I'll give you another just as likely reason for past societal collapses (frankly, a lot likelier reason), and you can then fill in more if you are able. In times of peace, leaders have no dire motivation to mold their citizens into specific paths that are catalyst for military purposes. This leads to societes that are directionless. Historically, only military societies prevailed because they had direction and motivation to improve. However, what's so bad about being directionless? What exactly causes the downfall of "peaceful" (=actually just directionless) societies? We have to dig a little deeper. You jumped the gun and proclaimed it was peace itself that was doing the damage. That sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Peace itself has millions of little and big effects on society. Among these effects is the loss of need for children, therefore inevitably marriage laws get relaxed. Humans want to have sex a lot and with many other people, and marriage gets in the way of that. In peaceful times we have seen a gradual destruction of marital laws. This leads to marriages which can be formed and destroyed at the whim of any person, and in our society today, it's even worse because women are considerably favored in the break-up. This leads to people being very cautious to form deep bonds, and this ultimately leads to a weaker society, a society devoid of the ultimate motivation for every human being: Providing and protecting your family. It's like taking away one of the primary engines of a spaceship. There is still other engines that powers it: Need for food. Need for sex. However the strongest one, the motivation to protect your own children is gone. Because there are no children, because there are no marriages, because marriages are nowadays too fast and detrimental for male parties. What we need, is actual equality between the genders.

I'm not sure I follow this logic. By all indications in both the East and West, it's women, not men, who are driving the changes in marriage rates, ages, and trends.

1) Women are entering and succeeding in the workforce, and accordingly, they see less reason to give that all up for traditional marriages and gender roles.

2) Men outnumber women in many Asian countries (especially China, for obvious reasons). Ergo, the women in these countries can afford to be choosey. It's a buyer's market, and they are the buyers. With the power dynamic in the meat market shifted in their favor, they can be more selective and take their time. Unfortunately, they can't wait too long, because eventually, they'll lose out to younger women entering the same market -- and, when that happens, many will have forfeited their marriage prospects altogether.

[For what it's worth, I am a proponent of gender equality. Please don't misconstrue me there. I am not passing judgment on any of these trends, but rather, am simply observing them.]

Consider this scenario: a man seeking marriage is likely to continue seeking it through his old age (e.g. doesn't become an eternal bachelor or celibate).

In this case, a woman of that same old age is likely to marry someone young because they can provide for their young husband materially, and from the young mans' point of view marrying an older woman is a good chance for marriage in a market where older men are using their own value to attract younger women.

"Detriment to our entire species" is also far from proven. This far mankind has done pretty well even with all the wars. While it's certainly unfortunate for the ones actually involved in the war, it might be better for "the greater good". Or maybe it isn't. The point is that you shouldn't dismiss an argument just because it's politically incorrect nowadays.

First of all, it would be common courtesy in any fruitful discussion that if you require me to provide evidence or some sort of logical construct supporting my theory, that you would do the same for yours first.

Secondly, you make the mistake of thinking life is easy. It's a really healthy attitude, and it is certainly born out of real life experiences, but the unfortunate truth is, that it's not easy. It's terribly complicated, and everything has so many reasons that it makes it pointless to try to enumerate them. I only ask that you don't restrict yourself to a single reason, like you did in your post. I only ask that you recognise that life is not easy, and that discussions are not easy and that you can't possibly ever understand a problem fully.

Your simple request for evidence to reject equality of gender as a requirement for peaceful societies is not simple to answer. This question is really a symptom of what I pointed out before. Your question would require extensive research into gender history, statistical analysis of marriage data, sexual encounters, the change of laws over history, how governments evolved under different societies, how governments treated genders, how that affected them, and many more personal assessments like how equality is historically always fought for and therefore it would be a pointless battle to reject it in the long run, ...the list is endless.

I hope you can now see that discussion is pointless. What we are all left with is the belief that we can achieve stable peace, that we can achieve gender equality and at the same time maintain a thriving society. This is what I want, and therefore I try to find theories to support that. Do not take that as naivety. Many will, but only people who have thought this through will agree that all their facts are in essence belief. You are doing the same thing, but labeling it differently. It's like the chicken or egg problem. What came first, your belief or the fact? In order to form any sort of belief, you need facts. In order to find facts, you need some beliefs first.

My comment originally said that I think there's two ways of exploring the world.

