Of course, the analysis of the effects of the costs of war is correct. However, individual weapons can have complicated results. Drones are a cheap, accurate technology. [So they confer stronger comparative advantage on the poor, but never mind.] Most interestingly, drones limit collateral damage, externalitites. Thus, one would think the technology makes war cheaper, and hence causes more war. While this may well be true, it also limits the destruction more to decision makers, making war less likely! Drones are more like an assassination weapon rather than area bombing.
There are other consequences of drones which make war more expensive. Used as surveillance they make surprise difficult. Hence, no Fall of France stuff. Instead, we get WW I stuff as in Ukraine. I doubt Putin would have done Ukraine had he had an inkling of the cost.
That's a reasonable point that different types of costs affect things in different ways. Nation A killing civilians of Nation B has negative effects for both countries. The citizens for nation B of course, but the PR for nation A. If you reduce those PR costs, you can afford to expend higher costs in other areas (like killing actual officers of war).
> I doubt Putin would have done Ukraine had he had an inkling of the cost.
You really think so? For a dictator like him, the monetary costs are much less important than the political costs. Has Ukraine been politically costly for him? The opposite seems to be true at least based on his popularity: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
If war is intrinsically or objectively bad, why is there war at all? I mean, at least someone decides to start a war, i.e. they prefer war to peace. Perspectively, there could be a specific economic view that tries to optimize for more war.
Foreign affairs are a great distraction from domestic troubles.
Everyone knows, in their heart of hearts, that government can't fix anything. Yet they still want to try, because it's the only tool in the toolbox for statists; the last thing they want is for people to learn they can solve most problems themselves.
So when a domestic problem gets too out of hand and the peasants appear to be losing patience with the government and possibly on the verge of fixing the problem themselves, why not a nice little existential threat to democracy to distract them?
In the end, the entire gestalt of the political world ("states") is the result of conquest. The USA would not exist without going to war. In mainstream economics, I have the impression that there is some form of optimal world state in the mind of an economist, and the economist is looking for a way to get there. Less war, less disease, less CO2, better climate, more food, general growth of "good" things. On closer inspection, there is always a conflict of perspectives, and these perspectives are incommensurable. There is no calculus for a unique solution.
In principle you could design airplanes so the pilots get on through a separate door on the ground and are completely sealed off from the main cabin until landing.
In practice it would be far more expensive, and make it annoying for pilots to get food and take breaks, and wouldn't matter in 99.99 percent of flights anyway.
Both this and Dr Friedman’s work fine to prevent 9/11-style crashing into skyscrapers or government buildings but would not be especially effective against the classical “Take this plane to Cuba.” For that you need not only physical protection of the cockpit but the inability of the hijackers to communicate with the pilots, which is way more problematic.
I think its a bit strange to juxtapose "less cost" and "more war" as two separate effects, when actually they're the same effect, just opposites. In any particular battle, the forces will expend the costs they think they need to gain what they want to gain from the battle (or they would decide not to fight that one). By reducing the "costs of war", you do not reduce the costs of each battle, nor do you reduce the number of battles necessarily, you only make it so the military can buy more things of war with the costs they're willing to expend.
The idea of shifting costs from human costs to capital costs is I think really the important shift. If things that have capital costs become more valuable in war, it means things that have human costs will be used less, leading to wars with fewer deaths and maimings, but not wars with lower total cost. One could see this as good. An economist might see it as neutral.
This actually has a parallel in the world of cryptocurrency. Discussion has been had around different ways to do cryptocurrency mining, for example having a mining hash algorithm that leads to people using personal machines vs special-purpose ASICs. Many have thought (and probably still think) that the first is better because it allows more people to mine, since more people have personal machines and fewer people can take advantage of the economies of scale important for ASICs. However, the important factor to consider for this decision is not cost. Because the cost miners are willing to expend to mine is only related to the value they can receive from mining (the coins they create and the fees they collect), neither a GPU-targetted or ASIC-targetted mining algorithm will have "more security". Miners will always be willing to bear a cost (including opportunity cost) up to their expected revenue. But ASICs are more expenive than GPUs, so by targetting ASICs instead of GPUs, costs are shifted from electricity costs to capital costs. One could say ASICs are a win for the environment, and again an economist might be neutral on that topic (unless we remember the unaccounted for externalities). But as far as cryptocurrency security goes, the special-purpose nature of ASICs means they can't be repurposed. If a GPU miner 51% attacked a cryptocurrency, they could turn around and sell their capital investment of GPUs to cover their costs. Not so with ASICs. With ASICs the spoils of the attack must also cover the capital cost of the now-useless ASICs (useless after the 51% attack destroys the cryptocurrency in question). So in this case, ASICs is the choice because it makes attacking more costly without making mining more costly.
