“The other half was mostly being used as an American front against the Soviets and didn’t dare to have internal wars.”
Really? Suppose the German invasion of 1941 was more successful, the Soviet Union was heavily weakened, and the demarcation line between the two was on the Vistula instead of the Elbe. Which European countries would have fought each other?
“Of course all this hasn’t stopped the Western European countries from having wars outside Europe, and there have been plenty of those in the last 60 years.”
Between two Western European powers? Which ones?
“Today, European politics are such that multinational business & industry organizations, and private international alliances, are vastly more powerful than any hypothetical nationalistic power.”
Evidence? Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany have gross revenues of more than $1T each, more than three times those of the largest corporations.
Suppose the German invasion of 1941 was more successful, the Soviet Union was heavily weakened, and the demarcation line between the two was on the Vistula instead of the Elbe. Which European countries would have fought each other?
In such a scenario I don’t think they’d have fought much because US hegemony would be even stronger than in real history. The US would push the USSR much harder in proxy wars if it thought they could lead up to an economic/military collapse of the USSR or its satellites, and all the European countries would participate more in these proxy wars. Also, decolonization of Asia and Africa might have proceeded more slowly in such a scenario, or not at all in places.
Between two Western European powers? Which ones?
Sorry, I realize now my phrasing was misleading here. I meant that European countries have fought outside Europe against non-European ones.
Evidence? Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany have gross revenues of more than $1T each, more than three times those of the largest corporations.
Yes, but the combined resources of the biggest (say) 1000 companies are far far greater than those of governments, simply because there are so many more corporations. This is true both inside a country and summed across Europe. And most corporations by far would lobby very strongly against war inside Europe.
“The US would push the USSR much harder in proxy wars if it thought they could lead up to an economic/military collapse of the USSR or its satellites, and all the European countries would participate more in these proxy wars.”
Agreed, but there’s still peace in Europe in this scenario.
“Yes, but the combined resources of the biggest (say) 1000 companies are far far greater than those of governments, simply because there are so many more corporations.”
“Corporations” do not act coherently like a national government does. There is no “United Corporate Alliance” or any such thing.
“This is true both inside a country and summed across Europe. And most corporations by far would lobby very strongly against war inside Europe.”
Some would, but some would probably push for it (military contracting can be enormously profitable). There were certainly plenty of companies that pushed for a US war in Iraq.
From Schindler’s List:
SCHINDLER: There’s no way I could have known this before, but there was always something missing. In every business I tried, I see now it wasn’t me that was failing, it was this thing, this missing thing. Even if I’d known what it was, there’s nothing I could have done about it, because you can’t create this sort of thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success and failure. [He waits for her to guess what the thing is. His looks says, It’s so simple, how can you not know?] EMILIE: Luck? SCHINDLER: War.
Incidentally, why do you use quotes instead of quote-markup with ‘>’? It’s a bit harder to read.
Agreed, but there’s still peace in Europe in this scenario.
Yes, because of US hegemony.
“Corporations” do not act coherently like a national government does. There is no “United Corporate Alliance” or any such thing.
There would be if 90% of all corporations had a common cause that was a life or death matter for them! At the very least all the corporations would be pushing in the same direction, and even without a formal alliance the result would be much the same.
Some would, but some would probably push for it (military contracting can be enormously profitable). There were certainly plenty of companies that pushed for a US war in Iraq.
Companies benefit from war—if they expect to be on the (economically) winning side, and if war isn’t going to occur on their home turf. If US companies really honestly believed there was a 50-50 chance of Iraq winning the war and conquering New York, none of them would have supported a war.
In Europe, too many big companies are multinational. All of them stand a lot to lose from an internal war. Also, in a war they would have to bet on winner(s) right at the start—because if they want a military contract with Germany, then Germany’s going to demand they stop selling weapons to France.
In WW1 the big economical winners were US companies because they sold everything but actual weapons to the Alliance countries for many years without being directly involved in the war.
