Military Speculations

We may well have to agree to disagree here, Harold. There is no question but what government investment has done a great deal of good. I'm not denying that. I'm a liberal, for Pete's sake!!!

But... unless you want a command economy focused on a narrow set of goals, you do want to see that infrastructure grow with as broad of an economic base as possible. To accomplish that development has to happen not only in the EOC and Siddarmark, but in Dohlar, Desnair and the Temple Lands. Open, competitive markets in which investments can be made, trade can happen, jobs created are the best way to bring that about.

For that you need rational regimes who are willing to do what is needed to make that happen. War shuts down trade, forces industry into survival mode, absorbs capital by raising taxes, postpones almost everything but the military. Cold war has many of the same issues to a lesser extent. Yes, r&d can be accelerated. But not across the board. And at what price?

What I'm trying to say is that Safehold as a whole needs to follow Charis' lead if the planet wide GDP is to become large enough to tackle the Gbabba.

Just a couple of comments in response to your post... First it was Japanese competition, not Uncle Sam's sponsorship that got Detroit off its collective arse to make better cars by the early nineties.

Finally you refer to how sluggish the private sector was about R&D in the interwar period. I'm presuming you are referring to the time between WW1 and WW2... As I remember my history, something called the Great Depression happened in about the middle of that... seems like it slowed everything down.

Don

n7axw wrote:But... unless you want a command economy focused on a narrow set of goals, you do want to see that infrastructure grow with as broad of an economic base as possible. To accomplish that development has to happen not only in the EOC and Siddarmark, but in Dohlar, Desnair and the Temple Lands. Open, competitive markets in which investments can be made, trade can happen, jobs created are the best way to bring that about.

Thee are two choices in response to a Cold War; command economy and broad based economic stimulus. The USSR chose the former and the US and Western Allies chose the second.

n7axw wrote:War shuts down trade, forces industry into survival mode, absorbs capital by raising taxes, postpones almost everything but the military. Cold war has many of the same issues to a lesser extent. Yes, r&d can be accelerated. But not across the board. And at what price?

The US and Western Allies were engaged in a Cold War from 1945 through 1989. I don't recall any of the "survival mode" economic stress that you're suggesting. On the contrary, I see the spin-offs from the space race, the internet, etc -- things that wouldn't have happened without the Cold War pressure to innovate faster and better than the Russians.

n7axw wrote:What I'm trying to say is that Safehold as a whole needs to follow Charis' lead if the planet wide GDP is to become large enough to tackle the Gbabba.

Without the pressure of life-or-death competition, Safehold won't progress as quickly or as widely as they could.

The Space Program (NASA et al) is stagnating in the last 30 years because there is only economic competition; it's cheaper to let the French, Russians, and Chinese launch our satellites and ferry our astronauts and equipment to the ISS than it is to develop our own, next-generation booster.

n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments in response to your post... First it was Japanese competition, not Uncle Sam's sponsorship that got Detroit off its collective arse to make better cars by the early nineties.

Not sponsorship, regulation -- seatbelts, airbags, catalytic converters, EGR systems, crumple-zones, etc wouldn't exist without government regulations banning tetraethyl lead, and setting efficiency and survivability standards.

n7axw wrote: Finally you refer to how sluggish the private sector was about R&D in the interwar period. I'm presuming you are referring to the time between WW1 and WW2... As I remember my history, something called the Great Depression happened in about the middle of that... seems like it slowed everything down.

The Depression began Oct 29th, 1929; the first world war ended Nov 11, 1918-- that's enough time for the last war-baby to become an adult, yet there was positively anemic actual progress as compared to the war years before and after. If the Stock Market is any indication, the GDP had never been higher than it was on Oct 28th, 1929, but real progress didn't really start until the TVA started damming and electrifying the Tennessee river valley and the Bureau of Reclamation built Hoover and Grand Coulee dams to do the same for the west.

There's a lot of debate about whether government spending ended or prolonged the depression, but there's little dispute that the end of the Depression and increased government spending on infrastructure projects like roads and dams happened in the same time frame.

Some people are stressing that there must be a cold war between the CoGA and the CoC in order to stimulate further innovation, on the premise that military research is a primary motivator for innovation.

I suggest that encouraging military research does not require a cold war between CoGA and the CoC. Charis is not going to conquer the entire world. There are still going to be separate nations on Safehold. To get military research funding, all you need is some wars or potential wars between those countries. As long as the Proscriptions are loosened on innovation, international conflict does not have to involve CoGA.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:But... unless you want a command economy focused on a narrow set of goals, you do want to see that infrastructure grow with as broad of an economic base as possible. To accomplish that development has to happen not only in the EOC and Siddarmark, but in Dohlar, Desnair and the Temple Lands. Open, competitive markets in which investments can be made, trade can happen, jobs created are the best way to bring that about.

