>>you seemed to agree that war is economically productive.<<
Depends on the definition - and on the circumstances.
I don't doubt at all that the Spanish Conquistadores repaid the investment of the Spanish kings many times over.
It's not at all pleasant to contemplate, but the French made quite a bundle on sugar cane and indigo plantations in the West Indies, using slave labor, after they killed off the natives (via war, if you could call it that); the African slaves, of course, being the spoils of war.
Fast forwarding to the last (20th) century - unlike others on the thread, I do believe in the multiplier effect of money. The dollar spent on cotton fabric for a uniform pays a girl working in the textile mills of the deep South. She takes the dollar and spends it at the Tastee Freez, treating her sisters and brothers to ice cream cones. The guy who owns the Tastee Freez pays the clerk, who is a college student, and he uses it to pay for gas to drive back to school. The guy with the gas station buys rheumatism medicine for his wife. And so it goes.
The dollars aren't tainted. They don't care about the morality, or lack thereof, of the person who possesses them, nor about what they are used for.
War is a peculiarly human activity. And, yes, it is an economic activity.
To the victor belongs the spoils. |