In Europe, too many big companies are multinational. All of them stand a lot to lose from an internal war…
In WW1 the big economical winners were US companies because they sold everything but actual weapons to the Alliance countries for many years without being directly involved in the war.
Yes, in WWI, the european multinationals did badly. But people saw that coming and said that they would never allow a war! How do you know you’ve quantified it right this time? What would you have predicted in 1914? How do you quantify it? Governments controlled a much smaller percentage of GDP back then. Also, I occasionally hear claims like: globalization only recovered to prewar levels in 1990 (or was it later?)
Yes, in WWI, the european multinationals did badly. But people saw that coming and said that they would never allow a war! How do you know you’ve quantified it right this time?
I’m not saying there’ll never be war. I’m saying this is one of the biggest factors that maintain today’s stable state of internal European peace. Of course it’s possible for affairs to leave this state, but there will need to be a (visible) change pushing in that direction.
In 1914 there were very visible and long-standing forces pushing for war. It was at best an open question which opposing political force would win, and I would certainly predicted war, as did most other observers. The nearly-autocratic ruler of the biggest Continental European country (Germany) had been saying for years he was going to go to war. He had full political and military support for this at home, and based all his foreign policy and diplomacy on this. He constantly made or tried to make alliances with pretty much every single country in the world other than France with the explicitly stated goal of going to war together; not just in Europe, but including e.g. offering alliance to Mexico against the US to keep the US out of a European war. And remember Germany had recently (1870-1) fought France and won.
Even without analyzing the pro-war sentiment in many other countries, it was reasonable to conclude there would be a big war. Wars were pretty much constant—a war in continental Europe once every 20-30 years for centuries. The only difficulty was predicting such a big and long war as WW1 turned out to be, and that only happened because no side managed to win quickly—and the Germans came extremely close to defeating France completely in the first assault of 1914, within a single tactical decision’s worth. (Ref: Guns of August, also The Proud Tower, both by Barbara Tuchman.)
The idea that multinationals would prevent war was mostly Woodrow Wilson’s vision at the time, and I think even he saw it as an ideal for the future; he recognized that it wasn’t achieved yet. Most pro-peace people placed their hopes on the International Socialist movement preventing a war by general strikes in belligerent countries and soldiers refusing to fight. This failed miserably because the Socialists didn’t dare anything of the kind; even in countries where they were fairly strong politically (a very recent turn of events at the time), as in France, they declared support of the warring government in the end. A pity.
OK, then, do you consider Schindler’s List or any other Hollywood film evidence that the war was profitable for industrialists in Germany?
That’s a funny thing to say on the quotes thread. Tom McCabe is deploying rhetoric, but this whole thread is about sharing rhetoric (or maybe directly using it).
In my humble opinion, quoting Hollywood movies detracts from any conversation about historical facts or about causal relationships even if the conversation starts with a rationality quote.
Moreover, none of the opinions I have seen as to the purpose of Rationality Quotes entails a rhetorical free-for-all. An example of an opinion that I recall is that a quote is an attempt to communicate some aspect of the art of human rationality in much fewer words than would be required by the standard expository rationalist style. The quote from the Hollywood movie does not have that property because the quoter could have written instead, “it is well documented that many German industrialists profited greatly from the war,” which of course is fewer words than the quote from the movie and which of course is standard expository style (no rhetoric).
I have nothing personal against the quoter (Tom) and I believe and I hope that I would have voiced the same objection if anyone here had used that particular rhetorical tactic.
An example of an opinion that I recall is that a quote is an attempt to communicate some aspect of the art of human rationality in much fewer words than would be required by the standard expository rationalist style.
Yeah, they say that, but I don’t believe them. At least, I don’t believe any version of that that doesn’t also cover Tom’s quote.
Well, I for one wish you would refrain from such a heavy-handed rhetorical tactic.
Everyone has a natural human tendency to consider what they see in movies as “documentary evidence”. I wish you’d try to help us overcome that cognitive bias, not encourage us to persist in it.
