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<blockquote data-quote="RoosTah" data-source="post: 733778" data-attributes="member: 12207"><p>GDP is an incredibly misleading measure for talking about military expenditure. The government doesn't have access to the country's entire GDP, so why would you use it as a measure? Well governments like to use it because it plays down their spending. Indeed, the actual spend and the stated spend are often two different things anyway, as many governments (including the U.S.) won't count vast areas of military servicing expenditure (things like food, maintenance and in some cases the salaries of non-combat military personnell are all excluded from the official defence statistics) in order to keep the figure down. Japan are great at this - they have a stated policy of keeping Defence GDP at around 1%, but they achieve that by not counting all sorts of military related R&D, civilian military servicing and even weapons themselves (usually by staggering payments in clever ways over long periods of time).</p><p></p><p>But back to GDP - You point out that the U.S. spends 4%. Sounds nice and cheap until you look at what that is <strong>as a percentage of the entire federal budget. </strong>If you look at it on that measure, it's 20%. In reality of course when you add in the "black budgets" of sections of the intelligence community it's even greater.</p><p></p><p>So yeah, calculating defence on a GDP basis is incredibly misleading and you're not gonna be saved come tax time in an arms race unless you're happy to let your essentially services and infrastructure rot.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, this is one of those "sounds nice in theory" things. Local communities and councils are already hotbeds of in fighting petty vendetta's and self interest. In Australia and the United States the amount of autonomy we give our states allows for a version of what you seek, but in Australia it has also had its drawbacks. Nation building infrastructure projects become much harder for one thing - our rail networks won't connect up because each state wanted to do things their own way and they all used different track widths. Imagine giving that amount of autonomy to every community - it'd make building any connective infrastructure ****ing impossible.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, not entirely against letting the banks fail, but in a country like the U.S. with the amount of leverage there, there were still risks both ways. I agree with what Iceland did though, even if it made borrowing tricky there for them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Actually, yes you did:</p><p></p><p></p><p>This next bit is a bit weird though...</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is another one of your cute analogies. The Free Market is nothing like an ant colony - an ant colony is a hive mind in which the entire colony all essentially pursue a singular and common purpose. The communists had that model for humanity in mind when they were constructing their planned economies. Such notions couldn't have been further from the mind of men like Smith. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Funny you should mention that. I have a Masters Degree in Strategic Affairs and Defence Policy from the ANU as it happens, and one of areas I did quite a bit on was Counterinsurgency Warfare. I happen to know an awful lot about the Irish War of Independence, the thinking of Michael Collins and the effectiveness of his strategy against the Royal Irish Constabulary Guard. </p><p></p><p>That was 100 years ago, but even still the British learned from that and I'd suggest you read about the Malayan Emergency and how the British managed to crush that uprising by using slow and methodical control and command methods mixed with targeted propaganda and intelligence networks.</p><p></p><p>As for America, they wouldn't use nukes on their own people, but technically the U.S. could legally use drone strike assassinations of terror suspects on US territory. Now, you might believe in your heart of hearts that a Michael Collins style uprising would be possible with light arms in America, but you haven't thought it through. First up, in Ireland the British were occupiers - and being an occupier makes control harder because you are always under threat of betrayal. Second, their intelligence network was limited - indeed so limited Collins was able to wipe out their key eyes and ears in one afternoon (Bloody Sunday), and third, the British armaments were still not significantly more advanced than the IRA militias in terms of their ground warfare. </p><p></p><p>None of this applies to the U.S. - It is THEIR country to start with, so they don't need "collaborators"; they have the most expensive and sophisticated intelligence network that has ever existed - something which makes planning any sort of organised and large scale attacks extremely difficult; and finally their arms just not only bigger, but significantly more effective. The U.S. doesn't need to launch nuclear weapons - that was just an example of the mismatch - but taking them on with small arms would be akin to taking on a man with a gatling gun with brass knuckles.</p><p></p><p>One question: you mention corruption a lot, but has it occurred to you that the NRA may well have itself been corrupted by major arms manufacturers who get a lot of benefit from fearful working class white Americans buying their machine guns? Or do you think they're above corruption and don't lie out of self interest?