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[Casiella]

I'd be okay with cutting nearly all military spending. But I also know exactly how realistic that is.

[orange]

I'd be okay with cutting nearly all military spending. But I also know exactly how realistic that is.

So, you would be ok with making ~2.5 million people directly unemployed and any knock on effects that might have to the communities those people live in?

[Ulphus]

I'd be okay with cutting nearly all military spending. But I also know exactly how realistic that is.

So, you would be ok with making ~2.5 million people directly unemployed and any knock on effects that might have to the communities those people live in?

I'm ok with the idea of the Government having work schemes for people, but I don't see why it has to involve blowing shit up.

One of the good things that came out of the Great Depression for the US was a world class highway system, and (possibly) the Hoover Dam.

Currently there are roads in need of maintenance, a bunch of bridges that are falling apart because of lack of maintenance, and cities with hundreds of miles of leaking sewer and water mains that are more than a hundred years old, and being replaced at a few miles per year.

Wouldn't the US be better off if it put some of it's work scheme people into repairing or building new infrastructure rather than preparing to blow up other people's? Take some of the very clever people currently designing Advanced Strike Fighters and put them to work designing sustainable technologies for cars and cities that reduce the USA's dependence on fossil fuels?

I've read an article once many years ago which I'm probably about to butcher, but which discussed the pyramids of Egypt as a work scheme.

For a good proportion of the year, people couldn't work in the fields because either they were underwater when the Nile flooded, or there was no water to grow things. Fortunately, the growing season was incredibly productive so they could feed everyone with the production from that. The problem was distribution over time.

What do you do with your population when they've got six months to sit around doing nothing? How do you stop them turning all their spare grain into beer and spending 6 months drunk and causing trouble until they run out of food because they drank it and the new crops haven't come in yet? Especially if not everyone has enough maths to tell how much they can eat per day and still have food until the next crop comes in?

Answer: Pyramids!

Your pharaoh grabs enough of the grain produced during the good times that he can feed the people in the bad times. He can make use of the organisation and economies of scale to build granaries to store it all, and then during the non-growing season he pays people to work on his pyramids. Thus people have work all year round, and always get enough food to eat.

One advantage of pyramids is that because they aren't actually practically useful, if they finish one, they can build another one.

Cathedrals in the middle ages were theorised to potentially meet a similar need. After all,  if one cathedral is good, two must be better right? And it doesn't matter if it takes 500 years to build, because the point is the work, not the product.

As I recall the article, highways aren't so good, because once you've build a highway from A to B, there's not much point to build another one. But luckily if you leave them to degrade for a while, you have a fair bit of work to do to restore them.

[Saede Riordan]

I think a major problem with the current system is this: It leaks. It leaks money on every level. The entitlement programmes simply do not require the massive amounts of paper pushers that they currently employ. I've been on foodstamps, I know how top heavy, and convoluted, and leaky the entire process is. We manage to currently spend way more per capita on healthcare then the UK, and yet the UK manages universal healthcare for everyone. Its clear that the problems are not with the programs themselves, but how they're structured. Same with the military. I don't think as much money needs to be spent on it as is currently being spent on it, the military budget could be drastically slashed and if the whole structure was reorganized it could maintain just as effective of a state of readiness. The same is true for politics. Does every senator need to make 450,000 dollars for life after getting the position? Doesn't that seem just a wee bit fucked up?

And yes, cutting funding to things cuts jobs, and restructuring things to be more efficent with their resources means less people employed. And you know what? Thats just fine. I think we're nearing the point as a civilization where we are mature enough that not everyone needs to work all the time. Technological obsolescence is nuking jobs left and right anyway. It would be much better to begin actively transitioning to a jobless society right now then to try and get the government to pick up all the slack dropped by the atomization and outsourcing of industry.

The problem isn't that we don't have the resources to fix things, we do. We're just currently mismanaging them very badly because we are holding onto notions of structure that simply do not function in our modern and rapidly changing world. Education should be a right, not a privilege for the wealthy, and I mean a real education, not the token but ultimately useless one you get in grade school. Medicine should be a right, not a privilege for the wealthy, our medical system can't manage universal healthcare, despite spending more per capita then countries that already have it. Housing should be a right, not a privilege, there should not be 6 empty houses for every homeless person in America. Our Infrastructure is decaying and lagging behind the rest of the world while we focus far too much of our resources into fighting enemies that by and large simply do not exist anymore. The enemies we do still have can't be fought with large standing armies anyway, and overall accomplish little.