Thee are two choices in response to a Cold War; command economy and broad based economic stimulus. The USSR chose the former and the US and Western Allies chose the second.

n7axw wrote:War shuts down trade, forces industry into survival mode, absorbs capital by raising taxes, postpones almost everything but the military. Cold war has many of the same issues to a lesser extent. Yes, r&d can be accelerated. But not across the board. And at what price?

The US and Western Allies were engaged in a Cold War from 1945 through 1989. I don't recall any of the "survival mode" economic stress that you're suggesting. On the contrary, I see the spin-offs from the space race, the internet, etc -- things that wouldn't have happened without the Cold War pressure to innovate faster and better than the Russians.

n7axw wrote:What I'm trying to say is that Safehold as a whole needs to follow Charis' lead if the planet wide GDP is to become large enough to tackle the Gbabba.

Without the pressure of life-or-death competition, Safehold won't progress as quickly or as widely as they could.

The Space Program (NASA et al) is stagnating in the last 30 years because there is only economic competition; it's cheaper to let the French, Russians, and Chinese launch our satellites and ferry our astronauts and equipment to the ISS than it is to develop our own, next-generation booster.

n7axw wrote:Just a couple of comments in response to your post... First it was Japanese competition, not Uncle Sam's sponsorship that got Detroit off its collective arse to make better cars by the early nineties.

Not sponsorship, regulation -- seatbelts, airbags, catalytic converters, EGR systems, crumple-zones, etc wouldn't exist without government regulations banning tetraethyl lead, and setting efficiency and survivability standards.

n7axw wrote: Finally you refer to how sluggish the private sector was about R&D in the interwar period. I'm presuming you are referring to the time between WW1 and WW2... As I remember my history, something called the Great Depression happened in about the middle of that... seems like it slowed everything down.

The Depression began Oct 29th, 1929; the first world war ended Nov 11, 1918-- that's enough time for the last war-baby to become an adult, yet there was positively anemic actual progress as compared to the war years before and after. If the Stock Market is any indication, the GDP had never been higher than it was on Oct 28th, 1929, but real progress didn't really start until the TVA started damming and electrifying the Tennessee river valley and the Bureau of Reclamation built Hoover and Grand Coulee dams to do the same for the west.

There's a lot of debate about whether government spending ended or prolonged the depression, but there's little dispute that the end of the Depression and increased government spending on infrastructure projects like roads and dams happened in the same time frame.

We certainly agree on the regulation bit. What happened in 2008 rather vividly demonstrated what happens when regulation is too loose. Also, I'm not against government spending at reasonable levels and what's actually reasonable is rightly subject to debate and compromise on the part of competitive interests. Probably the thing that ended the Great Depression was WW2 which was the biggest public works project of all time.

But government spending works best as a temporary expedient rather than a permanent fix. And there are some things that fit better in the public sector than the private. But I think that the whole notion of promoting a cold war for the sake of pressurizing military research is out of kilter. The health and prosperity of the EOC is not all that is at stake here. All of Safehold needs to grow economicly. Safehold needs more people so we are talking about population growth. And education needs to be upgraded planetwide. The entire world needs to be hauled into the modern age.

How? With open borders, trade and the constant expansion of industry as people become consumers. This same industry becomes the foundation for building the military eventially needed to confront the Gbabba. Research is a piece of that pie, but only one piece.

Don

SWM wrote:Some people are stressing that there must be a cold war between the CoGA and the CoC in order to stimulate further innovation, on the premise that military research is a primary motivator for innovation.

One of those people saying there WILL BE 20-30 years of Cold War is David Weber -- at least according to the interview link posted in a couple of threads.

I happen to think that RFC is correct in using a Cold War or Arms Race to stimulate innovation, because Merlin needs to stimulate innovation world-wide, not just in the Empire of Charis. Peaceful trade won't stimulate innovation outside of Charis because it will allow an amish/quaker-like adherence to discredited Proscriptions to flourish.

I think that the hinted 20 year span of the hinted Cold War is significant, because that is approximately how long it will take a new generation to grow up surrounded by feverish innovation without Proscriptions.

A Cold War is preferable to an Arms Race because the latter has all of the drawbacks and few of the benefits expressed in this thread -- in fact, most of the people arguing against a Cold War are actually arguing as if the two are synonymous.

A Cold War is a broad spectrum competition between two polities that encompasses far more than simply building up the respective military forces. It is a war of competing spheres of influence. Getting a contract to provide a commodity to a third world country -- whether it was computers or cannon, Tofu or Tanks -- expanded our influence and decreased the Soviets. A Cold War is as much about spies stealing each others' technology as it is about being ready to nuke each other "back to the stone age."