Drones don't just make war cheaper. They make defense and deterrence a lot cheaper and have little value in conquering and occupying territory.
I have thought for many years that one of the cheapest possible defensive weapons is thousands of cheap model airplanes. Launch a thousand towards fleet or military center. Put explosives in one out of ten or a hundred. Might not need any guidance, might need just enough to follow a compass heading and maintain altitude. No terminal guidance, although something which cut the power (like a V1 buzzbomb) when it detected heat sources below might be pretty cheap and effective.
The point is to make the enemy spend a lot of expensive ammo shooting these down.
They could have some use in an offense, making the enemy deplete ammo before a big attack. But I think they are mainly useful for a poor country to deter and defend against a big country.
I think the Ottoman issue is slightly different. The Sultan no longer murdered his defeated brothers, but he imprisoned them in isolation - so they couldn't act as a reversionary interest. This meant that the imprisoned brothers would be useless as rulers, having had no practice, but could be used as figureheads by factions who could launch a coup, then rule in the useless brother's stead.
Of course, the analysis of the effects of the costs of war is correct. However, individual weapons can have complicated results. Drones are a cheap, accurate technology. [So they confer stronger comparative advantage on the poor, but never mind.] Most interestingly, drones limit collateral damage, externalitites. Thus, one would think the technology makes war cheaper, and hence causes more war. While this may well be true, it also limits the destruction more to decision makers, making war less likely! Drones are more like an assassination weapon rather than area bombing.
There are other consequences of drones which make war more expensive. Used as surveillance they make surprise difficult. Hence, no Fall of France stuff. Instead, we get WW I stuff as in Ukraine. I doubt Putin would have done Ukraine had he had an inkling of the cost.
That's a reasonable point that different types of costs affect things in different ways. Nation A killing civilians of Nation B has negative effects for both countries. The citizens for nation B of course, but the PR for nation A. If you reduce those PR costs, you can afford to expend higher costs in other areas (like killing actual officers of war).
> I doubt Putin would have done Ukraine had he had an inkling of the cost.
You really think so? For a dictator like him, the monetary costs are much less important than the political costs. Has Ukraine been politically costly for him? The opposite seems to be true at least based on his popularity: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
If war is intrinsically or objectively bad, why is there war at all? I mean, at least someone decides to start a war, i.e. they prefer war to peace. Perspectively, there could be a specific economic view that tries to optimize for more war.
Foreign affairs are a great distraction from domestic troubles.
Everyone knows, in their heart of hearts, that government can't fix anything. Yet they still want to try, because it's the only tool in the toolbox for statists; the last thing they want is for people to learn they can solve most problems themselves.
So when a domestic problem gets too out of hand and the peasants appear to be losing patience with the government and possibly on the verge of fixing the problem themselves, why not a nice little existential threat to democracy to distract them?
> Perspectively, there could be a specific economic view that tries to optimize for more war.
1) To take someone else's stuff.
2) To impose an different global order that will benefit one long term.
In the end, the entire gestalt of the political world ("states") is the result of conquest. The USA would not exist without going to war. In mainstream economics, I have the impression that there is some form of optimal world state in the mind of an economist, and the economist is looking for a way to get there. Less war, less disease, less CO2, better climate, more food, general growth of "good" things. On closer inspection, there is always a conflict of perspectives, and these perspectives are incommensurable. There is no calculus for a unique solution.