And above all else, these are the things that we should be talking about. The real issues, the structural issues. Not the ones that are prominent this election. I'm a lesbian, I should care about the gay rights debate, but it won't matter one iota who wins or loses that if the country collapses anyway. We're stuck on social issues, on these notions of 'creating jobs' and 'creating wealth' can we just skip that and go straight to clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless?

[Casiella]

First, I'm pretty damn liberal, but "because we put people to work" isn't the ideal reason for a military.

Second, I would love to see a huge chunk (if not all) of the resources presently devoted to defense re-allocated to education, infrastructure, research, and, yes, a basic social safety net. That sort of investment will, in my personal view, pay off far better for us - meaning our nation AND the whole world - than anything else.

Imagine if something like the Peace Corps got as much funding as the Army. And yes, while I'm not nearly as involved with the space community as you are, I would love to see funding for space exploration increased dramatically (as in by several multiples)..

I live in Texas, where John Cornyn and (almost certainly) Ted Cruz will be my senators in the next Congress, and Jeb Hensarling is my representative. So not only are my dreams unlikely to happen anyway, I don't even live in an area where my congressional delegation is likely to agree with any bit of them. It's a bit problematic, but that's life in a republic.

[orange]

One of the good things that came out of the Great Depression for the US was a world class highway system, and (possibly) the Hoover Dam.

Interstate Highway System

Eisenhower gained an appreciation of the German Autobahn network as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II.[9] He recognized that the proposed system would also provide key ground transport routes for military supplies and troop deployments in case of an emergency or foreign invasion.

It is/was a dual-purpose project (as was the Autobahn).

Then there is the discussion of maintaining the capability to produce "X" capability at a later date if needed.   If you stop designing and building complex systems like Jet Fighters and Rockets (or Mars Landers) you eventually don't know how to build Jet Fighters and Rockets (or Mars Landers).

Wouldn't the US be better off if it put some of it's work scheme people into repairing or building new infrastructure rather than preparing to blow up other people's? Take some of the very clever people currently designing Advanced Strike Fighters and put them to work designing sustainable technologies for cars and cities that reduce the USA's dependence on fossil fuels?

Military wants drive the development of whole new industries and improve the lives of people the world over.  A great example is the Global Positioning System, a system envisioned by the US Navy (in the 1970s), developed and controlled by the US Air Force, and used the world over to improve lives.  Other smaller examples are items like QuikClot or sadly the advances in prosthetic limbs.

You are correct - resources spent on military power could be spent elsewhere, solving other engineering & system problems.

However, even if you didn't touch the defense industry and just cut the DoD by 1/3, you are still adding ~500 thousand people to the job market.

First, I'm pretty damn liberal, but "because we put people to work" isn't the ideal reason for a military.

Second, I would love to see a huge chunk (if not all) of the resources presently devoted to defense re-allocated to education, infrastructure, research, and, yes, a basic social safety net. That sort of investment will, in my personal view, pay off far better for us - meaning our nation AND the whole world - than anything else.

Imagine if something like the Peace Corps got as much funding as the Army. And yes, while I'm not nearly as involved with the space community as you are, I would love to see funding for space exploration increased dramatically (as in by several multiples)..

I should have been clearer in my statement.  The impact of not having a military-industrial complex is that the jobs associated with the military-industrial complex cease to exist.  It is an impact of pursuing that course of action.

We already spend as much on education (per student) as any other country, reducing the leaks/bureaucracy involved would likely help a lot, but again you will have people lose their jobs (and at least in California, the bureaucrats are part of the same union as the teachers).  We actually spend ~200B more on government funded education than we do the military - that does not include those who send their kids to private schools or home school.

Military spending includes some infrastructure and a decent amount of research.  The military also conducts numerous humanitarian missions the world over (Operation Unified Assistance, Operation Unified Response, Operation Tomodachi) because it has spent billions to be able to project power (soft & hard) worldwide.




I said I support a reduction in military spending and I do (at the cost of my job disappearing).   However, I do not support spending that money elsewhere because my goal is to stop deficit spending, regardless of how awesome it would be for NASA to get another 0.5% of the Federal budget (and we would be spending 0.025% of our GDP on Space Exploration).

I also recognize that in order to stop deficit spending may require increasing/reforming taxes and I support such a move.

At the same time, I think many problems should not be solved at the national level, which is where we keep trying to solve them and failing.

[Lyn Farel]

Now I think of it, except Ulphus, nobody talked about environnement issues ? I am not sure how central or marginal it is in the US elections ?

No need to add that it is the most important and worthwhile commitment of all times to my eyes... :/

[Saede Riordan]

Now I think of it, except Ulphus, nobody talked about environnement issues ? I am not sure how central or marginal it is in the US elections ?

