For starters, the casaulties are sunk costs. And the long-term gains are plausibly far greater. With several billion people around at any given moment directly thanks to things like the Industrial Revolution, that vastly outweighs the endless little European wars that encouraged it. (How many died in the 30 years’ war? 3-11 million? Global population growth adds that much in 5-50 days.)
The problem with arguing that way is that for you, living now, the wars were a good thing insofar as they enabled your higher tech level and quality of life today. But if you lived in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, you would have certainly preferred to have peace even if it meant no Industrial Revolution later on.
For broadly similar reasons, wars now which might involve you are bad for you, even if they’re good for your future self under the assumption you survive the war.
You seem to be shifting gears; I’ve explained exactly how the gains outweigh the costs of the wars—what the few people at the time preferred is irrelevant except as a few pebbles on one side of the scale, and I don’t know why you’re belaboring the point. It’s nothing new to say that the optimal long-term course of action may be suboptimal in the short-term.
To be clearer then: Wars today are different from wars then. The positive effects of conflicting states is clear enough from history, but lately the side-effects have started to reach into the unacceptable range. Ideally, Europe and Asia would be filled with active jostling competing states so we get the benefits of whatever Renaissance or Industrial Revolution or 100 Schools of Thought would happen in our era, but with enough of an international structure to prevent actual military operations (and particularly use of nukes or worse); the EU seems to me to have gone well beyond the salutary conflict-prevention point, and into stifling-Imperial-China territory.
For starters, the casaulties are sunk costs. And the long-term gains are plausibly far greater. With several billion people around at any given moment directly thanks to things like the Industrial Revolution, that vastly outweighs the endless little European wars that encouraged it. (How many died in the 30 years’ war? 3-11 million? Global population growth adds that much in 5-50 days.)
The problem with arguing that way is that for you, living now, the wars were a good thing insofar as they enabled your higher tech level and quality of life today. But if you lived in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, you would have certainly preferred to have peace even if it meant no Industrial Revolution later on.
For broadly similar reasons, wars now which might involve you are bad for you, even if they’re good for your future self under the assumption you survive the war.
You seem to be shifting gears; I’ve explained exactly how the gains outweigh the costs of the wars—what the few people at the time preferred is irrelevant except as a few pebbles on one side of the scale, and I don’t know why you’re belaboring the point. It’s nothing new to say that the optimal long-term course of action may be suboptimal in the short-term.
I read your original comment to mean you also thought wars today were good (i.e. for us, who live today) because they advance science.
To be clearer then: Wars today are different from wars then. The positive effects of conflicting states is clear enough from history, but lately the side-effects have started to reach into the unacceptable range. Ideally, Europe and Asia would be filled with active jostling competing states so we get the benefits of whatever Renaissance or Industrial Revolution or 100 Schools of Thought would happen in our era, but with enough of an international structure to prevent actual military operations (and particularly use of nukes or worse); the EU seems to me to have gone well beyond the salutary conflict-prevention point, and into stifling-Imperial-China territory.