1. Start with a conclusion you want to be true and looking for evidence that supports your view, or

2. Start by gathering facts and trying to find conclusions in them.

You write:

> This is what I want, and therefore I try to find theories to support that.

Right. I think that view fundamentally leads to disastrously bad places. It leads to assuming you're correct and looking for confirmation instead of truth.

Truth is often unpleasant. Confirmation is easily found, even for the stupidest and craziest arguments - look at some of the clearly insane views that people hold with no backing.

Why do they think that way? Because they start with the idea that they're right and look to prove that. It's easy to prove you're right, especially if your views are the norm in your community.

It's much harder to say, "What if I'm wrong?" and to constantly seek out counter-arguments and test your views.

Everyone has views that are wrong, mistaken, poorly informed, and counter-productive. The challenge of becoming an informed person is challenging your views constantly - even your sacred ones - looking for smarter arguments.

It's difficult and stressful. I can't even recommend it if your goal in life is happiness, because if you succeed then everyone in your social circle starts to think you're nuts. But ideally, you become gradually less wrong over time and can do a lot of good for the world, even when your views look crazy to people who never stopped and asked, "What if the world isn't the way I thought it was...?"

3. Look for multiple often contradictory world views and evaluate them over time.

Most people try and create a world view where they have the 'facts' and there may be a few unimportant things they don't know and a few things they are wrong about but they got the big picture. Unfortunately, it's easy to answer 'What is the best car company?' with Ford and then always buying that. Even if sometimes Honda might be a better option.

It is easy to find theories to support anything you want, look at all religions and other pre-scientific belief systems. It is facing reality, whether or not it supports your beliefs, that is hard. And that is something only modern, Western-derived civilizations have ever even come close to achieving.

His theory still holds true. Unless you can conclusively argue that 'Peace' isn't the MAIN reason for the downfall of non-warring civilizations and countries - don't see where your argument leads.

In a way you're supporting him.

Finally, he's pointing out something that might be The Truth. If it's the truth then it says a lot of positive things about his capacity for logical thinking and his ability to be HONEST with himself and others.

As this article points out a lot of woman aren't marrying or having kids because "being both employed and married is tough in Asia.".

In other words, these countries have enough equality where women are allowed in the labor force but not enough where the society has set up strong institutions to deal with women in the labor force. Another economist article dealt with the impossibility of finding day care in Japan. Lacking these institutions causes a huge economic cost to exist for having kids.

Indeed, among developed nations, you'll find a positive correlation between gender equality and total fertility rate.

Raw data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gender_Gap_Report

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...

In Europe, the countries with the least gender gap have the highest fertility rates. (> 1.8 for all the top 5). The countries with the most are among the lowest (< 1.5 for lowest 5).

You see this as well with Asia. South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet and extremely high gender inequality. Same is true with Japan. The article notes that it hasn't hit China yet; I'd be surprised if the trend does materialize with (urban) China's vastly higher gender equality. (gotta give the Communist Party props there)

My policy recommendation to maintain replacement level TFR is to follow the example of Norway or Iceland: reduce the economic and social cost of having kids (parental leave policies, free day care, etc.) - a lot cheaper than going to war.

I mean, would you really want to marry if that meant giving up your career and becoming an unpaid cleaner / cook / babysitter, while your SO worked 70 hour weeks to make up for the fact that you weren't contributing? Weird choice.

How does forcing the childless (note: people of both genders can be childless) to subsidize parents promote gender equality?

(I'm not disagreeing with your suggesting that you can subsidize something to get more of it, I'm just trying to figure out how your last paragraph relates to the rest of your post.)

First note that the childless already massively subsidize parents through taxes that pay for education. Also note that I am considering replacement levels of fertility desirable.

The cost of being a mother, biologically, is vastly higher than being a father. This is further enhanced by cultural expectations for the mother to do most of the child raising.

In other words, female parents take a far greater hit than male ones. (Indeed, child raising explains almost all of the male-female wage gap). Subsidizing parents effectively subsidizes women far more; it's basically an affirmative action program to compensate a disadvantage dealt by biology and society. (How the subsidy flows is tricky. As most people end up having kids, this subsidy is effectively mostly a transfer of wealth from fathers to mothers, across generations).

Some policies that may be clearer are government promotion of fathers taking care of kids via both advertisement and paternity leave. This breaks down traditional gender roles (promotes equality), while reducing the burden on the mother.

