war good

[andrewr5]

call me a monster but people should see that we need war every great nation has had an enemy Macedonia and Persia Rome and Carthage england and geramany not the best the USA and the USSR/Terrorism/North Korea we need

someone to hate if we didn't we would fall into economic depression war makes

a country strong we've been the greatest nation for to long to become pacifist

[ecoli]

Japan seems to be doing better since it lost WWII, economically, that is.

[the tree]

Switzerland, since not getting involved, also seems to be doing pretty well.

 

War does have some economic benefits, it creates jobs and gives inventors something to do that has benefits in other areas. But really, throwing away a lot of money and economically active citizens is doing just that and there are much better ways to give employment and technology a boost, building infrastructure and such like.

[John Cuthber]

Just thought I'd mention all the dead people's families who probably don't see the benefit so clearly.

[insane_alien]

and if you didn't have wars then you would have a couple of extra billions lying around to spend on worthy projects like schools, healthcare, scientific research, etc. etc.

[the tree]

Insane, I'm sure you know that it's a lot easier to convince people to invest money in scientific research when there's a war on.

[insane_alien]

yeah but i would hope the money invested in education would take care of that one.

[the tree]

The thing is, when you invest more money in anything that isn't warfare or preparation for warfare, people whine and moan that the schools or the health service or whatever are just pouring all their money away.

To be fair, people whine about military spending quite a lot as well, but it significantly less so.

[insane_alien]

well, you can never please all of the people all of the time. theres sometimes where i'm almost in favour of a dictatorship.

 

*is probably now on several(more) government watch lists.*

[the tree]

I concur, without wanting to sound elitist or anything, people sometimes really don't seem to know what's good for them.

[Royston]

andrewr5, for a start you'll need to define what you think constitutes a 'great' nation, I'm sure there are plenty of people that will beg to differ on what you feel is 'great'.

 

You can apply the reasoning that war is 'good' to a number of arguments e.g call me a monster, but I think cancer is good, because it helps towards population problems, it sounds daft, but the reasoning is the same. So completely overlooking the fact that there are other answers to population problems rather than relying on disease et.c, which extends to there are other means of progress, you 'don't' need a war to incite progress. Which it seems you're eluding to. So I'm not convinced conflict on large scales is necessary for creating 'great' nations.

 

The Tree, the independence of Switzerland in WWII is a popular misconception, despite their political stance at the time, economically they prevailed, in part, due to this 'so called' independence, i.e the profit on Nazi gold, and held Jewish bank accounts is hardly independent of WWII, in fact Switzerland played a key role in the economics of WWII.

[the tree]

OK not getting involved wasn't the right term, but they didn't go to war, and made quite an effort not to go to war. Striving to avoid war in Switzerland's case definitely worked out quite well for them.

 

AFAIK, in WW1, they were as genuinely independent as they really could be.

[abskebabs]

I concur, without wanting to sound elitist or anything, people sometimes really don't seem to know what's good for them.

I would contend that democracy though, depsite its flaws still functions better than dictatorships overall because of thechecks and balances involved. Unfortunately in democracies though, the "masses" have a disproportionate influence made on them by demagogues, like politicians, and the media in general; subsequently they are manipulated by these demagogues. I think maybe in our age though, ppl maybe starting to wise up on them as the internet is providing ppl with many ore independent sources of information, and hopefully overall ppl are starting to become more weary overall of the information they receive.

 

The case may be slightly different in developing countries, but even there I think sometimes the media and politicians understimate the intelligence of the ppl, and then later have to pay for their ignornace in the ballot box. With reference to Military spending, notce how these departments or Ministries have the word "Defense" in them? So their primary objective is to provide "defense" from all the other countries that are also spending considerable amounts of their GDP on "Defense", oso then they have their justification to spend money on this. The military always needs a potential adversary to survive, and in most cases it will have some potential adversary. In a way it maintains and takes care of itself this way, much like the political class and elite generally do.

[Haezed]

call me a monster but people should see that we need war every great nation has had an enemy Macedonia and Persia Rome and Carthage england and geramany not the best the USA and the USSR/Terrorism/North Korea we need

someone to hate if we didn't we would fall into economic depression war makes

a country strong we've been the greatest nation for to long to become pacifist

 

You have to peg your claim to a time period. Was war "good" for the Greek nation? Well, certainly, the Persian wars went pretty well for the Greeks. If they hadn't won, Greece would be an irrelevant memory. The Peloponnesian wars, didn't do too much for them, certainly if you were an Athenian. Alexander helped to create a "great" empire and did much to spread and simultaneously erode Greek traditions.

 

Fast forward to the US, wars were essential to build retain the nation which spans the continent. If the civil or mexican-american war had been lost, we would be diminished.

 

Fast forward to WWII, the US emerged as the remaining world power because (i) our economic basis had been mobilized but and was undamaged and (ii) we alone had the bomb.

 

For thousands of years, wars help a nation become and stay "great" by garnering and maintaining territory and resources essential to their economic and military. Wars also can preserve the "nation" or, in Greece's case, a collection of city-states.

