War | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 28 July 2016.
"We can generally ascertain how many lives have been lost in a war. The tax-gatherer lets us know how much money it costs. But no registry kept on earth can tell us how much is lost to the world by this insensibility to human suffering which a war produces in the whole family circle of nations." -Elihu Burritt

[@scotts4492]

Mr. Woods, you sir are a great orator!

[@snubbelbuff1471]

+

[@johnrobinson1762]

Shut your face and listen for a change.

[@Boarky]

Talking about the finite natural resources being used by the military gets me heated. I served many years ago and seeing how wasteful and impractical they were really boils my blood.

[@TheSkullConfernece]

When I hear people praise the military and soldiers as if they can do no wrong, I get this concerning Orwellian disappoinment in me. I have a lot of respect for you, though. Soldiers who can think for themselves.

[@ArchimedesDaVinci]

I can recall that every August and September, my unit would come up with surplus funding to send us on all types of additional _"mission essential"_ TDY training away from our base in order to spend all of the money in the budget which had been allocated to us before the start of the next fiscal year in October. Of course this served as a rationale for establishing a baseline operational budget for the following year.

[@Hashishin13]

That ending reminds me of how we were taught about the battle of Vimy Ridge in Canadian history class. 16, 000 Canadians dying on some hill in France nobody would otherwise know about, but be proud because we took it when others failed.

[@nicholascastucci]

"Think of all the fuel that you consume as a motorist over the course of two years -- that's a lot of fuel. That's about how much fuel a single F-16 training jet consumes in under an hour."

[@norseaknothead]

I wish this lecture could have been given at the DNC convention

[@nustada]

It you imagine a sarcastic "not" ended every sentence, then it was.

[@55Quirll]

Should have been at the National War College in DC

[@benalor1973]

No, every single economic or history class room.

[@anthonywest294]

You're the man Tom. I've been dying for another lecture taking this angle from you to hopefully get my "fiscally conservative" friends to take a second look at blindly cheer leading the Pentagon.

[@Bodhizzle]

Tom, you are fantastic. I saw you speak many many years ago in New Hampshire and have been a huge fan of your work since then. Love your podcast. Thank you for being such a strong voice for liberty.

[@CasaliArts]

Excellent as always, Tom. Keep fighting the good fight!

[@RAMSEY1987]

We hear much about scares resources in regards to natural resources and goods but I never thought of talented people as a resource being misallocated.

[@CurtHowland]

One entire class at Oxford volunteered to fight in WW1. The lads went together for King and country. Two survived. JRRTolkien, and CSLewis. An entire class of men of such quality, and that was only one such group of so many. We will never know just what was lost to humanity in that one damned war.

[@DrugsForRobots]

@@CurtHowland "the dysgenic effect of the Great War is absolutely appalling. The best and the bravest, of our young men sent into the grinder. The war was nothing short of the headlong rush of Europeans into race-suicide." --Lothrop Stoddard

[@chernobylcoleslaw6698]

Excellent point!

[@chronosx7]

War does make you richer... When it's fought on foreign lands and you're providing weapons, ammo and equipment to at least one of the involved sides

[@benalor1973]

Just commenting to help the algorithm.

[@corbinmarkey466]

Tom says he'll never make another dime off of We Who Dared to Say No to War just as I received my amazon notification about how it just shipped and is on it's way to me.

[@maciej.ratajczak]

8:18 - So (Seymour) Melman was at pains, for example, to point out that when you're looking at GDP figures, you are not necessarily getting a good picture of the overall health of the economy. Again, very good, that's a very good insight, because he says that GDP is, of course, a quantitative measure, it's a number, but it's not a qualitative measure. So if the government blows a whole lot of money on nothingness, on handing out spoons to people so they can dig holes with it, that gets added, that's a number, that's added to a number. But we know that qualitatively that is not a helpful amount of output for the government to produce a lot of spoons or buy a lot of spoons- this is not helpful for us. It doesn't contribute to our welfare. But GDP is just a dumb number. IT'S JUST A DUMB NUMBER. It can't tell you that.

[@urielwizzy4680]

War makes us richer. -Argument- Well to the people who proclaim that... for sure

[@markmiller3713]

That comment on the Pentagon's energy consumption just blew me away. That's crazy!

[@superhoga]

Quotes Seinfeld at 25:00 and 1 person gets it. Come on folks..

[@fountaincap]

These pretzels...are makin' me thirsty!