This isn't as simple as that. The tax revenue used for education in Texas comes from property taxes. The majority of that is from homeowners. The overwhelming majority of homeowners have or had children in the home at some point. Aside from those facts, would you like to live in a society where the children were not educated? I think you would find that the reduction in crime and the boost to the cheap labor force would be worth the investment.

The most important point this should make is: all of these things are fabulously complicated and interrelated.

Of course, I'd be rather hard pressed to see what that has to do with fertility. I'd suggest maybe that there is a simpler explanation for the phenomenon you observed - the countries with gender equality also seem to have lots of subsidies for parenthood. Most likely the subsidies are the cause of fertility.

If the subsidies are the actual cause, we could probably get higher fertility by subsidizing parenthood together with higher societal expectations of maternal activities from women. The carrot of free money for the fertile life path, and the stick of lower social status for the less fertile path.

(Not that I advocate this course of action, but I'm not in favor of encouraging fertility in any case.)

Then there's all sorts of peaceful native societies that did fine for hundreds to thousands of years before the colonial nations came, with no implosion.

Your statement reads far more like you had a predetermined conclusion and decided to simply shoehorn your observations into it.

On the other hand, I'm wondering if you're just trolling - "studied a lot of history" and then saying "exceedingly good relations with China" combined with "japan remilitarises". I don't think you've read enough history there...

But if that's the case, isn't the argument then an oxymoron? Total war is a total realignment of society - the society is necessarily broken down and forged afresh. Engaging in total war 'to save a society' necessarily changes that society, often quite profoundly. The total war of WWII made massive social changes when comparing pre- and post-war societies (two big ones were end of colonialism and rising equality of women in developed nations). The society you get at the end of total war is different from the one you may have been trying to preserve.

I tried writing up all the credentials I have that make me have a clear understanding here, but I don't know how to do it without looking snarky. But anyways, today I'm in Beijing, yesterday I was in Hong Kong, last week I was in Japan, and tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut with the nephew of one of the top CPC officials who is my friend and occasionally someone I do business with. And yeah, I read a lot of history.

So anyways. I think you might be uninformed about modern Japanese/Chinese relations.

For instance, there's only four countries that get visa free entry into the PRC without any public business.

Guess who is on the list?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_People%27s_R...

Huh. Interesting point? Don't the Chinese hate the Japanese?

Answer: nope! The leadership doesn't, anyways. The common people do, it's a common enemy for them, just like illegal immigration from Mexico is a common enemy for much of the American Midwest. But the leadership of China are extremely practical, intelligent, and unsentimental people. If a good relationship with Japan is good for China, they'll do it. If Japan makes friendly overtures simultaneously with re-arming and stays on good terms with the USA, yes that's all very possible.

As for the rest of your comment, man you've seriously got to check your own claims more. For instance -

> Far from renouncing war, the US both pursues and idolises it.

Okay. So, you'd expect a greater number of people among the upper class to be joining the military, a greater number of representatives to be coming from former soldiers, and more presidents to be former servicemen too?

Right? You'd expect those numbers to be increasing if American militarism is increasing? Are they increasing? No...? Is there a hole in your theory...? Hmm...

If Japan remilitarised they would be a credible threat to China and it would be difficult to maintain 'exceedingly good relations'. If Japan remilitarises, the question of any military is "who are our credible threats?", and the answer is "China, predominantly, then Korea". So Japanese remilitarisation would necessarily focus on countering China. The fact it could also fight in Korea would add tension to China's pawn in North Korea.

and more presidents to be former servicemen too?

I don't have numbers for congress, but do for presidents. In the last two presidential elections, 50% of the candidates have been former active servicemen. In one case, the serviceman was defeated by a former National Guardsman, the incumbent who had initiated two wars while in office. This same former active servicemen suffered a significant PR loss due to a character assassination campaign where his wounds in action were deemed "not heavy enough to earn a medal, the guy's a fake".

I'm not sure how your highly selective example of 'decreasing militarism' is satisfied here.

Remember that before WWII, the US had a small military. Since WWII it's been kept large and expanded - the cold war, for example, was brought to an end by the US out-producing it's opponent - and the world is constantly reminded that the US has an army and actively uses it, anywhere, any time.