The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights...
What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?
Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany have gross revenues of more than $1T each, more than three times those of the largest corporations.
Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums—a few thousands or millions. The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical.
“The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights...”
Citation? Britain and France haven’t fought since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
“What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?”
The fact that the French population would never stomach it, given that they had just gotten out from under four years of brutal German occupation with American and British support?
“Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums—a few thousands or millions.”
Ross Perot lost, and Bloomberg never even tried.
“The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical.”
Citation? Britain and France haven’t fought since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it’s not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s. We don’t know that their enmity and warring are truly over, any more than we know whether great power conflicts are truly over.
The fact that the French population would never stomach it, given that they had just gotten out from under four years of brutal German occupation with American and British support?
And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge? Italy and Germany were right there, and American and Britain wouldn’t’ve seriously objected to France invading (in this hypothetical nuke-less Communist-less world) - they weren’t in any position to stomach stopping France. The American & British support didn’t mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his force de frappe.
Citation?
Waggish answer: What, the past couple years of American politics haven’t made it painfully obvious how valuable lobbying can be?
Serious answer: if the returns weren’t high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?
“In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue—a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. ”
“The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it’s not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s.”
This is a blatant dodge of my original claim, which was specifically about Britain and France. No one who had ever cracked a history book would ever claim that there were no wars in Europe during the 20th century.
“And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge?”
Germany was destroyed, the government was completely dissolved (and largely imprisoned), all the cities were bombed into rubble, and more than ten percent of the population was killed (including, I believe, a majority of the men of military age). You couldn’t get a more thorough revenge if you obliterated Berlin with a 50 megaton H-bomb.
“The American & British support didn’t mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his third way.”
Historically, after the war, we know that the French didn’t want another war against Germany. Why would it be different this time?
“Serious answer: if the returns weren’t high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?”
Because there are points on the real line between “3%” and “22,000%”.
“In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue—a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. ”
OK, that’s a legitimate citation, but it ignores the non-monetary costs of lobbying, which far exceed the monetary ones. A company may hire a lobbyist and pay him $100,000, but if both the company and the lobbyist don’t have connections with people high up in Washington, they won’t get anywhere. And it’s much more difficult to acquire those connections than to acquire $100K.
“The other half was mostly being used as an American front against the Soviets and didn’t dare to have internal wars.”
Really? Suppose the German invasion of 1941 was more successful, the Soviet Union was heavily weakened, and the demarcation line between the two was on the Vistula instead of the Elbe. Which European countries would have fought each other?
“Of course all this hasn’t stopped the Western European countries from having wars outside Europe, and there have been plenty of those in the last 60 years.”
Between two Western European powers? Which ones?
“Today, European politics are such that multinational business & industry organizations, and private international alliances, are vastly more powerful than any hypothetical nationalistic power.”
Evidence? Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany have gross revenues of more than $1T each, more than three times those of the largest corporations.
In such a scenario I don’t think they’d have fought much because US hegemony would be even stronger than in real history. The US would push the USSR much harder in proxy wars if it thought they could lead up to an economic/military collapse of the USSR or its satellites, and all the European countries would participate more in these proxy wars. Also, decolonization of Asia and Africa might have proceeded more slowly in such a scenario, or not at all in places.
Sorry, I realize now my phrasing was misleading here. I meant that European countries have fought outside Europe against non-European ones.
Yes, but the combined resources of the biggest (say) 1000 companies are far far greater than those of governments, simply because there are so many more corporations. This is true both inside a country and summed across Europe. And most corporations by far would lobby very strongly against war inside Europe.
“The US would push the USSR much harder in proxy wars if it thought they could lead up to an economic/military collapse of the USSR or its satellites, and all the European countries would participate more in these proxy wars.”
Agreed, but there’s still peace in Europe in this scenario.
