... For most of history, a lot of the budget of every kingdom, empire, republic, city state was invested or wasted on soldiers and fortresses and warships and things like that and nobody felt safe.
One of the miracles of the international systems of recent decades — and this is not about writing pacifist poetry, it’s about government budgets: You look at the budgets, and you see that on average, in the early 21st century, about 6 to 7 percent of the government budget went to defense, to the military, compared with 10 percent on average that went to health care.
It’s the first time in history that humanity spent more on health care than on defense. They felt more secure than in any previous time in history because there was this taboo on invading and conquering other countries by force.
If we now break this taboo, it will force everybody to arm themselves to the teeth at the expense of health care, education, welfare and so forth — and nobody will feel safer as a result.
Because countries and leaders constantly miscalculate.
In the Vietnam War, the Americans thought they were stronger. It turned out they were wrong.
Putin was convinced he would crush Ukraine in 48 hours. He was wrong.
So this vision of basing the peace and order of the world on a hierarchy of strong and weak, with the weak always obeying the strong and thereby buying peace, it has been tried over thousands of years, and we know where it leads.
It leads, on the one hand, to empire — and on the other hand, to endless wars.
I am not confident I know enough history to confirm Harari's observation about where humans have spent the product of our labor, but it seems plausible. The strong always want to seize it for their lethal pissing contests.
And I am willing to opine that ordinary people will always, if given a chance, turn the product of their labor to that which enables human flourishing, even though we can be greedy and foolish. Worth thinking about.
No comments:
Post a Comment