The Angry White Man

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in
:

Hi Jeff, studied your post.

On Feb 25, 1:34 pm, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:
On Feb 25, 4:08 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:



On Feb 25, 11:30 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 25, 1:07 pm, "Ken S. Tucker"
wrote:

On Feb 25, 9:29 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 23, 1:04 pm, "
wrote:

On Feb 23, 12:45 pm, "Ken S. Tucker"
wrote:

I think war is usually a business mistake, nowadays.
Ken

Right, and that is always the overriding concern that
trumps the war
option, I suppose?

Certainly that was the case in 1861, 1914, and 1939 --
years devoid of business interests.

Every time that argument comes up, I'm more and more tempted
to go digging through the college textbooks I have in storage
until I find one reading that mentions a very compelling
book, written by a well- respected economist, that was very
popular in its time. It carefully explained how, due to the
interconnected nature of international trade, widespread war
was now impossible because it would call too much economic
damage to everyone involved. Written in 1912.
-JTD

That's a case of too much power, not enough brains.
1% of those in control, say we must build 1000's of
ICBM's because the other are guys are.

ICBMs were involved in the buildup to World Wars I and II? Do
tell.

Yet, 99% of the people on both sides have not motive
or desire to harm the other guys, apart from being
told they should.

Perhaps true. Even probably true. And almost certainly true of
Americans and Chinese today, or most people all over the world
for that matter. But war happened anyway. So what has changed
in the past 60 years, or even the past 30, that prevents such a
situation from devolving into war?
JTD

I'm lookin at history from 5000BC to the present.
Mongols slaughtered 30 million chinese using a
sword (not the same one), hence the sword is a
weapon of mass destruction, that's why I think
one should take care to the analysis of the 1000
ancedotal tactical battles, humans have fought.

Okay, hang on.

In your original post, you implied that wars weren't going to happen
any more, because they would be a "business mistake", that the world
had gotten too interdependent for a wider war. Others (including
myself) pointed out that for most of human history, war has been a
bad move, economically, and that in fact your thesis had been put
forward early in the 20th Century just before the most devastating
wars the human race has ever fought-

Not really WW1 and 2 were sissy fights, historically
serious war is totally genocidal.

and that wars keep happening anyway,
besides being really bad for business in general. In the post you
replied to, I pointed those things out, and asked what you thought
had changed in the years since that meant that this time, business
concerns would trump out, and wars wouldn't happen.

In response, you're invoking 5000 years of history, and calling us to
analyze the wars that humans have fought.

From the formation of city states (~5000BC) to the
present, ~7000 years. Each empire believed "Might
is Right", and War = Strength, including economical
but that never happened, otherwise the world would be
unified by force.
The world can be unified but by Benevolent Capitalism,
(according to our simulations).

That's a non sequieter, but let's look at it for a second. The last
time anyone could make a case that "war pays for war" between
civilized states with a straight face was in the early 18th Century,
when conscript armies under folks like Blenheim were merrily marching
back and forth blowing the Hell out of civilized Europe. They spent
most of their time "levying contributions", which is a nice way of
saying "we marched into this state and forcibly stripped it of pretty
much anything of value to feed and pay the troops". Since the armies
didn't require a terrible lot of manufactured goods that couldn't be
captured and since international trade wasn't a big deal at the time,
this meant that an army in the field could more or less sustain
itself indefinitely with minimal expenditure from home. Any
territory it captured was more or less gravy for the homeland. As
you can imagine, this led to some awfully long wars.

I read a theory about Spain stealing gold etc. from
America. Spain didn't need to develope a home
based GNP and when the America's gold ran out,
everyone they were purchasing goods from were
far more economically more powerful, because
they had a GNP, Spain had very little.

*After* that time, though, the balance tips the other way.
Sustaining an army in the field takes a lot of manpower, a lot of
high-end manufactured goods, and a lot of mundane supplies like food
and clothing- and you have to supply those on your own now, because
armies have gotten big enough that you can't gather what you need by
"levying contributions"/bank robbery on an international scale. All
of that takes money, and lots and lots of it. All of this means that
since (I would say) about the mid 18th Century, fighting and winning
a war is almost always going to cost more money than any *economic*
benefit you could get out of it.

[All of this applies, of course, to wars between cultures with
roughly equal technology. I haven't looked at the figures in detail,
but it's entirely possible that some of the colonial wars that pitted
breech- loading rifles against spears ended up being economic wins in
the long run. Although conquest was generally one thing,
pacification another.]

I'm still trying to figure out why somebody attacked
the Taliban, it wasn't my decision.

Yes, you'd have the RCAF flying paper darts if it were up to you ,
though.

Bertie