
The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html
======
mkempe
War is destruction. People who claim that war somehow creates wealth are
profoundly idiotic, to say the least.

Reference: "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen", by Frédéric
Bastiat, in English [1] and the original in French [2] (Ce qu'on voit et ce
qu'on ne voit pas)

[1]
[http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html](http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html)

[2]
[http://bastiat.org/fr/cqovecqonvp.html](http://bastiat.org/fr/cqovecqonvp.html)

~~~
ceras
I don't think that's a fair response to the article - it's arguing something
more nuanced. Right in the 4th paragraph is this:

> This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course
> the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct
> from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending
> and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the
> attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether
> investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up
> improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

~~~
crazy1van
The argument seems a bit too nuanced if there is such a thing.

"The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth" "This view does not
claim that fighting wars improves economies"

How can both of these things be true?

~~~
KC8ZKF
Fighting wars doesn't help the economy, but preparing for (potential) wars
can. Not that I agree with this argument, but that is the thesis of the
article.

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carsongross
If your economic model requires that we murder a bunch of people and blow a
bunch of shit up in order to be "better off", I think it might be time to
reconsider your economic model.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yes, I think that's the subtext.

~~~
carsongross
I just wish it was the supertext.

~~~
JacksonGariety
Here you go[1].

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7891557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7891557)

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salem
The title does not match the gist of the article.

It should be something like "Fear of war motivates politicians to do their job
properly"

~~~
danelectro
This is the main significant conclusion to me.

Simply that losing a major war can mean ultimate removal of the entire
political system of the vanquished, even if it does not result in replacement
by that of the victor. This is the steepest threat that politicians ever face.
This is when all the stops are pulled out, and incentive given to those who
"new ideas" might otherwise be discouraged until a larger external threat is
looming.

The beneficial element is not the war itself, but the wide & deep threat to
the politicians.

This encourages them to unleash the forces of innovation which have naturally
been throttled historically to preserve the status quo. These are the powers-
that-be, if they weren't that powerful it wouldn't be so.

War is always a net loss. Any small local or focused gains fall mainly to
politicians or those politically connected. This is nothing new, it will
always be less than 1% of us who have a "Daddy" Warbucks.

For greatest efficiency in creating wealth or innovation, minimize the
violence & destruction while doing whatever it takes to make your politicians
bend to your will as much as they would to an overwhelming outside force.

Even when threat becomes reality, removing evil politicians pays off much
better than merely seeking plunder.

------
Zigurd
It's madness no matter how you look at it: Ten years of war on the far side of
the planet isn't major? Trillions in all-up costs isn't major? Risking
comprehensive economic collapse by incurring the heaviest costs just as the
ibankers went bonkers with derivatives isn't major? The wars and the
derivatives bomb are why our growth prospects suck, not the lack of war. The
authors starts with "The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at
least not by historical standards." What rock has he been living under?

On top of the economy-breaking expense, there hasn't been the usual technology
upside from military spending: more surveillance, militarized policing, and
ex-PMC cops aren't nearly as much fun as SDI spin-offs.

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RawData
We've managed as a society to turn all the potential warlords into football
coaches and let them orchestrate their little armies on the football field
instead of the battle field.

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protomyth
Once again, WWII did not get us out of the depression, it was the changes in
government spending and tax policy between 1946 to 1948. Roosevelt was a
disaster just as much as Wilson and Hoover. Truman was overruled by Congress
who cut spending and taxes when Truman wanted to keep it. Reconcile the war
lovers with rationing that occurred.

~~~
hackuser
What is the basis of this statement? The economists I've read say that the US
gov't didn't do enough in the 1930s (I'm not sure how much Congress and how
much Roosevelt are to blame), as they lacked the political will to spend as
much as was needed.

~~~
fennecfoxen
That's ridiculous. The problem going into the Great Depression was the
monetary policy, which was tightened when it needed to be loosened. The
problem going _through_ the great depression, what made it really great, was
the New Deal -- not today's political footballs like social security, but the
radical restructuring of the American economy in a borderline Soviet wave of
regimentation and anticompetitive cronyism. We don't think about this much
today because it was mostly disassembled, but every so often you hear some
story where the government wants to take farmers' raisins for a pittance of
compensation (and the crop is at risk of spoiling). Or milk-price boards.
Those are just the last lingering vestiges of the system at work, a system run
with a mindset that they could drag the nation into prosperity again by
burning crops in the time of famine (to support prices don't you know).

No I don't have a well-sourced essay for you. Go do some real Depression
research. Look up work by multiple economists.

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galaxyLogic
The unspoken assumption in this theory is that growth is good. What about
peace and love? Isn't that good too? I wonder what Orwell would have thought
about this.

~~~
hackuser
> The unspoken assumption in this theory is that growth is good. What about
> peace and love? Isn't that good too?

Does one preclude the other? Generally, economic resources are necessary, but
not sufficient, for happiness. We still need growth because we do not yet
generate enough resources either worldwide or in the U.S., to meet people's
needs.

If you question whether that's true about the U.S., consider health care; we
can't afford to provide all that people need.

> I wonder what Orwell would have thought about this.

I'm not sure what Orwell has to do with it. Have I been trolled?

