Stupidity and violence

[DougShrapnel]

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All other variables being the same, a society of less intelligent people is likely to have more problems with violence than a society with more intelligent people.

[/ QUOTE ]Violence is the result of limited resources. Stupidity does not matter, only the need to compete over limited resources. Well maybe not only, but it's the largest factor.

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Intelligence influences the nature of the competition.

[/ QUOTE ]If you mean intelligence influences the effiecency of scarce resources you may have a point. But again the post is about all things being equal. If it something else, what is the nature? A dumb person kills you with bare hands but a smart person kills you with a gun?

[hmkpoker]

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If you mean intelligence influences the effiecency of scarce resources you may have a point. But again the post is about all things being equal.

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Nuts, you caught my mistake. See my first response to vhawk.

[jogsxyz]

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[ War produces nothing of value to the economy, .....

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That statement isn't true. Didn't WWII end the depression?

In the book 1984, there's a constant state of war to support the economy.

[DougShrapnel]

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If you mean intelligence influences the effiecency of scarce resources you may have a point. But again the post is about all things being equal.

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Nuts, you caught my mistake. See my first response to vhawk.

[/ QUOTE ]Vhawk pretty much has this nailed. I only wish Utah was arround to help you better understand the mistakes you are making regarding intelligence.

[hmkpoker]

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That statement isn't true. Didn't WWII end the depression?

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No.

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In the book 1984, there's a constant state of war to support the economy.

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And everyone lived in poverty.

[Propertarian]

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That statement isn't true. Didn't WWII end the depression?



[/ QUOTE ] The parable of the broken window doesn't apply in this situation-as it doesn't apply in all situations in which unused capacity exists-because the resources (broadly defined) were not being used AT ALL and WWII put people to work and put money in the hands of people who were not working and had no money.

Perhaps there would have been a better way to end the great depression (Lewis Black's idea of building a big f-ing thing comes to mind) but the fact of the matter is that WWII did end the great depression.

[soon2bepro]

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All other variables being the same, a society of less intelligent people is likely to have more problems with violence than a society with more intelligent people.

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voted agree because I chose to interpret your poll the way I think it should've been, but I think you should change the wording...

See how you say "have problems with violence" rather than "contain more violence".

The more intelligent people are, the more likely they'll have a problem WITH violence. They're less likely to be violent though. That's what I assumed the poll meant.

[hmkpoker]

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The parable of the broken window doesn't apply in this situation-as it doesn't apply in all situations in which unused capacity exists-because the resources (broadly defined) were not being used AT ALL and WWII put people to work and put money in the hands of people who were not working and had no money.

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What I think you are arguing is that there was a huge disparity of wealth, and redistribution toward some level of equilibrium was necessary to get people back to work. If this is the case, we must admit that the transaction costs were EGREGIOUS. War, by itself, is not valuable. No one is eat, smoke, drink, dwell in or be entertained by war (well, maybe some sickos). Functionally, this is identical to paying tons and tons and tons of people to dig ditches and fill them up (although many more natural resources were exhausted in so doing). Along your reasoning, I see no reason to think that a sudden redistribution of funds would not have been infinitely superior to the huge transaction costs of the war machine.

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Perhaps there would have been a better way to end the great depression (Lewis Black's idea of building a big f-ing thing comes to mind) but the fact of the matter is that WWII did end the great depression.

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That was FDR's idea. He built craploads of big f-ing things. Did it work, or did it just prolong the depression? Methinks the latter.

BTW, the big f-ing thing idea makes zero sense. If a big f-ing thing really is going to make people say "OMG, I've got to see this big f-ing thing!" then some capitalist will just come in and build the big f-ing thing himself.

[Propertarian]

That is not my argument at all. The parable of the broken window goes like this:

X (say war) is not actually good for the economy because the resources spent on X would have been spent bettter elsewhere.

However, sometimes the resources used for X are not being used at all. They are just sitting there doing nothing. So they therefore WOULD NOT (could not is irrelevant) have been spent better elsewhere; the great depression was a massive instance of this: unused capacity. Nobody was building anything or hiring anybody, because aggregate demand was too low and aggregate supply too high (unused cars were sitting in lots for years, farmers were burning crops (while other people were literally starving) because they couldn't sell all of them and/or to decrease supply therefore increasing price) for people to have an incentive to build things or hire people. The war both increased aggregate demand in and of itself by demanding goods for use in the war be created and put people to work, and them having money further increased aggregate demand, incentivizing hiring people for other purposes and creating other goods and services that the newly employed people want and can now afford. The war ended the viscious cycle that existed: nobody wanted to hire anybody because it was unprofitable to do so, but it was only unprofitable to hire people because people did not have enough money to buy things.

The war effort even put people who weren't even in the workforce into an employed status, not just those who were officially unemployed.

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BTW, the big f-ing thing idea makes zero sense. If a big f-ing thing really is going to make people say "OMG, I've got to see this big f-ing thing!" then some capitalist will just come in and build the big f-ing thing himself.

[/ QUOTE ] This is not true for the reason I gave above-nobody is spending on anything. Furthermore, the whole point of me bringing up the big [censored] thing is to illustrate how, in depressions, it is beneficial to employ people, even for things that nobody wants. As the joke goes, FDR paid people to dig a ditch in the morning, and paid another group to fill it up at night. Doing so puts money into people the pockets of people who would have money, increasing aggregate demand which eventually leads to the market to start producing things that people want again.

So, here is the hierarchy of best things to do with the resources:

1. Build a big f-ing thing.
2. Fight a war.
3. Let the capacity continue to go unused.

[madnak]

What he's doing is refuting the Keynesian assumptions you're still taking for granted.

"Resources aren't being used. It would be good if we started burning them and using them to kill people, to create jobs."

It's even worse than the "we should start breaking windows, because then people will have jobs repairing them" reasoning. Which definitely applies to this situation - destroying the property of rich people is a great way to mobilize resources. The difference being that the war solution to stagnation is even more destructive and includes atrocities as well as vandalism.

I love how you talk about the "vicious cycle" as if it just came along and happen, oh that's too bad. And I especially love how you talk about the draft and absolute necessity as a reduction in unemployment. "Wow, even people who didn't want to work got to, in fact, even people who tried to run away were dragged in and sent to their deaths whether they liked it or not! According to my arbitrary definition of 'good for the economy' that was totally good for the economy!"

Finally, you're only taking the US into account. Of course, I think the US lost plenty of utility from the war, but that's beside the point. An open system doesn't tend toward entropy, but a closed system does. Similarly, while it may be possible for one nation to benefit from a war, the net effect among all the nations involved in the war will be detrimental (in terms of utility both overall and per capita).