[wolverine876]

> I didn't specify an alternative model for a good reason, it doesn't exist yet.

There are plenty of alternatives to what the US does. You can see them in other politically and economically advanced countries, which achieve far better results. You can see them in relatively recent US history.

[streamofdigits]

by all accounts those "other" advanced countries offer a better socioeconomy model for how to organize things. The (recent) US is really an outlier that makes no sense whatsoever.

But there is a weakness in this view, namely the enormous security (and energy) dependency of those "other" countries on the US. It is a coupled system, making it hard to isolate what the standalone merits of the various modelw

[wolverine876]

Well, we're not going to have double-blind controlled empirical data. However, the other countries are easily wealthy enough to fund their own militaries at this point, without significant economic impact (right after WWII, it was a different story - the US produced half of the world's economic output, IIRC).