“Yes, but the combined resources of the biggest (say) 1000 companies are far far greater than those of governments, simply because there are so many more corporations.”
“Corporations” do not act coherently like a national government does. There is no “United Corporate Alliance” or any such thing.
“This is true both inside a country and summed across Europe. And most corporations by far would lobby very strongly against war inside Europe.”
Some would, but some would probably push for it (military contracting can be enormously profitable). There were certainly plenty of companies that pushed for a US war in Iraq.
From Schindler’s List:
SCHINDLER: There’s no way I could have known this before, but there was always something missing. In every business I tried, I see now it wasn’t me that was failing, it was this thing, this missing thing. Even if I’d known what it was, there’s nothing I could have done about it, because you can’t create this sort of thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success and failure. [He waits for her to guess what the thing is. His looks says, It’s so simple, how can you not know?] EMILIE: Luck? SCHINDLER: War.
Incidentally, why do you use quotes instead of quote-markup with ‘>’? It’s a bit harder to read.
Yes, because of US hegemony.
There would be if 90% of all corporations had a common cause that was a life or death matter for them! At the very least all the corporations would be pushing in the same direction, and even without a formal alliance the result would be much the same.
Companies benefit from war—if they expect to be on the (economically) winning side, and if war isn’t going to occur on their home turf. If US companies really honestly believed there was a 50-50 chance of Iraq winning the war and conquering New York, none of them would have supported a war.
In Europe, too many big companies are multinational. All of them stand a lot to lose from an internal war. Also, in a war they would have to bet on winner(s) right at the start—because if they want a military contract with Germany, then Germany’s going to demand they stop selling weapons to France.
In WW1 the big economical winners were US companies because they sold everything but actual weapons to the Alliance countries for many years without being directly involved in the war.
Yes, in WWI, the european multinationals did badly. But people saw that coming and said that they would never allow a war! How do you know you’ve quantified it right this time? What would you have predicted in 1914? How do you quantify it? Governments controlled a much smaller percentage of GDP back then. Also, I occasionally hear claims like: globalization only recovered to prewar levels in 1990 (or was it later?)
I’m not saying there’ll never be war. I’m saying this is one of the biggest factors that maintain today’s stable state of internal European peace. Of course it’s possible for affairs to leave this state, but there will need to be a (visible) change pushing in that direction.
In 1914 there were very visible and long-standing forces pushing for war. It was at best an open question which opposing political force would win, and I would certainly predicted war, as did most other observers. The nearly-autocratic ruler of the biggest Continental European country (Germany) had been saying for years he was going to go to war. He had full political and military support for this at home, and based all his foreign policy and diplomacy on this. He constantly made or tried to make alliances with pretty much every single country in the world other than France with the explicitly stated goal of going to war together; not just in Europe, but including e.g. offering alliance to Mexico against the US to keep the US out of a European war. And remember Germany had recently (1870-1) fought France and won.
Even without analyzing the pro-war sentiment in many other countries, it was reasonable to conclude there would be a big war. Wars were pretty much constant—a war in continental Europe once every 20-30 years for centuries. The only difficulty was predicting such a big and long war as WW1 turned out to be, and that only happened because no side managed to win quickly—and the Germans came extremely close to defeating France completely in the first assault of 1914, within a single tactical decision’s worth. (Ref: Guns of August, also The Proud Tower, both by Barbara Tuchman.)
The idea that multinationals would prevent war was mostly Woodrow Wilson’s vision at the time, and I think even he saw it as an ideal for the future; he recognized that it wasn’t achieved yet. Most pro-peace people placed their hopes on the International Socialist movement preventing a war by general strikes in belligerent countries and soldiers refusing to fight. This failed miserably because the Socialists didn’t dare anything of the kind; even in countries where they were fairly strong politically (a very recent turn of events at the time), as in France, they declared support of the warring government in the end. A pity.
Why include the quote from Schindler’s List? Are we supposed to take it as evidence for what causes wars?