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Just curious - I haven't ever come across anyone outside of America that believes the NRA's BS before.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RoosTah, post: 733778, member: 12207"] GDP is an incredibly misleading measure for talking about military expenditure. The government doesn't have access to the country's entire GDP, so why would you use it as a measure? Well governments like to use it because it plays down their spending. Indeed, the actual spend and the stated spend are often two different things anyway, as many governments (including the U.S.) won't count vast areas of military servicing expenditure (things like food, maintenance and in some cases the salaries of non-combat military personnell are all excluded from the official defence statistics) in order to keep the figure down. Japan are great at this - they have a stated policy of keeping Defence GDP at around 1%, but they achieve that by not counting all sorts of military related R&D, civilian military servicing and even weapons themselves (usually by staggering payments in clever ways over long periods of time). But back to GDP - You point out that the U.S. spends 4%. Sounds nice and cheap until you look at what that is [B]as a percentage of the entire federal budget. [/B]If you look at it on that measure, it's 20%. In reality of course when you add in the "black budgets" of sections of the intelligence community it's even greater. So yeah, calculating defence on a GDP basis is incredibly misleading and you're not gonna be saved come tax time in an arms race unless you're happy to let your essentially services and infrastructure rot. Again, this is one of those "sounds nice in theory" things. Local communities and councils are already hotbeds of in fighting petty vendetta's and self interest. In Australia and the United States the amount of autonomy we give our states allows for a version of what you seek, but in Australia it has also had its drawbacks. Nation building infrastructure projects become much harder for one thing - our rail networks won't connect up because each state wanted to do things their own way and they all used different track widths. Imagine giving that amount of autonomy to every community - it'd make building any connective infrastructure ****ing impossible. Again, not entirely against letting the banks fail, but in a country like the U.S. with the amount of leverage there, there were still risks both ways. I agree with what Iceland did though, even if it made borrowing tricky there for them. Actually, yes you did: This next bit is a bit weird though... This is another one of your cute analogies. The Free Market is nothing like an ant colony - an ant colony is a hive mind in which the entire colony all essentially pursue a singular and common purpose. The communists had that model for humanity in mind when they were constructing their planned economies. Such notions couldn't have been further from the mind of men like Smith. Funny you should mention that. I have a Masters Degree in Strategic Affairs and Defence Policy from the ANU as it happens, and one of areas I did quite a bit on was Counterinsurgency Warfare. I happen to know an awful lot about the Irish War of Independence, the thinking of Michael Collins and the effectiveness of his strategy against the Royal Irish Constabulary Guard. That was 100 years ago, but even still the British learned from that and I'd suggest you read about the Malayan Emergency and how the British managed to crush that uprising by using slow and methodical control and command methods mixed with targeted propaganda and intelligence networks. As for America, they wouldn't use nukes on their own people, but technically the U.S. could legally use drone strike assassinations of terror suspects on US territory. Now, you might believe in your heart of hearts that a Michael Collins style uprising would be possible with light arms in America, but you haven't thought it through. First up, in Ireland the British were occupiers - and being an occupier makes control harder because you are always under threat of betrayal. Second, their intelligence network was limited - indeed so limited Collins was able to wipe out their key eyes and ears in one afternoon (Bloody Sunday), and third, the British armaments were still not significantly more advanced than the IRA militias in terms of their ground warfare. None of this applies to the U.S. - It is THEIR country to start with, so they don't need "collaborators"; they have the most expensive and sophisticated intelligence network that has ever existed - something which makes planning any sort of organised and large scale attacks extremely difficult; and finally their arms just not only bigger, but significantly more effective. The U.S. doesn't need to launch nuclear weapons - that was just an example of the mismatch - but taking them on with small arms would be akin to taking on a man with a gatling gun with brass knuckles. One question: you mention corruption a lot, but has it occurred to you that the NRA may well have itself been corrupted by major arms manufacturers who get a lot of benefit from fearful working class white Americans buying their machine guns? Or do you think they're above corruption and don't lie out of self interest? Just curious - I haven't ever come across anyone outside of America that believes the NRA's BS before. [/QUOTE]
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