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To: Ilaine who wrote (5912)	7/17/2001 1:25:20 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

CB - ...I don't doubt at all that the Spanish Conquistadores repaid the investment of the Spanish kings many times over.... For the sake of argument, at least, I do. Not being a lawyer, I am willing to ask a question to which I do not know the answer. What would the result be for the pre and post conquistadorial periods of a comparison of the standards of living for all the classes of Spanish society? What would be the relative level of productivity? Might not all the gold actually returned be merely a source of inflation? Cheaper decorations for the church and royalty? Might not all the opportunity cost of all the Spanish lives (including its most able commanders) lost in the entire endeavor, including the opportunity costs of a command economy, be more than enough to offset all the gains? Regards, Don

To: Ilaine who wrote (5912)	7/17/2001 6:34:03 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

CB, I'm delighted that you see that war is only good if you are the winner. Yes, there used to be winners and losers, so for the winner, there was economic advantage and wars were definitely highly economic activities. But in the past century, wars became universally destructive so the winners and losers both looked like losers. Note that I am NOT saying that pacifism is good. I'm all for taking on and defeating criminal thugs - there's no choice. I suppose in the sense that defeating the thugs is necessary and therefore economically useful, that kind of war is economically productive, in a perverted sense. My objection was solely to the simplistic idea that wars are economically productive. That's a common canard which doesn't deserve the light of day. Anyway, I've made my point so I'll drop it. I'd like though to see you in a MAD war, leaping around excited at the prospect of a huge economic boost to the world! MAD = mutually assured destruction. However, you mentioned the happy money-go-round multiplier effect and said '... so it goes'. No it doesn't go. You missed out the most important party to the money-go-round = the tax departments! Each time the money changes hands [and even if it doesn't] the government is nabbing a portion of it and pouring it down the drain by arranging for holes to be dug and filled in again [which is what governments usually do]. The dollar has fizzled to near zero before it has passed through half a dozen hands! Even if the money doesn't change hands, the government gets some by way of diluting the existing money with issues of more to themselves - the good old money tree of never-ending moolah. Mqurice