Interesting point. We are quick to judge such apparent failures and waste on the part of the government, but what percentage of Silicon Valley startups succeed? What percentage of scientific experiments advance our knowledge?
I don't think the difference is about the source of the money. It's about whether the returns are, to use terms from machine learning, in exploration versus exploitation.
If the point of these expensive weapons systems is to inefficiently defeat imaginary enemies, then clearly they are a waste of money and the real motive is corporate welfare.
But if the point is 'we don't know what the world will be like in 2050, and the only way to find out and start preparing for it is to build a lot of hardware that doesn't end up getting directly used' then that could be a valid justification. I'm not making any claims about whether that actually is the justification. I'm just saying that if it is, it's the one that would work.
A big part of the US political discourse for the last 5 or so years has been that the voters no longer have any say. The machinery of so-called "Big Defence" trundles on forever, immune from the politicians who might want to cut spending due to the attack ads they would surely face about "jeopardizing national security".
The national security argument only flies if the people buy it. That's the root cause; fix the people.
I deliberately and provocatively overly simplify the issue here, but I claim that every problem we face can be solved by better education that simply requires people to ask "Is that really the way you say it is?" in every single step of every single fact they ever face.
>The national security argument only flies if the people buy it. That's the root cause; fix the people.
You can't. People that are receptive to the politics of fear are that way because of brain structure; they simply are unable to respond to reasoned arguments.
That's not how it works. They are very well capable of choosing something else and we all know it. They may lack the knowledge to do it - but that is fixable, politicians are not.
Well, there is no (credible) third. So maybe they would if they could and maybe not.
It sounds like we both agree on the problem and disagree on the solution.
If I understand correctly, you want to fix the people by educating them / making them think more!?
I think the problem is also solvable by fixing the system via direct feedback. This could be implemented via continuous elections (instead of once every 4ys) , directed tax payments (dedicated to specific areas/projects/representatives), direct elections (no intermediary), ...
Of course, today's politicians would never allow any of this to happen, so the problem is still somehow the politician.
There's no point in making people just to think more. They have to think very carefully and along a very specific line of though: they have to ask, "Is it really the way you say it is?", every single time something, anything, meaningful is at stake, for the rest of their lives.
People talk endlessly about their values. They talk about self-reliance, decency, honor. But we betray our values if we don't know what really is true. We work against our best interest and our dearest of things when we are mislead the moment we stop asking what really is. No matter what the values.
How about some self-reliance of thought for a change.
Make no mistake, it is a 30-year project to fix peoples. You need to educate a single generation before things start to get better. But then they will. Happens every time and in every country and in every culture. Skip that and no matter what you try, everything falls apart eventually if the people don't want to ask what really is true. Everything else is built on top of that. Nothing else is sufficient anymore, not in this age we now find ourselves in.
PS. I agree - I am greatly in favor of shortening any feedback loops in any system, societal, political, business, software development - it is what makes systems robust against changing environments.
How about not pissing around where we are clearly not wanted?
Spreading democracy is great and all, but it's pretty clear that the various places we've been trying to spread it aren't interested in the least. How about we let them stew in their own mess for a while and put our efforts into fixing issues at home for a while?
Maybe stop trying to be the world's policeman for a while. Let the UN sort it out and when they inevitably fail, then we can think about it. And if the UN doesn't, well, at least we haven't wasted the money in the meantime.
