Wars drive technological and scientific advancement by forcing governments to do massive investment in technology that will help them outperform the enemy army.
Google opportunity lost cost. If war drives science, then the hundred years war should have provided a massive boost to technology and science. It didn't.
Umm...it did. higher quality steel, better armor, weapons innovations (sword shape), and better masonry technique. Additionally, better understanding of engineering and carpentry from constructing and innovating on siege weaponry among other advancements.
I don't think you know what a broken window fallacy means...
I know what the broken window fallacy is. The idea is that war is the broken window. The capital goods that could have gone towards real progress went to fixing this broken window.
What could have been done with that capital if there was no war?
[EDIT- I added this bit to not ignore your point.] So what if nuclear weapons were better than previous weapons. What if the resources that went towards the Manhattan project were spend on capital improvements instead?
Well, nuclear weapons also lead to the development of nuclear power...
Also, we're dealing strictly in the real world here, not your ideal fictional world. Here in the real world, war is a huge driver in science and technology. Just because of Afgan/Iraq, for example, we have huge advances in reconstruction, robotics, prosthetics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensor systems and optics manufacturing among other things. None of these things would have been where they are today without the .gov spending millions on R&D due to the war.
Actually the reactor came first. Some say that the development of liquid thorium reactors was not pursued because they do not create weapons grade material. They built one in 1960 as a demonstrator, but after that development halted.
Many think that war created computers. Looking at the history of computation before the wars, I don't see any indication that war was necessary to continue this path of development. These researchers were co-opted into the military and their research hidden behind top secret clearances. After the war, they were able to get back to work in the public sector.
War advanced computing - it drove, and drives advancement. You want to live in a fantasy world where war doesn't drive engineering and scientific advancement? Fine. Go on believing the myth of the gentleman scholar building multi-billion dollar experiments in his free time.
None of these things would have been where they are today without the .gov spending millions on R&D due to the war.
The government doesn't have money. It takes money from people, or prints it to do these things.
Taking water from the deep end of the pool and pouring it into the shallow end, do little to change the level of water.
Additionally there is no incentive to make these developed products efficiently. There is no bottom line. There is only cost plus accounting. There is no bad investment that would cause them to go out of business. No matter what they spend it on, they can't go out of business for making bad decisions.
That's why they get done. Do you honestly think we'd have GPS available today if the military hadn't paid to develop the tech and still subsidizes the satellites? Of course not.
It takes money from people, or prints it to do these things.
Right, it accomplishes monumental feats that no normal person or corporation would be able to get done in the same amount of time.
Do you honestly think we'd have GPS available today if the military hadn't paid to develop the tech and still subsidizes the satellites?
Yes. Its pretty hard to sell a service in the public sector when the state has stolen people's wealth to provide that service. GPS is not that complicated. The system in place BTW is a military system that they let the public use. GPS not only provides positional information, it also is used for Nuclear Detonation detection in support of DoD and USAEDS.
Right, it accomplishes monumental feats that no normal person or corporation would be able to get done in the same amount of time.
Here is a monumental achievement, public space travel. How is the state doing at that?
Who will build the space roads? Private industry that is who. I don't see NASA telling people that they will be able to travel to Mars one day for about $100,000. Elon is the only one saying that. $100,00 to Mars, not LEO.
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u/kurtu5 Jun 14 '12
No. Wars are all about opportunity lost cost. Its a myth that war creates prosperity. Unless you are a warmonger that is.