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[Vactor]

Kogan: I was actually responding mostly to Rictus's post.  I was a little unclear what you were saying in the first paragraph of the post just after his.

I am not disagreeing that war helps drive innovation, and we are in agreement that this is because of the huge sums of money that are poured into the military industrial complex.  This of course leaves the question, if the same amount of money was poured into other forms of research, would we still have innovation?

You brought up Japan in World War 2, lets discuss that.

Pre World War 2, the US controlled the pacific islands, and the rubber production that occured there.  Japan invaded China, but needed rubber to maintain its military.  The US refused to trade with Japan because of their war with China.  The US Pacific navy was the backbone of the US military presence in the far east, and in order to prevent the US from defending their Pacific assets the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, expecting to destroy the Pacific Fleet.  They were successful in destroying the US's battleships, and taking the Pacific Islands from the Americans, giving them a much needed supply of rubber.  

The US was not only retaliating for the destruction of their Navy, but were also fighting to regain an economic resource that had been taken from them, that they also needed. So although there were in fact economic reasons for the US to participate in the war, the profit/loss should not be applied to the defenders, as they are involuntary actors.

The Japanese expected to be better off because of their wars, they were incorrect, and had they known the eventual costs of going to war, surely they would have taken a different course.  The bar has been set for the level of destruction to be expected by war, and it has quickly become a non-option to many countries.  

There is a reason why the most advanced countries no longer go to war with each other.  However the Military Industrial Complex would be out of work if we did not have a use for their weapons, so every 15 years we go to war with a relatively defenseless country.  Again we are left with the question, is this in our Nation's best interest, or is it in the best interest of war profiteers?  

Being in a war doesn't change the way the human mind works so as to allow more creative thought, the difference is how many people are being paid to think.

The New Deal is an example of a non-war infrastructure project that gave the same economic boost to the US that the Rearmament of the 3rd Reich gave to Germany.

History is filled with non-war innovations that are later applied to warfare, airplanes, hot-air balloons, electricity, the telephone immediately come to mind.  And many inventions we consider military in nature were actually invented by some guy who considered himself a professional inventor. The Military simply came along and bought the invention from him. (i.e. the arc trasmitter)

[Earthquake Damage]

quote:Originally posted by Alfador:
<STRONG>Asimovian robots aren't very reasonable then. If they fail to save a human's life through inaction, they go insane. ('least that's how I remember it)</STRONG>

By Asimovian do you meant following Asimov's three laws?  Or do you instead mean according to what happens in his stories?

If the former, insanity is not a necessary consequence.  It's just faulty programming.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Some of your economic examples have alternative possible theories explaining them, which are just as plausible.

History is also full of wars started to "end the threat" or "retaliation for such and such attack". These are not economically motivated. Defenders often push the war beyond where they could end it to prevent future attacks.

And the innovations, the further back to their roots you go, the more likely you will run into a cost prohibitive development that they required before they could be thought up of, and that cost prohibitive problem was solved by military research either during a war, or in anticipation for one.

[Vactor]

I am in now way trying to dismiss what you are saying, but if you were to give examples I would be able to respond more aptly.

Your second point: You are mixing the justification of wars with the motivation for wars.  Germany invaded Poland in retaliation for The Gleiwitz incident.    The Spanish American war was in retaliation for the sinking of the USS Maine.  Gleiwitz clearly a german machination, while the cause of the Maine unkown, but both precipitated wars that were previously desired by the 'victims' of the attacks.  The US has its own modern Gleiwitzes, the Iraqui Assassination plot of Bush Sr., which it is now revealed to be a fraud, and "Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere."

Remember Paul Wolfowitz saying "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."?
Now you might say this disproves my point about war no longer being in a nation's economic interest.  While certain companies have made record profits (every US oil company (the bush family's trade), KBR (dick cheney's company), etc.), America's economy is in shambles.  Is America better off for invading iraq? clearly no.  But there are some people who have made out like bandits because of it, at the expense of the Nation.

In historic times a Nation profited from war not because they increased employment, but because they took something from the nations they defeated.  i.e. Currency, goods, real estate or labor.

Granted there are many complexities that i am not even touching upon in regards to why modern war cannot pay off its cost to the warring nation.

In response to your third point, To me it seems the opposite is true, as the most fundamental human creations were not born of military research.  Fire, the wheel, domestication of animals, levers and other simple machines.  Tools proceeded every early weapon type, axes were developed to cut wood, knives to butcher animals, spears bows and slings to hunt game.  It wasn't until people had axes that they realized they could use the axe for warfare.  They had fire before they figured out how to use fire for warfare, so on and so forth.

Horses weren't domesticated because someone needed something to ride into battle on, they were domesticated as a food source and a pack animal.  Modern airplanes were developed by a pair of bicyclist mechanics to prove it could be done, not because someone decided that battles would be easier to win if they had a guy puttering 5 feet off the ground for a quarter mile.  Hot air balloons were developed by two paper makers who noticed that a paper bag would rise if put over a candle.  The cost incurred is the cost of adapting and refining these discoveries to the point where they are useful in warfare, not the price of conception. (I am resisting the urge to bring up not yet realized military uses of viagra.. heh)

Many of our most recent creations are a result of military spending, because it is one of our greatest expenditures.  Had we spent the same amount in non military research subsidies, I find it highly unlikely that we would have remained technologically stagnant.  

Japan again enters our discussion, this time as the perfect example of a nation that post world war 2 has not invested in military research, and has become synonymous with the idea of economic and technological growth.

[Forumsdwarf]

Actually it was not the axe but the granary that led to the first war, at least as far as recorded archaeological history is concerned.
From that time until the development of nuclear weapons and deterrence theory the leading cause of war has been the perception of unguarded wealth of a would-be victim by a prospective aggressor.
Deterrence theory, properly applied, makes war over resources obsolete, but both Gulf War I and the Falklands War came about in part by breakdowns in the information systems necessary for deterrence to function properly.

[Qmarx]

quote:Originally posted by Vactor:
<STRONG>
Japan again enters our discussion, this time as the perfect example of a nation that post world war 2 has not invested in military research, and has become synonymous with the idea of economic and technological growth.</STRONG>

Of course, Japan's economic restructuring *was* guided by a military commander, so...

[Vactor]

@ Forumsdwarf: We are in agreement, I was not saying that warfare was caused by people having axes, rather that when war broke out people found the tools they already had to be helpful. I'm pretty sure you understood me, but thought i'd clarify.

@ Qmarx: I'm not quite sure what you're saying, and I think you may have missed my point.  What I was saying is that Japan has been at the forefront of technological developments in the modern era, and that their research has been funded for economic profit, not for military purposes.