibly low quality ally. Regional stability is arguably a lot more important to Saudi Arabia (a country that has never tried to sink any US navy ships I might add).

The US GDP is about $25 trillion. Our military costs about $1 trillion, even if you leave out things like the Veterans Administration or the funding of Ukraine's war. That's 4%, a number I'd be hard pressed to describe that as "minuscule". And it's close to the amount everybody else spends, combined.

The military is certainly necessary. But even a 25% cut would be a lot of money you could spend on other things, and still be by far the most advanced and expensive military in the world.

Historically, it is minuscule. It wasn’t too long ago that waging a war for too long would bankrupt most countries, but the US has been waging wars for almost the entire time it’s existed, and it’s managed to build the worlds largest economy while doing it. But you’re suggesting we debate whether defence spending should be 3 percent rather than 4 of GDP. If all of our allies properly contributed to our defence, it could probably be 2 or less. I’m not a big supporter of government spending, but the effectiveness of our defence spending for its tiny relative cost is remarkable compared to literally any other period in history.

> the US has been waging wars for almost the entire time it’s existed, and it’s managed to build the worlds largest economy while doing it

Colonial imperialism is a highly effective means of resource extraction.

The US foreign territories have nothing to do with resource extraction. They're primarily maintained to provide strategic territory to the US armed forces.

Of course, chip manufacturing was moved almost entirely to Taiwan and South Korea out of complete happenstance, not because it was cheaper to make there for the American mega corps making huge profits out of the chips. And that's just one example.

Offshoring parts of your supply chain (and to high income countries no less) is your idea of colonial imperialism?

I'm not talking about territories, I'm talking about the US' long, well-documented history of neoliberal foreign interference with democratic nations, with the aim of establishing economic and ideological superiority.

I'm guessing it would be hardly noticeable to anybody. Just the federal deficit alone is 50% higher than total military spending.

Healthcare expenditure is 5 trillion, per-capita is around double that of other first world countries, for worse social health outcomes in many objective measures.

Welfare expenditure is 6 trillion, still >10% of the population is in poverty somehow. If you gave that money to everyone living in poverty, they would be getting $200k/year.

I think governments have a problem with wasteful (via incompetence, corruption, and bureaucratic overhead) spending. Sure, saving one % by cutting military expenditure or finding a few % more revenue by increasing taxes on wealthy or corporations might help at the margins. It's not going to be some incredible transformative thing like the online-leftist narrative would have you think.

The last two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) are estimated to have cost the US 4-6 trillion dollars (not to mention the lives lost and ruined).

It did not make us more secure or establish democracies (quite the opposite in Afghanistan).

I agree that we need national defense but we spend way too much with zero accountability.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/financial-legacy-ir...

In principal I agree, but there is a benefit that you're missing out. The fact that the US is in a constant state of war for so long has made it by far the best country at doing war. Aside from being better equipped than probably the rest of the world's armed forces combined, the US armed forces are broadly speaking the most experienced and competent armed forces in the world, with the only countries that come somewhat close being the ones who regularly join us on our stupid wars.

The effects of inexperience and general unreadiness amongst some of our biggest adversaries are currently on display for all to see in Ukraine.

Not that I'm saying this is an adequate justification for any of the terrible wars we've waged, but it is an outcome that should be accounted for.

The fusion breakthrough in the National Ignition Facility was said to be essentially a program claiming to be for nuclear weapons research but instead they did fundamental research.

I think it'd be clearer to say they did fundamental research as part of nuclear weapons research. The goal of the facility is to perform testing that can help to validate the continued functioning and yield of the nuclear weapon stockpile without actually setting off a nuke. Since a hydrogen bomb achieves fusion ignition, being able to perform ignition at the facility is kind of part of the goal.

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