[extropy-chat] What % of global economic activity is dependant on military activity?

[Mike Lorrey]

--- "Lifespan Pharma Inc." <megao at sasktel.net> wrote:

> What I mean is to delineate the point of diminishing  returns at
> which testing out technology by military enterprises no longer
> serves the purpose
> of yielding information from which to make more durable or efficient
>  or yield  improved  technological innovations.

Cruise missiles result in affordable small turbine engines for civil
aviation and efficient micropower cogeneration, as well as terrain
recognition software that is useful for environmental analysis,
searching for missing hikers.

> 
> Putting AK47's and and landmines cannot possibly yield much towards
> an improved human condition.

Ah, but developing land mines whose detonator squibs decompose over
time makes for safe landscapes after wars end without a lot of work. An
AK-47 in the hand of every person helps ensure that tyrannical world
government will be a very expensive proposition. It is interesting that
a very simple means of detecting mines has been found: plants that grow
with different colors based on the nitrogen content of the soil....

> Putting up a GPS satellite network does improve the human condition
> in measureable ways.

Except when it involves governments GPS tracking every one of their
citizens. As Vinge warned, localizer technologies are more a tech of
tyranny than not.

> 
> One could begin to classify global military activity into  a spectrum
> and rate the
> societal or other  benefits,  short, medium and long term  of these 
> activities.
> 
> This like QALY ratings for medical intervention economics  might
> yield a cost/benefit system for military activity economics.
> 
> This might allow rationalization of global military economics.

There are certainly lots of spin-off technologies, from rocketry to
computers, avionics, rescue, submarines, much medical trauma technology
etc.. There was a tv show on last year that detailed many such. While
military investment in such technologies is easy to make when there is
no profit motive, only strategic or tactical motive, it is questionable
whether private industry couldn't develop the same thing without
government contracting.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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