[@dylanholt9906]

Especially a reference like that. That's up there in my all-time favorite Seinfeld scenes.

[@EFCasual]

not everybody wastes their life with pop drivel.

[@jameserenberger3425]

That's a bit before wlmy time...

[@diggLincoln]

Lmfao you want the insurance? Ya better give me the insurance I’m going to beat the hell out of this thing

[@konberner170]

Superb.

[@anarchyseeds4406]

Tom lookin good!

[@mitchtroumbly7056]

20:00-25:00 ish is precisely the argument against chomsky's "public sector production" claims. Just a little fyi

[@user-vf2vx3zn1g]

Nice Seinfeld reference at 24:43

[@Max-nc4zn]

15:40 who will build the roads? Tom.

[@TheDookielove]

F dem hoe ass roads

[@bigz5262]

Are you being serious? You don’t think people would be smart enough to build roads?

[@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406]

Overkill: when it comes to missiles and nuclear weapons, you have to remember that they can be intercepted and destroyed by enemy defenses.

[@tricksyhobbitses1695]

You missed the 6 tons per person deal, huh?

[@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406]

@@tricksyhobbitses1695 Yea, I don't think you understand how little that is, especially when the majority of those tons are found in single weapons like hydrogen bombs. Weapons that can be intercepted. But by all means, go on believing that I'm some idiot who missed his argument completely.

[@ZARK0_]

@@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406 what do you mean?

[@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406]

@@ZARK0_ Would you agree that a nation needs the ability to defend itself from foreign aggressors?

[@kevanharris3883]

take a look at the British economy. From 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the top 40% of British engineering graduates went into Military Research/ production. The cost to British engineering firms was they went from being world leaders in some fields to also rans. There lies the main reason for the virtual collapse of UK industry yes union troubles etc did not help but that was the main reason for "The sick man of Europe tag". The products were cr** so they could not sell them.

[@CountArtha]

Seymour Melman's broader argument about opportunity cost holds up, but that figure about "excess bombers" is just asinine. It was never the plan that every single U.S. bomber would drop its maximum payload on the Soviet Union, because not every bomber is going to be in flying condition and not every bomber is going to get through. In a hypothetical Soviet first strike, 2/3 of them would have been destroyed when their bases got nuked - and a majority of the survivors that retaliated would have been shot down by interceptors or missiles on their way to the target. So to have an effective deterrent, you NEED more bombers than you need on paper. It's a macabre arithmetic that they used, but war is hell. And having an over-sized fleet of B-52s was still cheaper than a World War.

[@blueunicornhere]

Breaking windows helps the economy

[@DrugsForRobots]

~45:00 war quote

[@clarencepeterson8646]

Like the Seinfeld reference.

[@germanicusternus1982]

You may only be able to destroy a city once, but simply having X amount of tnt does not mean that you actually have the capability to overcome your adversary to achieve that objective. So creating some arbitrary level of spending that if exceeded is “wasteful,” is not useful. I’m sure the Germans dropped several tons of tnt per soldier against Britain and France but it didn’t kill all of them. Trenches are effective and cheaper. So it really doesn’t matter how much you spend per, as much as how you employ your resources. I think a stronger argument is made in assessing the Pentagon’s procurement practices, and classifying it as wasteful. Calling it parasitic ignores the fact that no matter how rich you are, someone can kill you and take your property, be they Germans, Soviets, Mongolians, or the Chinese.

[@b.griffin317]

true, that would be "productive" defense spending; that much which would be necessary to defend your person and property. anything in excess of that is opportunity cost. the government cannot accurately estimate costs and thus cannot determine productive versus "parasitic"/opportunity cost spending.

[@OolTube02]

Well, what happened after WWII was, of course, that a lot of the stuff that was destroyed had to be rebuilt, so that would give the economy a Keynesian stimulus same as the building of bombs. At the very least until the rebuilding is finished. So of course you wouldn't get an economic depression right away. And, after all, the US kept building weapons even in peacetime, courtesy of the Cold War. I guess this is why you never had to create a social market economy based on social services and infrastructure spending much -- because there was always the command economy niche of the military providing that Keynesian stimulus and keeping the economy from collapsing, but not in an efficient way.

[@ricerealtor980]

And now we have the Iron Man and Transformer movies to poison all future dreamers and divert future private research toward quasi-military purposes...

