Nuclear weapons

[Merlin]

@Autolykos

You were the one who brought up Lanchester’s square to support your thesis. I challenged it. If you’re backing down from that challenge, then please be explicit about it.

Now then, you seem to be equivocating with “economy of scale” - that is, you’re using it in a non-economic sense (!) as well as in an economic sense. I pointed this out in my last post and you’ve just done it again. I don’t understand why.

You really do not see the argument there, or are you just trying to produce an over-detailed response? If what a firm ‘produces’ is military force, and ceteris paribus for every x% increase in one factor of production (labor) you get a ((1+x%)^2)-1 percent increase in production, is it really so thought to see this is an economy of scale: you get a more than proportional increase of production by increasing the use of one factor?

Please now, do tell me where the difficult part of the concept is.

@Autolykos

If a free-market society were really under threat of invasion, I fail to see why only the pre-existing “PDAs” would be tasked with defending it. Rather, I think the situation would be akin to Yamamoto’s depiction of the folly of invading the United States: “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”. Volunteer (“irregular”) militias would abound in such a situation, IMO.

But then why you insist on discussing the idea that PDAs would defend a free society in open battle? Just say that you believe in guerilla.

Now, guerilla warfare is another subject, and I expressed my opinion on its futility in another thread. If you think it proper, we can discuss those points.

@Autolykos

Furthermore, even if one allowed (if only arguendo) the existence of nuclear weapons in a free-market society as defense against state invaders, I fail to see what use they would have within the free-market society itself.

If we assume, arguendo, that nukes may be useful in defending against foreign aggression, why wouldn’t they also prevent the creation of a new government by force of arms in the anarchic commonwealth itself? If a foreign army can successfully occupy a free society, than any band of robbers could, in time, do the same. If foreign armies are vaporized as soon as they leave their borders, local thugs won’t even try to amass fellow thugs.