RuffDraft wrote:
[Begins organizing a plan of attack against Valhallen's brilliant assaults.]
Please concentrate your efforts on where you think that I'm wrong.
Whatis6times9 wrote:
Lily wrote:
what civil person would fuck on hay? you could get hay in very uncomfortable places.
It's fun.
Johnny Bravo approves this message!
Q.U. wrote:
Putting a cop on every corner was a clear metaphor. It's a phrase, I don't mean I want you to calculate the expense it would take to achieve that literally.
Valhallen wrote:
or other increases in service.
Q.U. wrote:
And a single world government would need intelligence, but not foreign intelligence.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border region would be watched by the FBI instead of the CIA. Is that supposed to be a major cost-saver?
Q.U. wrote:
As for the rest of "domestic needs" or civil unrest, it all depends on how unified world society are we talking. Should we end up with one faith, one ethnicity, and one living standard, then I guess a lot more expenses could be cut.
The primary benefit of merging countries together throughout time is that in the end there is next to no need for military and war equipment.
So politically unified, with religions, ethnicities, and living standards as they have been "throughout time". How many insurrections do you think the US has had to deal with
? Because governments in the real world have to guard against such things even in the absence of foreign concerns, cutting that "lot more" is not a practical possibility. Hence my contention that unifying the world may reduce military costs, but the remainder would still be significant.
Q.U. wrote:
I will not argue how much we could save that way, I will only say that we'd be able to save up quite a bit more than we do now.
That's a conclusion that ought to come after a quantitative analysis. Care to do one to justify your claim?
Q.U. wrote:
Quote:
Actually, the Germans mostly went around, as did the Allies on their way through the area.
They took both ways. Which still means Maginot Line got eventually overrun.
Did you read
the link I gave before? The Germans
went around the Maginot Line, and started serious attacks on it
after taking Paris. Even after cutting the Line off from the rest of France and attacking from both sides with air superiority, it didn't go easily. Most of the fortifications were intact and manned when France surrendered. Keep in mind that this was before precision weapons made fixed fortifications completely obsolete in repelling major attacks. Artillery, mortars, and machine guns in armored turrets supported by a network of bunkers, all behind tank and infantry obstacles, was a significant impediment for an attacker with WWII technology. And Switzerland had a network of such things running through the country.
Q.U. wrote:
Quote:
Belgium and the Netherlands were neutral and did not pose a threat, but were invaded because they provided a convenient path to France (and Hitler wanted a unified Europe anyway, but that was incidental at the time).
Please note the difference of context, they were neutral in the war, not neutral politically and militarily. Switzerland's neutrality was recognised by the Congress of Vienna and the country had been neutral since 1515, and not self-imposed like in Netherlands. Belgium tried to regain neutrality after WWI, but clearly it didn't work in the eyes of Germany.
You keep using
that word. Belgium declared itself neutral according to the standards of the
Hague Convention of 1907 (Belgium decides whether or not it is neutral, not Germany). Germany didn't care and invaded anyway because Belgium provided an expedient route to Western Europe around the Maginot Line. Belgium was neutral and did not pose a threat, but it was invaded anyway. So that's clearly not the reason why Switzerland was not, contrary to what you said
earlier.
Q.U. wrote:
Quote:
Switzerland is a rather wealthy nation though. That's still a decent military expenditure per capita - more than Russia, about as much as Germany, but with considerably less spent on sea and air assets despite that. if a single world government spent per capita for its military what Switzerland did in 2009, global military expenditure would be about $3.6 trillion per year, more than twice what was actually spent globally in 2009.
It's silly to compare that. A global government would have a global GDP per capita. You can't tell me that an argument saying "if Switzerland and Nigeria fused into one country they'd still have the same GDP per capita as Nigeria/Switzerland" has any meaning here.
Switzerland has a population and GDP (PPP) of about 7.8M and $315B, for a little over $40K per capita. Nigeria has about 152M and $374B, for about $2460 per capita. Fusing Switzerland and Nigeria would produce a country with a population of about 160M and GDP (PPP) of about $689B, for about $4300 per capita. If Switzeria / Nigerland spent per capita for its military what Switzerland does today ($526), military spending would be about 12% GDP, compared to Nigeria's actual military expenditure of about 1.5% GDP. In absolute terms, Switzerland really is more militarized than most places in the world, despite its neutrality and your use of it as an example of a place with the "
huge weight" of maintaining a military off its shoulders.
Q.U. wrote:
Quote:
Two generations ago, the structure of DNA was discovered. One generation ago, the polymerase chain reaction was invented. Ten years ago, the Human Genome Project released its first draft, after 10 years of work costing $3 billion. The cost of sequencing a genome has been dropping nearly an order of magnitude annually since then. Genetic engineering is routinely done in labs, and genetics is becoming more closely tied to information technology, and thus taking advantage of the accelerating returns of Moore's Law there. Human genetic engineering of the sort required should be possible within a decade. Give it a decade or two more to become cheap, reliable, and widespread, if it's legal.
You forgot to mention, "assuming liberal social status". Well it's not. It's controversial, and human genetic engineering is generally illegal or off-limits. You can only make progress that fast in fields that aren't supported world-wide by neither the public nor the governments.
...I didn't forget to mention it. It's at the end of what you quoted there.
Anyway, human genetic engineering is generally NOT illegal (care to cite any laws to the contrary?) Certain kinds of genetic modification will probably be made illegal in some places when they get closer to practicality (non-therapeutic embryo modification, say). Keep in mind that we're talking about dealing with the negative consequences of genetic drift caused by the removal of selection pressures, meaning therapeutic changes like susceptibility to type 1 diabetes. I don't see that becoming illegal.
Q.U. wrote:
Quote:
Better achievement, perhaps, but just pumping money into things runs into diminishing returns and decreased efficiency, at least in terms of cost effectiveness.
That's what happens at the saturation value. When the money cannot benefit much more anyway. In the current state more money would easily and quickly increase the efficiency of schools, provided that they are ran by competent individuals.
The point of peak marginal benefit is also the point of diminishing returns. The point at which further spending produces no marginal benefit is the futility limit. The peak overall efficiency lies somewhere between the two. Why are you confident that the peak efficiency has not been passed? Quantifying the efficiency of education is somewhat nebulous, but do you think that increasing school funding by 10% would increase standardized test scores by more or less than 10%? Cuts of X% don't appear in practice to have resulted in X+% lower test scores. I agree that increasing school funding would increase the efficacy (which is the more important consideration at this point), but that's not the same as efficiency.
, and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. 