The US is a much more military-oriented society than it's colleagues. What you're doing is taking the wide outlier (the US) and then saying "it's not highly militarised - see it's not increasing", despite the point that it's already way out there.

Note aside, it is funny to see that when doing some quick blind generalizations on mankind, like "countries at peace die eventually", one can almost always use China as a coutner example. I can trow a fairly lenghty list of them.

At the very least, it's an extraordinary claim and makes no reference to the anything not more easily explained by the oft-noted equation between low GBP and high fertility - for example, seen here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg

If you can furnish a concrete series of examples of countries at a similar economic stage, where the sole difference is warlike behavior, and connect this to fertility, more power to you.

But frankly, I think you're just making stuff up.

Man, it's very possible to be skeptical without the asshole tone. It's a common theme in your comments, but it's really unnecessary.

Anyways. It's a good point, regardless of tone. Where'd my analysis come from?

I've noted that:

-You see baby booms frequently after the conclusion of war, increasing fertility.

-As nations age and move towards pacifism, you seem to have a cycle of more luxury goods being produced and less trade/usable goods. EG, more Burberry and less fighter planes, which means more status/positional goods and less things that can be technologically built on.

This has been noted at various times in history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon

It's also something I've seen and felt in being in lots of countries. That's entirely subjective, but the urge to "live quickly" seems higher in places that where people face their mortality. Mongolia made a notable impression on me, and their fertility is very high (and they have a high general militant disposition, as well).

> If you can furnish a concrete series of examples of countries at a similar economic stage, where the sole difference is warlike behavior, and connect this to fertility, more power to you. But frankly, I think you're just making stuff up.

1. That's a PhD thesis amount of work, or at least a long many-page discussion on a history forum, not a quick comment on Hacker News. Asking the other person you're talking to provide PhD amounts of evidence is asinine. C'mon dude, seriously.

2. You can be skeptical and intelligently asking questions without the asshole tone. I don't mean just to me - go review your own comment history. You're obviously a smart guy, you can ask questions without the haughty manner and you'll probably be better off for it.

I'm still baffled as to your evidence; apparently the Mongolians are hard bastards and like fucking, or something. What's asinine is that you have no evidence for your wild, extraordinary claim. None. Never mind PhD level. Give a couple examples that you think support this idea that aren't equally well explained by the traditional 'stone broke and ignorant and breeding like mad to make sure at least one survives' model. Explain why Russia is at a fertility rate of 1.34 and Iceland is at 2.05, for example. New Zealanders are breeding like rabbits compared to Belorussians, etc. Not sure who has the Burberry and who has the fighter planes there, but I doubt it bears out your ideas...

I don't want a PhD thesis. I want you to come out with a single convincing case where your 'let's be warlike' stuff explains the way the world is better than the default "broke people breed more" model.

Appeal to authority are all very well (your idea has been 'noted' by 'notable' guys!), but Gibbon is a contentious source for any kind of assertion about the modern world, having not, well, seen it. Like many pretentious high school students, I've read him, but may not be the better for it. At least you could name-check Spengler or something; this would be just as embarrassing as anything else you've written on this thread but at least more topical.

+1, this really nailed it. Not just this thread either, but the all-too-common, arrogantly presented naive analyses that we see from time-to-time on the HN comment threads.

This is possibly the worst idea I've ever seen proposed on this site. An actual war between the three richest countries on the planet could possibly make the world unlivable for all of humanity. It's not a good solution for putting the Japanese economy on track.

This isn't the 20th century. Our mastery over the natural world has grown far too powerful for a war between strong countries. If you can make a convincing argument that war is inevitable even in these circumstances, then you've also explained the Fermi Paradox.

I say that as a clarification of the discussion, not because I agree that it's a good idea.

ok, let's hear it.

travel through 60+ countries...study of lots of history.

the anticipation builds....

I think peaceful societies self-destruct.

dude.

a) You obviously haven't read enough history, or you would know this is not a new idea.

b) So if peaceful societies do self-destruct, do warlike societies not self-destruct? Or only the ones that don't lose?

Perhaps you ought to turn your attention from demagoguery to speculative fiction. I'm sure there's a great novel in you about militant nations fighting ritualized wars to keep their edge, while deftly avoiding any real conflict. Add some authentic texture from those 60+ countries, and you'd have a bestseller for sure.

Without going deeper into your "analysis" I assure you that there is no single, unifying causality to the effects you describe.