No need to add that it is the most important and worthwhile commitment of all times to my eyes... :/

Obama just sorta bent over and let the oil companies have their way with him, so no, its not really been talked about at all.

Orange:

I would postulate that if the leaks in the system were fixed and the whole thing were restructured drastically (and I mean drastically, like, army/navy/air force/marines becoming one unified force type drastically) then not only would we not need to spend as much money on any of the systems of our government at any level, but we would in fact have enough surplus left over to provide free food, housing, education, and medicine for every person living in the United State. This can be done I think. We have the resources, both in raw material, and industry, and economic pull. I truly believe that if we removed all the corruption, and pocket packing, and classism, and corporatism in the current system, and basically rewrote the entire government from the Bill of Rights upward to be as efficent and sustainable with resources as possible. Then it really would be possible to just outright remove scarcity altogether as a concept.

[orange]

Lyn, sadly it is marginalized in the political dialog.  Part of it stems from an unwillingness of one faction to even recognize there is a problem.   On the other hand, part of the message has been heard and actions are being taken.  Lastly, recent disasters and a drop in the price of fuel have made the alternatives less attractive.

Saede, the one force concept is not really all that drastic since there is a push in that direction anyway.

I am trying to frame this question appropriately, mainly because I do not disagree that there is currently an imbalance, so bear with me.

If all the necessaries of life are taken care of, regardless of choices made (like what a person studies in their education), is there a reward for making choices that are more useful/less selfish than those that are not?

Even if material scarcity is conquered (which I agree it can be), we will still face intellectual scarcity, possibly more so (lack of incentive to do hard, but rewarding things).

[Casiella]

I recognize that those jobs would be lost. I would like to replace them over time with other jobs, in other words. The Coast Guard is an example of a military branch that generally does good work, but I'm not convinced that the DoD per se is best equipped for long-term rebuilding / humanitarian work.

In other words: what if we took the good stuff out of the DoD, put it in places where it belongs (and there are many "right answers" to the question implied there), and stopped using "food airlifts" as the reasoning for billions of dollars in defense spending?

Education is in need of more than spending increases, of course. But given the resources we spend on other things - yes, including entitlement programs and prisons and all those other things - I think that increased spending there (along with many other fixes to how we approach it in our country) is a far better investment in the long term. An individual's level of education is a significant factor in their future income and stability (translate: people with degrees make more money, commit less crimes, and are a better asset as citizens).

Thus, whether the answer's at the federal level or not, I want the poor kids in my neighborhood having every opportunity and encouragement to grow up to become engineers and such rather than working the night shift at the drive-thru. They'll pay more taxes and will make better neighbors on average.

In general, I would describe my foreign policy desires as more closely aligned with Representative Paul's, but my domestic policy desires as somewhat stronger than President Obama's. That's highly imprecise and lacking in any nuance as a statement, so don't read too much into it, please...

---

I don't think the answers to these questions are partisan: Lord knows I'm no Democrat, but the Republican plans generally either don't seem serious (we're not going to balance the budget on the back of USAID) or so radical as to lead to all sorts of civil instability. I do think that the current state of civic discourse in the US is so dysfunctional that we're unable to reach any real answers anytime soon, because most people aren't interested in actual conversations and compromise as much as they are in scoring points and having it their way.

As long as we treat politics like Saturday afternoon college football, we will continue to get politicians who sound more like cheerleaders in expensive suits and bad toupees than deep thinkers.

[Saede Riordan]

If all the necessaries of life are taken care of, regardless of choices made (like what a person studies in their education), is there a reward for making choices that are more useful/less selfish than those that are not?

Even if material scarcity is conquered (which I agree it can be), we will still face intellectual scarcity, possibly more so (lack of incentive to do hard, but rewarding things).

I don't exactly think that's the case, if anything the opposite is true. None of the great scientific advances in the last two hundred years were made out of the search for profit. Einstein didn't figure out relativity because it put the food on the table, he did it because he wanted to. Edison wasn't trying to make money off the lightbulb, he was trying to make a lightbulb so that there was a better alternative to candles. Personal gains or profit were not sought here. A lot of modern music artists are either forgoing contracts to large profitable record labels to retain their intellectual freedom, or telling their fans to pirate their music. This is in direct contrast to their own best interests, they're worse off then they would be if they took the deal, but they don't take it anyway, for no other reason then to retain the freedom of their own ideas. People want to be able to explore philosophy, truth, beauty, science, innovation. No one says "When i want to grow up, I want to work in Walmart like mommy." The desire to create, and innovate, and explore, and love...we have these desires from a young age. Children want to grow up and be astronauts, exploring space, or firefighters, risking their own lives to save others, or doctors, or veterinarians, or scientists, not because these things will earn them money, because they they want to do them, independently of the pressures of society and the reality of a world with scarce resources. We tell ourselves we can't grow up and be an astronaut. That its not 'realistic' but the fact of the matter is, we have the resources and the technical know-how to make it happen. The only thing holding us back is our inefficient allocation of resources due to corruption, concentration of wealth, and outright resource waste. The issue of fossil fuels, and peak oil and the destruction of the environment? these issues would be irrelevant if we didn't make crappy, one time use products like zip lock bags and Mt Dew bottles out of them, most of which are just filling up our landfills. Its just plain wasteful.

