Economic costs of war • Hacker News Board

Re: Economic costs of war

#401

Post by ComputerGuru » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #251

Mizza wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot but don't understand why. China has every motivation to prop up the Taliban. A sister comment already noted the mineral resources, but don't forget the main function of Afghanistan as a nation: production of heroin. Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media, but this is the name of the game. Chinese fentanyl has taken over the global opiate…

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.

Taliban is/was pretty ardently anti-opium even when they were running the show and could make infinite cash off its taxation or production.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanis...

> The opium trade spiked in 2006 after the Taliban lost control of local warlords

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

> Ironically, the only power that has demonstrated an ability to cripple the Afghan drug industry is the Taliban.

> In July 2000, when the Taliban controlled most of the country, its reclusive one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, declared that opium was un-Islamic and imposed a ban on growing poppies.

> Much to the surprise of the rest of the world, the ban worked. Afraid to cross the Taliban, Afghan farmers immediately ceased planting poppies. The United Nations estimated that poppy cultivation plunged by 90 percent from 2000 to 2001.

Re: Economic costs of war

#402

Post by curation » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

The West is an itinerant war machine. We define who we are, prove our ethics via an Other we best. The only solution is Copernican.

Re: Economic costs of war

#403

Post by cjsplat » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #156

baybal2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say so for politics. Average Americans don't understand American politics. To me, the transition from Bush to Obama was paradoxal. One thing, Obama marketed himself as a change man, as well pretty much everybody. It's very generic. On the other side, his true colours weren't even hidden, his electoral programme told very candidly about his national security views, views on civil rights, and etc for which he got…

My impression was that Obama wanted to be more progressive-- domestically if not internationally. But he got derailed spending 2 years of a supermajority on a single issue (healthcare) partly because more centrist democrats objected to the more progressive ideas, and partly due to special interests. After the midterms he had little chance at passing more progressive policies, leaving a fairly centrist foreign policy…

First, the ACA passed in March 2010, so not really 2 years on health care. The tweaks folded into reconciliation were not a major distraction.

Second, if by super-majority you mean filibuster-proof, then in reality this was nowhere near 2 years.

Al Franken (the 60th vote) was not seated until the court challenges finished on June 30th.

Ted Kennedy died August 25. So that is about 8 weeks of super-majority.

Paul Kirk was seated on Sept 24, and Scott Brown took over on February 5th. So a little over 4 more months.

That is a total of about 6 calendar months of filibuster proof majority.

A glance at the legislative calendar shows a total of a little over 110 total Senate legislative days, out of a total of about 350 legislative days in 2009/2010.

So in reality, Obama had a filibuster proof majority for about 1/3 of his first 2 years.

Re: Economic costs of war

#404

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #333

smegger001 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why bring in hundreds of thousands of workers when China can pay the Taliban to force the Afgans to do it and just send some engineers and managers

Wow jeez when you put it that simply of course they’ll just pay local warlords who totally won’t steal money for fake employees, and they’ll totally have these Afghan people who are hard working and really eager for that 9-5 lifestyle to get out of their own village to “mine” for Chinese engineers and managers. I hate to be flippant here but this really shows a continued western misunderstanding of how people in plac…

Eh, China is the new red scare. It is actually twice that since they still have communist in their official name. I jest, but only a little.

I agree with you. It is not a straightforward and foregone conclusion. Taliban has clearly shown that it can play a very long game. That said, so can Chinese.

US can barely handle one news cycle lately.

Re: Economic costs of war

#405

Post by asdff » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

bamboozled wrote: post #98

epicureanideal wrote: post #75

Perhaps they should've spent this much on medical research instead. For the same money perhaps we could save a few million people dying of various diseases or cancer. It would take a whole lot of terrorist events to counter the benefits of significant R&D funding for medicine (or maybe a lot of other things).

Climate change will destabilize the world more than any "terrorists" could. Also would've been nice to have seen 6.4 trillion go into renewables tech and investments ~ 20 years ago.

We were literally a couple hundred votes from Gore 20 years ago. How different our world would have been today with a climate focused presidency two decades ago. 9/11 would have probably came and went without fanfare like most terrorist attacks, much less spurred invasion of two countries.

Re: Economic costs of war

#406

Post by poorjohnmacafee » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

NonContro wrote: post #170

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…

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…

I've seen too much to underestimate the MIC, as Afghanistan's hard fall could easily become "the taliban can't run a nation, we must war", as endless wars resume.

Re: Economic costs of war

#407

Post by aiisjustanif » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #366

dragonwriter wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gulf War One, we went in, did the job and got out. No, we didn't, we were perpetually militarily engaged in Iraq, at a lower level, between the 1991 war and the 2003 war. We weren't occupying or administering Iraq, but we didn't leave, either. > Let's go back to congress needing to authorize wars Both of the long wars started under Bush had Congressional authorization.

>We weren't occupying or administering Iraq, but we didn't leave, either. I mean, we never left Germany or S. Korea, so... Playing big brother to Q8? I'm not mad. Like other countries, we can pick sides and aid whatever side we think has our interest. I'm not interested in intervening with infantry and all the necessary materiel unless it's to defend ourselves from grave danger. Especially avoid stupid the boondoggle…

> I'm not interested in intervening with infantry and all the necessary materiel unless it's to defend ourselves from grave danger. Especially avoid stupid the boondoggle of "nation-building". Not everyone wants democracy right now. It may come later.

This short sightedness might cost more in lives globally and money loss from trade and resources being restricted.

Re: Economic costs of war

#408

Post by sgregnt » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

minikites wrote: post #376

sgregnt wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every complicated problem has a simple solution that is wrong. It is just to say, your metaphora might be beautify and simple but in your comment there is nothing to add about how valid is it.

Re: Economic costs of war

#409

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

miked85 wrote: post #363

jjoonathan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It couldn't have happened any other way. That's why the last two presidents promised it and failed to deliver.

They could have got US civilians and allies out first - there is no reason it had to happen this way.

Everyone knew we were leaving, Trump set the date. Why folks were still hanging around I'll never know.

Re: Economic costs of war

#410

Post by rland » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

handedness wrote: post #178

SteveNuts wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not (just) about overkill. Nobody else underwrites global free trade, and that's incredibly expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434640

This argument dissolves under even the lightest scrutiny.

Let's assume for a second that there is a dollar amount to "underwriting global free trade" (spurious to begin with). What actually is that dollar amount? Is it 3x more than what we're spending? 10x less? How could we ever know?

As it turns out, whatever we are currently spending, that's the amount required. We could double the number of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, jet fighters, missiles, spy satellites, military bases; we could start another war, another engagement, another "peacekeeping mission," do another few "surgical strikes"... And yep, that would be exactly what's required for freedom.