In principle you could design airplanes so the pilots get on through a separate door on the ground and are completely sealed off from the main cabin until landing.
In practice it would be far more expensive, and make it annoying for pilots to get food and take breaks, and wouldn't matter in 99.99 percent of flights anyway.
Both this and Dr Friedman’s work fine to prevent 9/11-style crashing into skyscrapers or government buildings but would not be especially effective against the classical “Take this plane to Cuba.” For that you need not only physical protection of the cockpit but the inability of the hijackers to communicate with the pilots, which is way more problematic.
I think its a bit strange to juxtapose "less cost" and "more war" as two separate effects, when actually they're the same effect, just opposites. In any particular battle, the forces will expend the costs they think they need to gain what they want to gain from the battle (or they would decide not to fight that one). By reducing the "costs of war", you do not reduce the costs of each battle, nor do you reduce the number of battles necessarily, you only make it so the military can buy more things of war with the costs they're willing to expend.
The idea of shifting costs from human costs to capital costs is I think really the important shift. If things that have capital costs become more valuable in war, it means things that have human costs will be used less, leading to wars with fewer deaths and maimings, but not wars with lower total cost. One could see this as good. An economist might see it as neutral.
This actually has a parallel in the world of cryptocurrency. Discussion has been had around different ways to do cryptocurrency mining, for example having a mining hash algorithm that leads to people using personal machines vs special-purpose ASICs. Many have thought (and probably still think) that the first is better because it allows more people to mine, since more people have personal machines and fewer people can take advantage of the economies of scale important for ASICs. However, the important factor to consider for this decision is not cost. Because the cost miners are willing to expend to mine is only related to the value they can receive from mining (the coins they create and the fees they collect), neither a GPU-targetted or ASIC-targetted mining algorithm will have "more security". Miners will always be willing to bear a cost (including opportunity cost) up to their expected revenue. But ASICs are more expenive than GPUs, so by targetting ASICs instead of GPUs, costs are shifted from electricity costs to capital costs. One could say ASICs are a win for the environment, and again an economist might be neutral on that topic (unless we remember the unaccounted for externalities). But as far as cryptocurrency security goes, the special-purpose nature of ASICs means they can't be repurposed. If a GPU miner 51% attacked a cryptocurrency, they could turn around and sell their capital investment of GPUs to cover their costs. Not so with ASICs. With ASICs the spoils of the attack must also cover the capital cost of the now-useless ASICs (useless after the 51% attack destroys the cryptocurrency in question). So in this case, ASICs is the choice because it makes attacking more costly without making mining more costly.
Imperialism made for intriguing history. I wouldn't want to be an Imperial soldier though :D
Many if not most o f the comments lack consideration before iteration , including this one.
Drones don't just make war cheaper. They make defense and deterrence a lot cheaper and have little value in conquering and occupying territory.
I have thought for many years that one of the cheapest possible defensive weapons is thousands of cheap model airplanes. Launch a thousand towards fleet or military center. Put explosives in one out of ten or a hundred. Might not need any guidance, might need just enough to follow a compass heading and maintain altitude. No terminal guidance, although something which cut the power (like a V1 buzzbomb) when it detected heat sources below might be pretty cheap and effective.
The point is to make the enemy spend a lot of expensive ammo shooting these down.
They could have some use in an offense, making the enemy deplete ammo before a big attack. But I think they are mainly useful for a poor country to deter and defend against a big country.
> They make defense and deterrence a lot cheaper and have little value in conquering and occupying territory.
Well, the Azeris used drones offensively to good effect in their recent war with Armenia.
But not to conquer or occupy territory. That still needs boots on the ground and vehicles, and that's a lot more expensive than defensive drones.
I think the Ottoman issue is slightly different. The Sultan no longer murdered his defeated brothers, but he imprisoned them in isolation - so they couldn't act as a reversionary interest. This meant that the imprisoned brothers would be useless as rulers, having had no practice, but could be used as figureheads by factions who could launch a coup, then rule in the useless brother's stead.
Sports is a cheaper form of competition than war and it is institutionalized in the Olympics
That provides some status, but no resources or territory.