So… I was thinking about it… in any of the US’s wars, would more people have died if we had refused to fight?
WWI: Germany was after territory, not explicitly trying to kill people. I can understand why the French government would want to stop this, but from the french people’s perspective its just another douchebag government so who cares. Letting germany win this one probably averts ww2 anyway.
WWII: Wow how many people died… again just letting the german government eat anything it wants still probably saves more lives. Even if the rounded up all the jews and commies and killed them, waaay more people still die as a result of the war
So you can see the logic. Its a douchebag gov vs another douchebag gov. Sure one might be better than another but its not worth sacrificing an entire generation for.
I think the wars get less justifiable in recent history… the current war in iraq is absolutely laughable. The odds of being attacked by the iraqi government (even indirectly thru tarrists) were very slim. Even if there weren’t good evidence that our gov let 9/11 happen, 3000 deaths doesn’t come anywhere close to the magnitude of PEOPLE (not just americans) who have died in the iraq war.
9/11 should have been a wake up call to how lame US foreign policy in the middle east is. I mean the medical blockade to iraq is just uncalled for. Im sure you all know it killed 500,000 people over 10 years. Sorry Amira and Khalid, I don’t have penicillin because the US won’t let us trade with the rest of the world, I guess your baby is dead. Unforgivable.
War is a legal term defined by a nation, or some body that makes laws. If you operate under the laws of the legislating body you accept its conditions. If you accept its conditions you could accept its legal definition of peace.
Either way my guess is, from your perspective, war could concievably create a desirable peace just as the Misean definiton of socialism could concievably create prosperity, it is just highly unlikley and not worth thinking about.
Also ask;
peace for whom; The “greater good”, everyone, the victor?
What is peace; complacant slavery, voluntary happiness, a legal definition of the state, victory, getting things your way?
I dunno, I guess I just assume I could kill someone with it. Or at least incapacitate them long enough to stab them or shoot them or hit them with something. But you’re right, I’ve never thoroughly tested it. It’s an assumption.
He is, everything to him is only valid if its a posteriori. He is also a Might makes Right ethicist. That should help you understand where he is coming from.
He truly believes that if you flip a coin it will land heads 70% of the time, based on a test that was done which he read. He does not understand the difference between A priori and A posteriori and has made it known several times in the past that he doesn’t care to.
To honor him I have updated and added content to my sig.
I am not. I just don’t worry as much as you do about morality when thinking about public policy.
But seriously, how can you say that the state is the cause of war but also say that even if there’s no state and there’s still war that the prior assertion is still correct? I mean it’s nonsensical.
That’s not how I understood his statement. But even if that’s what he were saying, we should still be able to see whether or not it’s true by removing the state. In other words, this hypothesis requires a test to see if the hypotheses that are presented actually predict the results of the experiment. If things don’t happen in the way that the hypothesis say they will then perhaps there’s more to things like war than just the state. My hypothesis is that war is a natural human behavior, it cannot be eliminated. So I think that no matter what circumstances you put a society into, eventually there will be war. It’s all a matter of when not if.
Why would we need to exactly? Are you even vaguely familiar with Mises’s arguments against the hypothetico-deductive methodology when used in social sciences? And it does facilitate it. How? By shifting its costs to others. This requires “testing” to be understood?