Merlin needs the pressure of Charisian innovation threatening the CoGA and forcing even die-hard radicals like Clyntahn to suspend the Proscriptions "For the Duration." If there is no Cold War, Clyntahn or his successor can revoke the suspension "for the duration" and make the Church's innovators disappear for violating the Proscriptions.

Economic pressure won't be enough, by itself, to force the CoGA to suspend the Proscriptions long enough for a world-wide generation to grow up without them. It's going to take a continued threat to the Church's very survival to keep the Proscriptions at least loosened if not completely suspended.

Did David actually say there would be a Cold War? I have not seen the interview. People have said there would be an interval of peace, but I don't recall anyone mentioning that David said the peace would actually be a Cold War.

SWM wrote:Did David actually say there would be a Cold War? I have not seen the interview. People have said there would be an interval of peace, but I don't recall anyone mentioning that David said the peace would actually be a Cold War.

I think one of the links is in the "Clyntahn's Fate" thread, with a time-stamp for the comments about a Cold War.

n7axw wrote:
However it needs to be said that much of the pure scientific research occurs in the civilian sector, particularly these days in the universities. How much of that is military driven, I don't know. I think that those lines get pretty fuzzy.

Don

Until the most recent couple decades, the bulk of research, especially basic research, was funded from the department of defense. Commercial and non-military funding sources are very small (and even these have basically been gutted in favor of higher profitability on the commercial side and "balanced" budgets on the public side.

Even in pharmaceuticals, the major expenditure is the testing and approval process. Very little of the research money goes into basic research.

At this point, the funding for basic research and much of the early stages of applied research has effectively been cut off in the United Stated. This does not bode well for the future.

Weird Harold wrote:

SWM wrote:Some people are stressing that there must be a cold war between the CoGA and the CoC in order to stimulate further innovation, on the premise that military research is a primary motivator for innovation.

One of those people saying there WILL BE 20-30 years of Cold War is David Weber -- at least according to the interview link posted in a couple of threads.

I happen to think that RFC is correct in using a Cold War or Arms Race to stimulate innovation, because Merlin needs to stimulate innovation world-wide, not just in the Empire of Charis. Peaceful trade won't stimulate innovation outside of Charis because it will allow an amish/quaker-like adherence to discredited Proscriptions to flourish.

I think that the hinted 20 year span of the hinted Cold War is significant, because that is approximately how long it will take a new generation to grow up surrounded by feverish innovation without Proscriptions.

A Cold War is preferable to an Arms Race because the latter has all of the drawbacks and few of the benefits expressed in this thread -- in fact, most of the people arguing against a Cold War are actually arguing as if the two are synonymous.

A Cold War is a broad spectrum competition between two polities that encompasses far more than simply building up the respective military forces. It is a war of competing spheres of influence. Getting a contract to provide a commodity to a third world country -- whether it was computers or cannon, Tofu or Tanks -- expanded our influence and decreased the Soviets. A Cold War is as much about spies stealing each others' technology as it is about being ready to nuke each other "back to the stone age."

Merlin needs the pressure of Charisian innovation threatening the CoGA and forcing even die-hard radicals like Clyntahn to suspend the Proscriptions "For the Duration." If there is no Cold War, Clyntahn or his successor can revoke the suspension "for the duration" and make the Church's innovators disappear for violating the Proscriptions.

Economic pressure won't be enough, by itself, to force the CoGA to suspend the Proscriptions long enough for a world-wide generation to grow up without them. It's going to take a continued threat to the Church's very survival to keep the Proscriptions at least loosened if not completely suspended.

What I am really reacting to is the notion of an artificially induced cold war. There was nothing artificial about the real one. As for Safehold, RFC will tell the tale and I am not in any way trying to influence that. That being said, you don't leave Clyntahn or his cronies in place to enforce the proscriptions at all. The are no formally stated war aims on the Alliance side, but the most consistantly stated goals is to purge the Temple of corruption and insist on justice for crimes commited by the inquisition; indeed break the power of the inquisition to coerce. That is how David has told the story so far. In my view, the way you do that is to get rid of that crowd altogether.

If there is to be a cold war on Safehold, it will be because of unresolved conflict, more than likely because there will be those who don't accept the military verdict. It won't be because Cayleb and Sharley go looking for enemies to justify military spending.

Don

Which brings us back to how a real cold war could manifest. As I asserted before, Clyntahn gets whacked by Duchairn and Magwair and the G2 offer a truce giving the Allies their stated war aims.

The Inquisition becomes in large measure a persuasive arm of the CoGA not a coercive one. The mainland reformers rejoin the CoGA but remain with their congragations. Reformist nations to reassert their authority to appoint bishops and vicars.

Lots of room for political tension, no?