Comments on: Apart From Better Sanitation And Medicine And Education And Irrigation And Public Health And Roads And Public Order, What Has Modernity Done For Us? http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/ In a mad world, all blogging is psychiatry blogging Fri, 24 Jul 2015 10:30:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3 By: peterdjones http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-91996 Sat, 31 May 2014 18:57:40 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-91996 Their habit of reinventing a new philosophical vocabulary certainty doesn’t help. It is not like the world needs another of those behemeoths.

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]]> By: peterdjones http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-91991 Sat, 31 May 2014 18:51:42 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-91991 It’s helpful to notice whom the was saying what to.

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]]> By: Andy http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-91962 Sat, 31 May 2014 17:51:34 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-91962 …is this a spambot asking for solutions on how to tackle spam?
Such a strange world.

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]]> By: Andy http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-19481 Fri, 08 Nov 2013 16:07:43 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-19481 “Note that this analysis doesn’t apply to civil wars: taking over the government of your own nation, even if that nation is fairly poor, can still make you and your supporters very rich. Also, you can still get rich off of other people’s wars – there’s plenty of profit to be had from a war you’re not fighting in.)”

Though I suspect civil wars have their own hidden cost – a very long period of instability. If you control the government, you might not be controlling the government next Tuesday. because after winning a civil war,there’s typically lots of guns in the marketplace, maybe lots of factions who just saw how easy it is to overthrow a government, and a reduced social cost of violence.

And outsiders are leery on investing in a place that’s had three different governments in the last year.

Though your second point is well-reasoned. There is a TON of money to be made selling supplies and hospitality to people fighting in the war next door, as long as it doesn’t spill over. Thailand during Vietnam is a very good example of this – American GIs spent a ton of foreign exchange in bars and brothels , and helped kick-start the local economies.

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]]> By: Multiheaded http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-15881 Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:34:06 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-15881 I agree! So, to the gulag with all of you people!

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]]> By: asdf http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-15867 Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:27:38 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-15867 “Everyone in the Reaction seems to be more interested in being a goddamn poet than being understood.”

A lot of people feel the same way about the rationalist crowd except instead of aping poets they ape philosophers. Lots of big fancy complicated words designed to impress people rather than actually aid in understanding.

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]]> By: Douglas Knight http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-12937 Thu, 30 May 2013 19:44:25 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-12937 The fact that Italy has not had civil war is just as much a part of the claim about violence as the fact that it has not warred with France. But whatever level of internal conflict there is in Italy, factions will have foreign support.

In particular, the Years of Lead seems to have had foreign involvement. At the time, at least some people expected more violence. Propaganda Due, which may have had CIA and Vatican support, had plans for Italy very similar to the CIA’s contemporary work in Chile.

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]]> By: houseboatonstyx http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-12550 Sat, 25 May 2013 02:27:36 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-12550 “And above all else — MADD. The specter of nuclear annihilation probably did more to avert war than any change in human society.”

Seconded from the Left. (Of course that specter, and the habits it produced, may have made some changes in society, which then … round and round.)

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]]> By: Michael Vassar http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-12542 Fri, 24 May 2013 23:58:04 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-12542 This is fair, and I think that it would be unfair to put the odds below 1% or above 20%, but that’s a very large range. OTOH, for the last quarter century global thermonuclear war has not been an issue in the same way and things seem to still be really really nonviolent.

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]]> By: Doug S. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/apart-from-better-sanitation-and-medicine-and-education-and-irrigation-and-public-health-and-roads-and-public-order-what-has-modernity-done-for-us/#comment-12538 Fri, 24 May 2013 23:00:50 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=624#comment-12538 One thing that changed sometime in the past couple of hundred years, but has been especially true since World War I: in general, winning a foreign war no longer makes you wealthier. In the old days, you got your army together, went and attacked Those Guys Over There, and if you won, their wealth (in the form of land, gold, and possibly slaves) was now yours. Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, and many other famous historical figures all won vast wealth by going to war. In the 20th century, though, wars between nations generally ended up costing far more than you’d ever make back by exploiting someone you conquered. So one much-overlooked reason that there’s less war today than there used to be is that there’s no longer any money in it!

(Note that this analysis doesn’t apply to civil wars: taking over the government of your own nation, even if that nation is fairly poor, can still make you and your supporters very rich. Also, you can still get rich off of other people’s wars – there’s plenty of profit to be had from a war you’re not fighting in.)

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