 

The problem is that we have now expanded into all available land on this planet and more and more nations are gathering the ability to destroy the world. We are dealing with an imperative that is encoded into our species to protect and benefit the tribe but our survival may depend on overriding that hard coding with the software in our brains.

[andrewr5]

Japan seems to be doing better since it lost WWII, economically, that is.

 

because of it depends on who the USA to rebuild their economy

[andrewr5]

You have to peg your claim to a time period. Was war "good" for the Greek nation? Well, certainly, the Persian wars went pretty well for the Greeks. If they hadn't won, Greece would be an irrelevant memory. The Peloponnesian wars, didn't do too much for them, certainly if you were an Athenian. Alexander helped to create a "great" empire and did much to spread and simultaneously erode Greek traditions.

 

Fast forward to the US, wars were essential to build retain the nation which spans the continent. If the civil or mexican-american war had been lost, we would be diminished.

 

Fast forward to WWII, the US emerged as the remaining world power because (i) our economic basis had been mobilized but and was undamaged and (ii) we alone had the bomb.

 

For thousands of years, wars help a nation become and stay "great" by garnering and maintaining territory and resources essential to their economic and military. Wars also can preserve the "nation" or, in Greece's case, a collection of city-states.

 

first i said Macedonia not Greece they were separate entity's second men fear death to much to use nukes in any large scale maybe a few rouge bombs but

not all out war

[andrewr5]

by great i mean nearly omnipotent militarily and completely in control of the worlds influence and the most culturally important nation in their time which as of yet we are

[andrewr5]

and if you didn't have wars then you would have a couple of extra billions lying around to spend on worthy projects like schools, healthcare, scientific research, etc. etc.

 

 

the idea is that the war creates more money than you put in and i agree that we need a better school system but healthcare we spend more on than anyone

and scientific research should be done by private individuals because the government has an adverse affect on research and while i believe in war as a tool new ways to wage it are not good

[andrewr5]

Switzerland, since not getting involved, also seems to be doing pretty well.

 

War does have some economic benefits, it creates jobs and gives inventors something to do that has benefits in other areas. But really, throwing away a lot of money and economically active citizens is doing just that and there are much better ways to give employment and technology a boost, building infrastructure and such like.

 

such as

[andrewr5]

Just thought I'd mention all the dead people's families who probably don't see the benefit so clearly.

 

that would be call me a monster part morality is not part of economy

[andrewr5]

OK not getting involved wasn't the right term, but they didn't go to war, and made quite an effort not to go to war. Striving to avoid war in Switzerland's case definitely worked out quite well for them.

 

AFAIK, in WW1, they were as genuinely independent as they really could be.

 

would you call Switzerland great or mediocre it is put forward several useful things in its past but it simply isn't a historic nation

[the tree]

such as

Roads, government buildings, schools, hospitals, tidal defences, sewers, reservoirs, water pipes, gas pipes, power stations, power lines, communication lines, road signs, traffic lights, police stations, fire stations, shopping centres, car parks, parks, playgrounds, railways...

 

would you call Switzerland great or mediocre it is put forward several useful things in its past but it simply isn't a historic nation

A higher GDP than America _[source], distinct absence of war, incredibly environmentally responsible power production, historically democratic, religious freedom, tasty cheese, drew with France in the '06 world cup... yes I'd say they're a great nation, and in terms of the 20^th century they are definitely historic.

[Haezed]

first i said Macedonia not Greece they were separate entity's

 

I was using Greece for my own example. I understand Alexander was from Macedonia.

 

second men fear death to much to use nukes in any large scale maybe a few rouge bombs but

not all out war

 

Well' date=' I'll sleep much better now. Seriously, a "few rogue bombs" could lead to a hellish existence.

 

Besides, the risks are hardly limited to nukes. In another thread recently, I saw how Martin Rees, the Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University gives us a 50/50 shot of surviving for another century.

 

History, if there is to be a recorded human history, will record the "great" nation of this period as the one who best led humanity out of this technological adolescence. Note, that this leadership may require some wars to be fought. This is a far cry, however, from saying that generically "war is good" or even necessary to a great nation.

[insane_alien]

I would contend that democracy though, depsite its flaws still functions better than dictatorships overall because of thechecks and balances involved.

 

don't get me wrong i don't think that we should have dictatorships all over the place. just mentioning that they do have their merits just like everything else

[Realitycheck]

the idea is that the war creates more money than you put in

 

The war machine model of economics doesn't really apply to all wars. In WW2, the people were unified in defeating a monster who was doing a pretty good job of trying to take over the world, while having to fend off the Japanese, as well, on our backs.

 

In the war we have now, we have large scale disagreement about whether we should even be at war, in a region that has a large scale impact on fear in the oil markets, not to mention an impact on the actual oil market since all of Iraq's oil production was shut down, plus we have this gigantic check to pay for it all disturbing all kinds of social programs and so forth, in preparation for the retirement of the Baby Boomers. It isn't quite the same.