~~~
pjmorris
> 'consider health care; we can't afford to provide all that people need.'

I beg to differ. I argue that the US can afford to provide all that is needed,
but _chooses_ not to do so. As a fraction of GDP, no one spends more than the
US on healthcare; many developed nations spend half. [1] For this spending, we
get roughly the same outcomes, more medical innovation, higher profits from
running health care operations, and millions of people with poor access to
health care. We've chosen profits over people. I could judge the choice, but
I'm only here to point out that it is a choice, not some fundamental lack of
resources.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

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joshsegall
Judging by the content of the article I get the sense that he didn't choose
that title. The gist seems to be that some previous wars helped focus our
values and priorities of spending, and that recent wars lacked that focusing
aspect. There is no spending argument in the article, which is good because
econ 101 tells us that war spending doesn't increase demand and doesn't create
jobs.

However, the author's theory doesn't point to any solutions, so it is not
interesting. I could also point to many other factors that may have changed US
(and global) values and priorities aside from wars, so I don't find this
theory compelling in itself either.

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hyperion2010
So I have a little piece that I've written about this, it is woefully
incomplete, but I'll post the abstract.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION----

From the Paratime Economics and Sociology Department, University of New Earth,
2332

Dept of War Studies, University of Mars

Investigation of countries at peace and at war: A trans-worldline study.

Status: Failure

Recommendation: Further study of evolution requested

There has been significant debate over the past n centuries as to whether war
or peace is more successful at driving innovation and progress (however
measured). Given the recent cataloging of trillions of new worldlines with the
advent of our new transworldline sensing technology, we set out to search for
the ideal ‘natural’ experiment: two world lines, one where a country was at
war, and one where it was not. We initially found practically countless
potential pairings, so with high hopes we entered the second phase of our
research program. To our great dismay, as we began to filter through potential
world lines for a situation where a single country was at war and not at war,
we stumbled upon a serious problem--we could find no perfect control! Whenever
one country switched from a state of war to another, so did some second
country as well!

To make a long story short, despite having direct access to countless possible
worldlines, we have been unsuccessful in answering our fundamental question.
The state of war and the state of peace, while often considered duals, are in
reality ahistorical names we give to the states of societies that come about
by long, path dependent processes. We would attempt to account for the
interaction effects between society and environment, however our colleagues
working in Evolution and Transtemporal studies inform us that they remain
decades, if not centuries away from having tools to answer such questions, and
they have had a four century head start developing their tools.

We believe that these results would be of interest to researchers and policy
makers across the multiverse.

END TRANSMISSION----

tl;dr You can’t possibly measure this.

~~~
diziet
How about Civil Wars?

~~~
hyperion2010
An interesting proposition, however I would argue that it is actually even
harder in the case of civil wars because you don't know what to compare to.
Let's pretend that we compare the set of all worldlines where country A goes
to war with itself to the set of all worldlines where it does not. The
variance within each of those sets is going to be enormous with regard to the
relative rates of progress.

Another thing to consider is that in the case of a civil war we could simply
treat the two parties as distinct states for the purpose of analysis. Yes,
there will be some peculiarities such as supposedly being governed by the same
set of laws, however if we take only the United States and France as examples,
the factions that ultimately developed basically lived under two (or more)
distinct sets of laws. I say this because in the US federalism was much weaker
before 1865 and in France the class system divided the population and the
difference in the treatment of different classes under the law has been argued
to be one of the key factors contributing to 1789 (see Tocqueville).

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lsh123
I feel this article assumes that the major war will happen "somewhere else".
The last major war caused complete destruction of the economies and
infrastructures from Seine to Volga. Today, a major war pretty much means
nuclear/biological/chemical warfare. What kind of growth is author thinking
about after that?

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WoodenChair
Yeah so in today's dollars the Iraq War cost more than World War 1, so says
the Congressional Research Service:
[http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf)

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nateabele
It's a bummer that we now live in an economy that is so inured to government
spending that the very idea that war improves the economy would even occur to
people.

~~~
KC8ZKF
It's not a new idea.

------
richiverse
Misappropriation of public funds is the greatest driver of economic growth!
Let's do more of that.

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vishaldpatel
We need to get everyone who calls for war to go fight them... you know.. for
the economy.

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Orthanc
"Lack of smashing and fixing windows may be hurting the economy"

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mrxd
Sounds a bit like Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.

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jorgecastillo
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, I am not even going to read
this article.

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blahber
/shoddy

Lack of Discipline.

Lack of Honesty.

Lack of Charity.

------
andyl
One important point of the article is that war is good for innovation. In war,
people unite around common goals, and are willing to sacrifice in a way that
is impossible in peacetime.

~~~
teddyh
One might attribute this to the willingness to abolish patents in wartime,
like the American aeroplane industry was forced to do during the first world
war.¹ Since the state is the one concerned with fighting the war, and the
state is the only actor effectively able to abolish patents (since the state
is the one granting them in the first place), it is not odd that war is the
only thing which can effect this change.

It has been argued that patents, as a whole, is a retardant to innovation.
These historical facts seems to bear this argument out.

1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war)

