When I say that the value of that information is larger than the total costs of WW2, it means, of course, that another war of larger scale has been avoided.
Well if the Nazis had staid in power but just delayed the war it may have been worse, or it might not have been. Weapons becoming more powerful would suggest worse. Nuclear weapons could have made it much worse (OTOH they may have deterred the combatants from going to war at all, or ended the war with less total destruction, there is even a small chance that they might not be used, chemical weapons where used only on a very small scale even though everyone had them, but I think as one side or the other started to fail, they would threaten and perhaps use such weapons, and if only one side had them they would likely be used as happened in reality). Balance of power questions are complex, the delay could have tilted things to either side, as both got more ready; but in actual history the axis powers where more ready, any large delay (or for that matter many possible scenarios with the war starting early) would be more likely than not to work for the allies, which I think would be more likely than not to make the war not as bad. (I think this partially because I see the allies as less abusive and partially because the axis did actually lose, and having them lose quicker means a shorter war)
But I'm not sure any of that really matters in terms of relevance to the discussion we are having. A delayed WII would still be WWII. It wouldn't be the case of "WWII being worth the price", but rather "WWII being not as bad at time X, as it would have been at a later time Y".
If it was delayed so long that you had a totally different world, say in to the 60s, then there is a good chance that it wouldn't have happened as a world war at all.
But yes it definitely could have been worse, but taking that fact, and spinning it in to an issue of gaining information seems to be a stretch, and one that seems to have little relevance to either the issue of conscription generating information that's useful for the civilian economy, or the more general issue of military spending largely being a net negative (if you exclude military and diplomatic utility from being considered, or you assume some particular portion of military spending doesn't have important utility in those areas, such exclusions or assumptions occurring because the issue is the civilian economic benefit of military spending, not its military or diplomatic utility).
This, of course, assumes a model that anticipates that history repeats itself, and that fixes to existing problems have value, even though they just remove problems instead of providing a physical product.
Removing the nazis and the imperialist military clic from Japan, where definitely useful things. Also I fully support waging WWII against such countries, after they attacked us or others. Again I'm considering the direct economic impact of the spending, not the military/diplomatic/security/world situation effect. As with Bastiat's example of soldiers in France -
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"Suppose we confine ourselves to replying to him: "These one hundred thousand men and these one hundred million francs are indispensable to our national security. It is a sacrifice; but without this sacrifice France would be torn by internal factions or invaded from without." I have no objection here to this argument, which may be true or false as the case may be, but which theoretically does not constitute any economic heresy. The heresy begins when the sacrifice itself is represented as an advantage, because it brings profit to someone."
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In the same way, the biggest value of conscription is the information that is in the people who are no longer doing service.
You mean the training and experience they receive in the military? That is useful. I'm not denying the gross benefit, just the net benefit. You gain such training and experience, but you lose other training and experience, and other things, that you would have had without the conscription, while paying a lot for what you do get, not just in terms of money, but also in terms of lost freedom.
However, the world is really bad at doing economic calculations on information
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you mean economic models and studies are often weak or even misleading, than I agree, but I don't see how that point is significant in terms of anything I'm saying. I you mean market processes are very bad at dealing with information, than I strongly disagree, and I'd even add that to the extent you disrupt market processes you destroy or distort information that theoretically could be used by anyone trying to plan or manage the economy.
so that's why we still buy physical products in cases where it is totally nonsense.
Why do you think its nonsense?
Also how does that fold back to the larger issue. Even if somehow cases really are a bad idea (and not just an idea you don't like or don't see the benefit of, which isn't the same thing), how is any process other than markets going to avoid such "mistakes" and avoid committing larger mistakes to "correct" ones like this. |
