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Economic costs of war

watson.brown.edu

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Re: Economic costs of war

#371

Post by corey_moncure »

throwawaysea wrote: post #200
epistasis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$6.4T into renewables and storage over the past 20 years would have decarbonized the US grid several time over, accelerated the tech curve drastically, nearly completely transitioned us to EVs, and we'd probably have decarbonized a good chunk of industry that is hard to decarbonize now. We'd have cheaper energy than we do today, and cheaper energy forever. We could have been looking at current levels of climate chang…

What evidence do you have that Afghanistan was due to oil, and not due to the most direct motivations, like Taliban sheltering Al Qaeda (as they still do)? This seems like a conspiracy theory.

On the public face, the politicians talked about t-----ism and A- Q----. Behind the scenes, they're all doing things like this and getting filthy rich:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_Energy

Re: Economic costs of war

#372

Post by adventured »

SteveNuts wrote: post #169
sgregnt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is not as simple as this. It's a nice appeal but very removed from reality. If you didn't have strong enough army to protect you, then you might loose, schools hospitals and what not... Unfortunatly, in a real world a war is not a maybe question but a when question. The question is what amount of defense expenditure is adequate? And that a political question, with no right or wrong answers that for the vo…

What you say is true, but I think people get pissed off when comparing US Military spending vs... basically the entirety of the world https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison This is so far beyond overkill it's sickening.

China already spends approximately as much as the US on its military when you adjust for the difference in income/salaries (which is a large share of US military expenditures). By the end of this decade it'll be well beyond the US.

"China Outspends the U.S. on Defense? Here’s the Math."

"Factoring in purchasing power and personnel costs leads to a surprising conclusion."

https://archive.is/32N1F

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-25/china-...

Re: Economic costs of war

#373

Post by wavefunction »

55555 wrote: post #266
jdavis703 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Taliban taxes opium farming and manufacturing. It’s believed to be a significant source of revenue for them. But, China probably still has the upper hand in the opiate business here, because fentanyl is far easier to smuggle.

China has easier access to opium/heroin from the golden triangle anyway, if they need a non-syntheic.

China can have both, I don't see why having both Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle in your pocket is a bad thing if you're interested in opiate production at the global scale.

Re: Economic costs of war

#374

Post by jrsj »

swader999 wrote: post #206
NonContro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of cutting costs, the way we exited Afghanistan is the best way to do it. Pull out overnight, abandon all the equipment, and the rapid takeover by the Taliban means we don't need to keep running bombing missions to support a slowly retreating national army. In that regard I'd see the current situation as a success, not a failure. It also seems like the Taliban have chilled out a bit, since we're not seeing w…

Probably should have got the civilians out before the military but what do I know...

Allegedly the “government” of Afghanistan (its really just been a sham and a U.S. puppet state for the last 20 years) didn’t want this to happen because they wanted to avoid demoralizing the Afghan army which…subsequently refused to fight anyways. Or at least that’s how I understood some of what Biden said earlier today.

For all we know that was the idea of our own military or intelligence community & now we are conveniently placing the blame for our mistakes on a government that no longer exists

Re: Economic costs of war

#375

Post by sollewitt »

Smoosh wrote: post #136
el_jay wrote: post #118

To those here riffing on the theme of “this misrepresents the volume and beneficiaries of the transactions involved” - you’re not wrong. Accurate representation of public info like this is a top organisational problem for our species at the moment. But I do think you miss the point, so aptly put by Mr Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a thef…

I think of this when people say we can't afford to mitigate climate change.

The US military is a bigger fossil fuels user than most developed countries all by itself.

Re: Economic costs of war

#376

Post by minikites »

sgregnt wrote: post #233
WaxProlix wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may or may not be true right now. Was it true 10 years ago? 20? 30? There exists a point at which it was not true, and we're talking about taking that investment over a 20+ year historical period, not as a lump sum right now. Lots of fossil fuel aligned people have pivoted from "everything is fine" to "there's nothing we can do now", and echoing the latter might be factually correct, but in the context it smacks…

There might be an escape velocity to this: as technology evolves it is easier to clean pollution, and perhaps the innovation moves faster than the added pollution. So maybe the best time to start cleaning is 30 years into the future?

We're metaphorically traveling in a car that's smoking and making noise, it's not going to get cheaper or easier to fix later.

Re: Economic costs of war

#377

Post by AnthonyMouse »

adventured wrote: post #289
grecy wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars and give them sole war-powers The issue there is the massive conflict of interest and legal bribery. Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Their bank accounts want more wars.

> Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table. I'm familiar with how campaign contributions work and the legal regulations involved, including what they're allowed to do - and not do - with the m…

> Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table.

There are two aspects to this.

The first is campaign contributions. Recent US Presidential election campaigns have exceeded a billion dollars. House and Senate races have been millions to hundreds of millions, per election. The people "giving" this money are not doing so out of altruism. It's not secret money under the table, it's all open and disclosed, but nobody thinks it has no effect on behavior. At best the representatives are entirely scrupulous and never allow the money to affect their positions, but then the candidates with pro-corporate positions find it easier to raise money, the money allows them to buy more advertising, and the candidates who want to shovel tax dollars into corporate coffers win more elections.

The second is the revolving door. You go serve some time in Congress, do what the corporations want, and when you retire or fail to win re-election because your constituents got fed up with what you were doing, you have a cushy job paying six, seven, eight figures a year waiting for you after. Or that job goes to a member of your family while you're still in office.

Re: Economic costs of war

#378

Post by amscanne »

Sebb767 wrote: post #315
randyrand wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

years of expected life lost is the more important metric imo. would still be a big discrepency.

> years of expected life lost is the more important metric imo. If you start doing this, you start valuing peoples lives differently, which is a horrible thing. Going just from this, you could say that an Afghan citizen is worth about 82% of an US citizen (64 vs 78 years life expectancy) or that burning down a whole palliative care unit is less bad than shooting a 20 year old (or 16 year old Afghan). I can see where…

I hate to break it to you, but “quality-adjusted life years” [1] is already a standard metric for evaluating medical interventions.

While the whole “death panel” thing is exaggerated, it is necessary that insurers (incl. single payer governments) have quantitative ways to evaluate different treatments. They won’t throw infinite $$ at every treat that is expected to add a tiny amount to your life.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

Re: Economic costs of war

#379

Post by sdenton4 »

adventured wrote: post #289
grecy wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars and give them sole war-powers The issue there is the massive conflict of interest and legal bribery. Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Their bank accounts want more wars.

> Members of congress are getting obscenely rich from the Military Industrial Complex and their "campaign contributions". Please explain for me how that is so, without diverting into claiming that they're being handed tens of millions of dollars secretly under the table. I'm familiar with how campaign contributions work and the legal regulations involved, including what they're allowed to do - and not do - with the m…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

Re: Economic costs of war

#380

Post by fny »

el_jay wrote: post #118

To those here riffing on the theme of “this misrepresents the volume and beneficiaries of the transactions involved” - you’re not wrong. Accurate representation of public info like this is a top organisational problem for our species at the moment. But I do think you miss the point, so aptly put by Mr Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a thef…

The problem is none of the other initiatives sell. Reflexive war is easy, unquestioned. In the wake of 9/11 it was unpatriotic to ask whether the war was worthwhile or expansions of executive power such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force were justifiable.

Mention infrastructure, healthcare, or clean energy and suddenly a million special interests pop up and the deficit suddenly starts to matter.

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