[toolz]

people don't demand wealth equality after a war, they just create massive inflation during the war and solve it by taking everyone's savings after the war...half the countries in europe post ww2 did something akin to replacing the national currency at exchanges rates of like 10:1 in some cases like germany...and germanys post-war inflation solution is hailed as an 'economic miracle' by many history books. Somethings tells me I wouldn't feel too jazzed about taking 90% of my savings, but I would also be resigned to do whatever because war is worse.

I get really worried when I see people glamorize equality post-war...post-war times are not good times for the middle class. The most equal wealth humanity has ever had is during caveman times, but that is not the goal.

war does not make things better folks, I hope that's not what OP was trying to say, but just in case let's be very very clear about how awful war is for progress and humanity.

[scarby2]

post-war reconstruction fervor can inspire wealth creation. This is largely because there are no NIMBYs and eco-warriros sat around saying that the returning troops cant have a place to live and we cant have new infrastructure. If we can get that reconstruction fervor without a war it would solve a lot of our problems.

[toolz]

I just don't believe this, not because I have hard data, but it just doesn't make any sense. Sure, the central banks will do everything they can to ignite the economy and everyone will be generally working their hardest to recover from hard times, but how can an economy that gets completely halted to go full bore in war efforts ever hope to generate the wealth of an economy that isn't halted and has been making incremental improvements, uninterrupted?

[imtringued]

There are two reasons.

War destroys existing structures and gives them a chance to evolve again.

The economy is growth dependent and can only perform its basic functions under growth, even if that growth is fake. By basic functions I also include all functions that do not depend on growth.

[toolz]

> War destroys existing structures and gives them a chance to evolve again.

are you suggesting that destroying things, results in improvement in the long run? I don't know that I could be farther from agreeing with that. If starting from scratch was better, why wouldn't we be doing it voluntarily at frequent intervals? It just seems easily dismissed as entirely incorrect.

> The economy is growth dependent and can only perform its basic functions under growth, even if that growth is fake.

I don't think this describes the economy, it just describes some of the metrics we use to gauge the health of the economy. burning down the internet and killing everyone that understands it might result in another dotcom boom, but would you say the economy is more healthy than some other reality where the internet continued to exist with no reset and only has smaller incremental gains?