That’s a funny thing to say on the quotes thread. Tom McCabe is deploying rhetoric, but this whole thread is about sharing rhetoric (or maybe directly using it).
In my humble opinion, quoting Hollywood movies detracts from any conversation about historical facts or about causal relationships even if the conversation starts with a rationality quote.
Moreover, none of the opinions I have seen as to the purpose of Rationality Quotes entails a rhetorical free-for-all. An example of an opinion that I recall is that a quote is an attempt to communicate some aspect of the art of human rationality in much fewer words than would be required by the standard expository rationalist style. The quote from the Hollywood movie does not have that property because the quoter could have written instead, “it is well documented that many German industrialists profited greatly from the war,” which of course is fewer words than the quote from the movie and which of course is standard expository style (no rhetoric).
I have nothing personal against the quoter (Tom) and I believe and I hope that I would have voiced the same objection if anyone here had used that particular rhetorical tactic.
Yeah, they say that, but I don’t believe them. At least, I don’t believe any version of that that doesn’t also cover Tom’s quote.
It’s supposed to be an example of how war can be profitable for industry (as indeed it was for many in Germany during WWII).
OK, then, do you consider Schindler’s List or any other Hollywood film evidence that the war was profitable for industrialists in Germany?
I always thought that Hollywood films were held to high standards for mass appeal and sometime for aesthetics, but not for historical veracity.
I quoted the film merely for rhetorical purposes. The fact that many German industrialists got rich off WWII is very thoroughly documented.
Well, I for one wish you would refrain from such a heavy-handed rhetorical tactic.
Everyone has a natural human tendency to consider what they see in movies as “documentary evidence”. I wish you’d try to help us overcome that cognitive bias, not encourage us to persist in it.
Especially in “based on a real story” pseudo documentary films.
The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights...
What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?
Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums—a few thousands or millions. The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical.
“The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights...”
Citation? Britain and France haven’t fought since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.
“What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?”
The fact that the French population would never stomach it, given that they had just gotten out from under four years of brutal German occupation with American and British support?
“Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums—a few thousands or millions.”
Ross Perot lost, and Bloomberg never even tried.
“The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical.”
Citation?
The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it’s not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s. We don’t know that their enmity and warring are truly over, any more than we know whether great power conflicts are truly over.
And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge? Italy and Germany were right there, and American and Britain wouldn’t’ve seriously objected to France invading (in this hypothetical nuke-less Communist-less world) - they weren’t in any position to stomach stopping France. The American & British support didn’t mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his force de frappe.
Waggish answer: What, the past couple years of American politics haven’t made it painfully obvious how valuable lobbying can be?
Serious answer: if the returns weren’t high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?
More serious answer: The Mickey Mouse Protection Act
Most serious answer: http://www.google.com/search?q=return+on+lobbying+investment and specifically http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041102035.html :
“The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it’s not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s.”
This is a blatant dodge of my original claim, which was specifically about Britain and France. No one who had ever cracked a history book would ever claim that there were no wars in Europe during the 20th century.
“And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge?”
Germany was destroyed, the government was completely dissolved (and largely imprisoned), all the cities were bombed into rubble, and more than ten percent of the population was killed (including, I believe, a majority of the men of military age). You couldn’t get a more thorough revenge if you obliterated Berlin with a 50 megaton H-bomb.
“The American & British support didn’t mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his third way.”
Historically, after the war, we know that the French didn’t want another war against Germany. Why would it be different this time?
“Serious answer: if the returns weren’t high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?”
Because there are points on the real line between “3%” and “22,000%”.
“In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue—a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. ”
OK, that’s a legitimate citation, but it ignores the non-monetary costs of lobbying, which far exceed the monetary ones. A company may hire a lobbyist and pay him $100,000, but if both the company and the lobbyist don’t have connections with people high up in Washington, they won’t get anywhere. And it’s much more difficult to acquire those connections than to acquire $100K.