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by SR2Z
462 days ago
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> Again, it's a flawed heuristic. Military contracting is wildly profitable. Value to society is questionable. It's not questionable at all but if you don't already see that I'm not interested in arguing it with you. > Analysis of the subtle successes of social democracies and "Gross National Happiness" are just two examples that put the lie to this myth. GNH is cope from the Dragon King of Bhutan to justify the poverty and ethnic cleansing of his nation in the international community. The Nordic countries all have very high per-capita GDP. If you wanna call my claim a myth, citing a few metrics which correlate really well with GDP is not very convincing. |
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Militaries exist expressly to destroy (enemy) societies. Even if you agree with the reason for a war, that fact doesn't change. So "preservation" of one society (if becoming beholden to a MIC doesn't change that society) versus the destruction of another. Questionable value.
>GNH is cope from the Dragon King of Bhutan to justify the poverty and ethnic cleansing of his nation in the international community.
The commencement of measuring GNH coincided with marked increases in Bhutanese living standards by traditional measures. Nordic countries have roughly the same GDP per capita as the US. Countries like Japan and France feature lower GDP per capita and, while not traditionally considered social democracies, feature comparable approaches to social welfare, income equality, etc.
Free-Market Capitalism as the only way, or even best way, to prosperity is indeed a myth. Even at its best or most successful, it has to be tempered with robust social policy and economic controls, lest people fall to excess and the economy itself burn out. That's called, "Late-Stage Capitalism", and you'd best start believing, because we're in it.