I was arguing over this (the fallacy)issue with a friend of mine, and he agreed that it's pointless to waste capital in wars and pretend it spurs development, but then went on to say that to fill the gap of what's been wasted, innovation will occur. Is it a sufficient answer to say that said innovation would have been outweighed from that which would have occurred had the missing capital not disappeared?
Innovation will always occur, it is a fallacy to believe that because economic output is not where it once was that there will be more innovation because of that gap.
I am becoming a Burkean Whig.
- F.A. Hayek
On a somewhat different point:
Innovation has not historically always been the case. Entire societies have failed because they did not innovate. The Greenland Norse is a good example from Jared Diamond's "Collapse": They arrived with an entire economic infrastructure (their "culture", as it were) in place that had played a key role in their prospering back home in Scandinavia (and Orkney, Shetland, and to some extent Iceland). They did not manage to let go of their past economic systems: Their dependence on frail livestock (cow and pigs), and not so much the hardier ones (sheep and goats), their unwillingness to research and implement the tools and strategies needed to succesfully hunt the indigenous animals (as did the Inuit - and the Vikings traded, at times, with them), and their lack of interest in the delicacies of Greenland soil erosion and wind exposure (the remains of their farms are scattered somewhat randomly across the landscape; some lucky ones in what turned out to be good locations, some unfortunate in the worst locations).
The Greenland Norse colonies ultimately failed and were abandoned. Innovation, obviously, does not always occur. However, is your point that innovation - to ensure survival in changing circumstances - must occur? (which seems not only a logical conclusions, but a necessary one).
On the topic of war and innovation: Historically war has driven technological development. But there are two thing to be said against a strong correlation between the war breaks it / human creativity fixes it-duality: 1) War has been a stable throughout the history of mankind - so apart from (parts of) the 19th and 20th century there really isn't much peacetime to compare with. 2) What peacetime there has been has been highly productive and innovative. Localised to the British isles, there was great innovation in technology and theory (the very political theory many of us adheres to), in peaceful circumstances, and 3) The Internet - even given its military roots - could presumably only have arisen commercially and in the greater public in a time of relative world peace.
Any comments on this point 3 in particular?
war/destruction = innovation... curious.
So does this mean I should make war on my neighbor so we can innovate at the same time? Would we have time-outs so we can go to work to get an income and food on the table? Ahh.. that's right, the government doesn't take these latter time-outs. We are forced to supply these for them.
"I used to see a mountain as a mountain.. Thereafter.. when I saw a mountain; lo! it was not a mountain.. yet now of final tranquillity: I see a mountain just as a mountain as I used to.." - Master Yuan; molon labe
Innovation is useless without a sufficient capital structure.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Zach:I was arguing over this (the fallacy)issue with a friend of mine, and he agreed that it's pointless to waste capital in wars and pretend it spurs development, but then went on to say that to fill the gap of what's been wasted, innovation will occur. Is it a sufficient answer to say that said innovation would have been outweighed from that which would have occurred had the missing capital not disappeared?
its sufficient to say that its pure wish thinking not grounded on any chain of reasoning.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
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