[@UmaROMC]

I love melmons 'state capitism' line. Happenz to me all the time, try to talk some sense into a socialist and they start decrying all the faults of 'capitalism', only to enumerate all the ways in which oursystem is interventionist and statist Makes me tired and sad.

[@germanicusternus1982]

It is also incredible unscientific to say, “if X hadn’t happened, then Y would have happened sooner.” It’s shocking that you find this to be a compelling enough argument to make in front of an academic argument.

[@michalptacnik1]

I like the logic behind this (as in: really love) but I find it surprisingly inconsistent for an Austrian to speak about 'parasites' and 'unproductive' economic choices. I, as a 'commie' do happen to believe in a modified cost value theory, so this is music for my ears - YES, if you buy drugs in stead of buying productive tools for your business (when you need the tools), you are doing it WRONG. Objectively. Even if in your 'subjective ladder of preferences' the drug comes first. You have just a screwed preferences ladder, that's it, because there is such a thing as utils, value is objective and utility is interpersonal. But for the austrians, value is strictly subjective. And the government is a buyer, and it has chosen for war and the Pentagon and tanks and sinking ships in the Atlantic. Of course they would say that governments are inherently wrong, but all in all, the government is just a player on the market. How can an austrian criticise the choice of a player on the market? Of course because he, like all of us, just instinctively knows that war stinks and searches for arguments to justify their (very correct) position. Which makes them all the more human. :)

[@nicholascastucci]

A strong antiwar movement is the middle ground everyone on every side of the political spectrum should be what everyone is aiming for.

[@b.griffin317]

an austrian would argue government is not subject to price signals and cannot efficiently allocate resources as well as private actors who are and are those less productive "market players." since war takes up resources which could be better allocated it reduces overall value available in an economy to consumers to improve their lives through opportunity costs which are incurred due to this inefficient allocation (bastiat).

[@awordabout...3061]

The issue is that individuals can pursue their own ends according to their own hierachy of value and sometimes, yes, they'll buy a ton of cocaine rather than a pacemaker, but while there is some marginal utility from the perspective of the addict, war is never fulfilling a need. By definition, it destroys - it destroys people, it destroys capital, it destroys nations. Even if you had the most ruthlessly efficient procurement programme, every tank constructed, every shell forged and every bullet fired comes at the cost of a thousand other things that would have produced utility for their users without destroying anything else.

[@davidmaharaj6900]

The Pentagram, oh, sorry, the Pentagon.

[@thomasf.9869]

Interestingly the Europeans understand the opportunity cost of military spending and create dual use platforms such as the Airbus H145M (kzbin.info/www/bejne/nJrLaXt9oaetgsk) and the Airbus A330 MRTT (kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2Kqc6KbfbV9rKM). Little wonder they spend less on defence.

[@thomasf.9869]

@Nuby My argument is that the Europeans spend more efficiently on defence. Uncle Sam does what the big defence contractors and their armies of lobbyists want. Not to mention the revolving door between the military and the defence industry, which creates another moral hazard, resulting in overspending for what is delivered. The JSF is probably the most egregious example in recent memory. I do, however, believe that the Europeans could and should spend more. But they do not need to spend as much as Uncle Sam to get meaningful results, as they know how to get more bang for the buck, in this case literally.

[@diggLincoln]

33:54 nasa

[@jzechiel]

Hahaha the Seinfeld reference. You gotta get up to date on your cultural relevancy, Woods, haha

[@kevinjjfr]

Bake the fucking cake Austin.

[@puppetsock]

What is more expensive than the best military in the world? The second best military in the world.

[@419fish]

This simply is not true. Socialised militaries (as the U.S has) are hugely wasteful. Looking back at history I would bet on the volunteer rebel group over the most well funded socialist death machine. The U.S independence was created by defeating the "best" socialist military force in the world.

[@OolTube02]

I think the main problem is that libertarians are to a great degree to blame for this state of affairs because of their minarchist ideology of letting the government be only a night-watchman state, i.e. only be responsible for the military, police, courts, prisons. Well, the problem is, if all you are given is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. If the only way you can stimulate the economy is by spending lots of public money on the military then you do that. And it's the economic right-wingers who holler at every government expense _except_ for military spending. So of course if all you ever let slide is the night-watchman state expenses of government then you get a bloated military, a hated militarized police, a court system that penalizes people for being poor, and history's greatest absolute prison population. Libertarians may cry and holler that this is against everything they believe in, but this is something their ideology has brought about, by stifling every government program except for the minarchist ones.