Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
No. Every dollar spent on a tank that merely sits idle is still a dollar not being spent on something that adds ongoing value, like a road, or a bridge, or a school. It's wasteful of our society's capital.

Guns or butter...
Yes wasteful of capital, but not just a waste of capital, a waste of natural capital. How many NON-RENEWABLE resources are used for the warfare state? Why? Toward what end? Shouldn't we spending this on solar arrays or wind farms something? Preparing for the future? Of course it does reduce the earth's population I suppose (by you know, killing people).

Quote Originally Posted by The Storyteller View Post
Oh, absolutely. That would be my preference. But you will never convince the right of that. I figure if the government is going to waste money on this anyway, at least put some people to work. Not only does it create jobs in the technology sector, but gives kids in poor areas a job and a way out of poverty.
Blah, is work an end it itself? If there's not enough productive (as opposed to building unused tanks) work to do, wouldn't most people be happier spreading the work around and having more leisure time? But the current economic system can't accommodate that, and noone even thinks to make it so it can.

Maybe even the person involved in manufacturing a tank would like to be doing socially worthwhile work. But instead they're building a tank, that if it is used at all, will be used to kill. They might not want to be doing this, may even sleep uneasy at night knowing this is what 40 hours of their life goes to every week: the war machine. But they need a fricken job and this was all that was available. Why? Because it's what the government chose to spend money on! Not just a waste of capital, A WASTE OF HUMAN BEINGS LIVES, building this stuff.

Meanwhile after all our money is spent on this nonsense (and banksters, of course banksters), there's always austerity to follow, because sorry no money left for anything else. Sure if you really believe deficits are no problem whatsoever then it's not a choice between guns and butter. But um, governments around the world are sure as heck not acting like they believe that!! Austerity as far as the eye can see. There's too many reasons not to believe that deficits are no problem, our national debt was funded partly by China, now it's increasingly funded by money creation, the whole thing is nuts.

And the only time the military is destructive is when we are actually at war, like right now. And whether a particular war is truly destructive or constructive in the long term is often a matter of debate.
I think common sense dictates that we should have an anti-war bias given the tremendous cost of wars in lives and suffering. That once in a while a war might still be worth it, yes fine. But we should be very very skeptical. The problem is the people too easily have a pro-war bias. They're easily convinced wars are justified and righteous and this is why war continues indefinitely.