On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Chad Cooper wrote:
> I agree with this, and I would think that any accountant would agree as
> well. However, for some reason, money is not spent this way. In an ideal
> world, it would, but it is not. I suspect that there is a fundamental
> cultural, or biological bias to spending money on defense over spending the
> same money on quality of life improvements.
Is the western arms economy hard wired in our genes? Somehow I doubt it.
Self-serving stupidity on matters of wealth and violence? Probably. I'm
happy to grant the cultural part--but cultures change (or die).
> > The trick of course is to convince people that the benefits purely
> > civilian research would outweigh the benefits of making the research
> > dependent on feeding and supporting the arms industry.
>
> Alas, you do understand the issue. Feeding and supporting the arms industry
> is required to benefit purely civilian research.
Only in the current cultural and political context (by which I mean
the atmosphere of DC, not the actual political needs of our nation)--not
in any absolute sense. There is a point at which feeding the arms industry
produces diminishing returns, IMO, and the proposed forms of missile
defense go way past that point. IMO, of course.
Actually, we probably exceeded that point when we decided that arming
every tin-pot dictator in the world was a worthwhile means to the end of
bolstering our own national defenses and economies, but that's just me.
> Hey, I did not make it that way and I don't like it either. Perhaps a
> condition to being Uplifted by alien benefactors is our ability to reverse
> the 10,000 year old trend of defending the home first, over making the world
> a better place.
I'm not against defending the home, but as I said there's a point of
diminishing returns. Missile defense isn't about defending the home; it's
about providing a make-work scheme for our arms corporations.
Ya know, last weekend I went to Houston (again) and this time was able to
see the travelling Star Wars exhibit. It occurs to me that the Death Star
wasn't really a device for controlling the galaxy--Palpatine had the Force
for that--it was a make-work program to keep the Imperial economy on a
wartime footing even after the serious fighting was over. That's why it
was big and clumsy and capable of being defeated by a handful of cheap
starfighters, the way missile defense will be easily defeated by a handful
of cheap decoys.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
Nuke the straight capitalist wildebeests for Buddha!