If we reallocate our resources effectively, I believe we could eliminate scarcity, on at least a national, if not global level eventually. We would create a world, where having a job really was optional, where it was something you did because you enjoy doing it, or because you wanted to get a bit of extra resources. But it doesn't need to be expected, it doesn't need to be required to survive.

[Syylara/Yaansu]

There's more to life than fulfilling the very basic physically required needs to sustain life.  If you didn't have to submit 1/3 of your life to employment at some menial task, you'd have the time and energy required to tackle whatever limitation in achieving a full, rich quality of life existed.

Is there not enough food? You'd find a lot of people suddenly very interested in learning horticulture or at least carrying out tasks that someone who is qualified in that field advises.

Is there a lot of illness around affecting your friends and family?  You'd find a lot of people interested in understanding sanitation and medical subjects.

However, in a society where you toodle away pushing pieces of paper around your desk, writing emails (and making sure the cover letter is on all of your TPS reports) and reading through an endless series of corp-speak riddled procedures and guidelines, by the time you get home your general attitude is "screw all that, I'm getting a beer."  Having to submit to employment in order to cover your very basic life necessities actually results in less willingness and availability to volunteer your efforts towards greater societal well-being.  In an economy where a huge and ever-increasing share of our GDP comes from institutions trading useless fictitious "financial products" back and forth all day that provide no actual increase to the value of any products or services, essentially not improving the quality of life, it is little wonder that people have become increasingly pessimistic about doing so at an individual level.  When the highest levels of affluence and status are achieved by those who contribute little to society, the behavioral conditioning subconsciously informs us that empathy and charitibility are not worth pursuing.  Self-serving behavior is rewarded, altruism is ridiculed.

There are many economists and studies suggesting that innovation is actually higher in countries with a lower gini coefficient (more equal distribution of wealth and other resources).  This is in large part because of the aforementioned release from the need to expend so much energy on meeting basic needs, but also because of greater access to education (which in American is becoming little more than a financial hole you end up having to dig yourself out of on top of those basic needs) and greater public subsidization for research of ideas that will increase quality of life.

I can agree with the fact that "the military" has been central to inventing a lot of the technology that we have incorporated into everyday life.  However, I have two observations to make on that point.  If there were the political will to fund an agency that sat around and thought up "cool toys" all day at the same level as DARPA, I imagine we'd get similar results.  Also, doesn't that prove the concept that if the government pours money into the fostering of new ideas, that society as a whole will benefit (and by extension, what I'm saying is that profit-minded corporations are happy to take the idea and make products out of it, but are too tight-fisted to have done such innovative tinkering to begin with...ergo profit motive is not the only path to innovation and in many ways works against it).

From 1947 to 1979, productivity in the U.S. rose 119% while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose 122%.  We all shared in the prosperity created.

From 1979 to 2009, productivity rose 80%.  The income of the bottom fifth fell by 4% while the income of the top 1% rose 270%.  This is inherently unequal.

The purchasing power of the average family has actually been in decline for well over a decade as wages do not keep pace with inflation, CPI, GDP and other metrics.

The largest contributors to the deficit right now are the temporary tax cuts (the "Bush tax cuts" as they are often referred to) followed quickly by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 1.8 and 1.5 trillion, respectively.

By the way, the tax cuts, the wars, Medicare part D, TARP and the 2008 stimulus package?  All voted for by Ryan, so positioning himself as a deficit hawk might be all well and nice in front of the cameras, but actions speak louder than words.

Yes, this was a bit of a brain dump, take from it what you want.

[orange]

I was unable to adequately frame my question.

[Casiella]

Saede, if you think Edison did anything out of a desire for simple knowledge and humanitarianism, you may want to read some more on him.

[Saede Riordan]

Saede, if you think Edison did anything out of a desire for simple knowledge and humanitarianism, you may want to read some more on him.

Okay, so maybe Edison wasn't a good example, but overwhelmingly I believe the point still stands.