1) In a sense the national security threat keeps elites honest. Without an objective way of measuring societal strength (victory in war) it all becomes court intrigue.
This is one reason I don't buy into the idea that Russia has become weakened by the recent war. The attritional losses are small relative to the society, but its gone from being a state that can't measure strength accurately to one that can (from tanks to drones, from the peace generals to the war generals, etc).
In a way weak states need more war than strong states because they lack mechanisms to measure performance in peacetime. This explains part of why Russia always starts weak and gets stronger, war provides the objective testing mechanism its civil society can't.
One could make the same comment about America on a lessor scale, who now knows that even with two years time, they can't make a 155mm shell. And it should be learning that its planes and ships are as vulnerable as its tanks.
2) I'm a huge supporter of nuclear weapons and MAD, because I see the alternative as endless industrial war that is was more damaging then the old cabinet war, but I can't help but not notice that the lack of external existential threat allows modern societies to get really loopy.
When Xi visited SF they cleaned up all the junkies for a week. We obviously have the capacity to fix things, but without that external threat we don't.
You are correct that war and the threat of war keeps elites honest. Unfortunately, war also leads to terrible destruction. I believe that transparent non-violent competition between elites gets almost all the benefits of war with far fewer drawbacks.
I am going to write much more about this in future articles, but here is one that I have already written:
> I believe that transparent non-violent competition between elites gets almost all the benefits of war with far fewer drawbacks.
The advantage of war is its finality. We used to have nonviolent competition between corporations. Then the government decided some of the looser were "too big to fail".
It's like that Star Trek episode where a computer calculates how many people would die in a war and they all go to their suicide capsules. It's humane, but too humane.
its a difficult question how we have honesty without true honesty, because honesty is too horrific.
Well in the episode in question Kirk's theory is that the people keep going to their assigned suicide chambers because its too sanitized a mass death, and that if they had to actually see people killed violently in a real war they would find a way to avoid war.
More generally, I think it's a difficult problem to figure out ways to compete that reveal objective reality within the confines of rules (rules like transparent and non-violent, etc). You need the rules obviously, but the rules also obscure the "truth" of the matter (if you broke the rules, which anyone could do, the outcome would change). Once you set rules, people optimize to the rules and try to manipulate the rules, eventually you are so focused on winning the game those rules set up that you are sub-optimal for any competition where someone ignores those rules.
1) In a sense the national security threat keeps elites honest. Without an objective way of measuring societal strength (victory in war) it all becomes court intrigue.
This is one reason I don't buy into the idea that Russia has become weakened by the recent war. The attritional losses are small relative to the society, but its gone from being a state that can't measure strength accurately to one that can (from tanks to drones, from the peace generals to the war generals, etc).
In a way weak states need more war than strong states because they lack mechanisms to measure performance in peacetime. This explains part of why Russia always starts weak and gets stronger, war provides the objective testing mechanism its civil society can't.
One could make the same comment about America on a lessor scale, who now knows that even with two years time, they can't make a 155mm shell. And it should be learning that its planes and ships are as vulnerable as its tanks.
2) I'm a huge supporter of nuclear weapons and MAD, because I see the alternative as endless industrial war that is was more damaging then the old cabinet war, but I can't help but not notice that the lack of external existential threat allows modern societies to get really loopy.
When Xi visited SF they cleaned up all the junkies for a week. We obviously have the capacity to fix things, but without that external threat we don't.
You are correct that war and the threat of war keeps elites honest. Unfortunately, war also leads to terrible destruction. I believe that transparent non-violent competition between elites gets almost all the benefits of war with far fewer drawbacks.
I am going to write much more about this in future articles, but here is one that I have already written:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-we-need-decentralized-government
> I believe that transparent non-violent competition between elites gets almost all the benefits of war with far fewer drawbacks.
The advantage of war is its finality. We used to have nonviolent competition between corporations. Then the government decided some of the looser were "too big to fail".
I think we still have quite a lot of competition between corporations, but you are right about “too big to fail.”
It's like that Star Trek episode where a computer calculates how many people would die in a war and they all go to their suicide capsules. It's humane, but too humane.
its a difficult question how we have honesty without true honesty, because honesty is too horrific.
How is transparent non-violent competition too humane?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
Well in the episode in question Kirk's theory is that the people keep going to their assigned suicide chambers because its too sanitized a mass death, and that if they had to actually see people killed violently in a real war they would find a way to avoid war.
More generally, I think it's a difficult problem to figure out ways to compete that reveal objective reality within the confines of rules (rules like transparent and non-violent, etc). You need the rules obviously, but the rules also obscure the "truth" of the matter (if you broke the rules, which anyone could do, the outcome would change). Once you set rules, people optimize to the rules and try to manipulate the rules, eventually you are so focused on winning the game those rules set up that you are sub-optimal for any competition where someone ignores those rules.