[gaius]

Fighting wars directly destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's not true that military spending is bad for progress. Jet engines, satellite communications, radar, etc - any one of those alone has probably repaid the defence budget many times over.

[ojbyrne]

You are assuming those things would not have been invented without the military (and with all that money freed up). That's a pretty shaky assumption.

[gaius]

No, I'm just saying that that's what did happen. You can always say "if someone didn't invent something someone else would have eventually".

[ojbyrne]

destroys an enormous amount of economic value, but it's not true that military spending is bad for progress. I don't see how you can say the first part, and still agree with the second part. The logical conclusion is, not only that someone would have invented everything that was invented, but in fact they would have invented more.

[scott_s]

I don't think it is. The needs of the military may drive different innovation than the general needs of society.

[ojbyrne]

Perhaps. But then you can argue that the innovation that would have been created would have been "better" for society.

[scott_s]

You could argue that. But it's not necessarily true. Neither is what I speculated, of course.