I also assure you that my country (germany) has a really bad track-record of listening to guys with "easy answers" whose arguments started out strikingly similar to yours.

Right. That's the whole point - there will be beligerent nations, and pacifist nations will get rolled by them unless they've got a strong ally to bail them out.

It was the militant nations (USA, Britain, Russia) that bailed out the appeasement/pacifist nations from Nazi conquest and rule.

No easy answers, indeed!

Over here in europe we have that ally, it's called NATO.

And despite all its flaws it seems like a more reasonable approach, rather than encouraging individual nations to build nationalistic regimes (all the way down to the "standard messages") in order to protect against potentially "beligerent" neighbours.

The UK is known as the appeasement nation. 'I hold in my hand a piece of paper' are the immortal words. When someone says 'appeasement', Chamberlain is the guy who comes to mind.

Russia didn't get a choice to bail anyone out - they were invaded, and through dint of favourable geography and stubborn nationalism, they prevailed.

Russia and the UK were both hastily militarising at the end of the '30s in response to rising German militarisation. And in counter to your earlier idea that in order to be more 'military' a society, you have to have more upper-class people in the military: you claim that Russia was a militant nation at that time, despite the Great Purge removing a solid chunk of the officer corps, including most of the top brass.

Keep in mind that even Russia's allies at the start of WWII considered them a backwater military, unsuited for playing with the 'big boys'.

Honestly, your comments read more as if you're just finding ways to support your predetermined conclusions than incorporating things you should have learned from studying lots of history.

Out of curiousity, who do you frame as an 'appeasement/pacifist' nation in the WWII timeframe? Is it just a jab at the early French surrender, you know, the French who weren't pacifist, but were heavily investing in military defense, just the wrong way? Or is it a jab at (I'll give you these for free) Denmark and Norway, neither of which could stand up to the German military machine, even if they were highly militarised? Surely you're not thinking of Poland, which had a strong-but-outdated military? Certainly not Czechoslovakia - that country had been left to the wolves by the countries you claim 'bailed them out'? Sweden and Switzerland were both pacificst... but didn't need bailing out. Perhaps you mean Benelux... but again, you're talking about small countries being steamrollered by a powerful military using never-before-seen tactics (paratroopers and armored spearheads) which was subsequently able to bring a world power to its knees in only a couple of months?

And despite all this, the US was not highly militarised in the period before WWII, when isolationist politics had led to a reduction in the size of the military. All three nations you report had small or underdeveloped armies (two did have very large navies, but it wasn't the navy that defeated Nazi Germany) in the lead-up to WWII.

When you say you've 'studied lots of history', are you actually delving into the actual events and reading about them, or are you just pulling from 'an interest in the populist zeitgeist mythology'?

Yes, there are no easy answers, but that doesn't mean you should skip the reading requirements...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12179705

or simply look at birth rates in Israel, a very militarized country.

True purpose of war lies elsewhere. As Orwell said:

The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

And obviously, lots of subjects will internalize values of ruling group and believe that war is good for economy or birth rates ;)

But where Colinvaux and myself would disagree with you, is the direction of the cause and effect.

My interpretation is that a society starts off warlike. At some point it either conquers, or is conquered by its neighbors. Once the empire is at its natural borders, war no longer provides a good economic rate of return. People avoid the army and instead go into trade or farming. The imperial peace provides a stable base for commerce and industry. People become rich. As they grow rich, and as the need for martial valor declines, people become more decadent. They spend more on luxuries, they have less need for children. Thus both a decline in fertility and a decline in aggressiveness are symptoms of the underlying cause (war no longer being necessary for survival, and war no longer providing a good rate of return). Eventually though, on the borders of the empire some new, highly fertile, highly aggressive population arises. Meanwhile the old growth civilization has long lost its martial prowess, and each individual resident faces a game theory optimum of continuing the decadence, rather than face the rigors of a martial life. Thus the bordering tribe eventually is strong enough to invade, the old civilization falls, and the cycles of history continue.

Oh, and just to have a counter example: Switzerland

The Swiss are a strange bunch of people. As recent (or as long ago) as 500 years Machiavelli was praising their military spirit compared to the mercantile and money-oriented one of his Florentine fellows. He was predicting that the city of Florence's reliance on mercenaries instead of building a military spirit from the bottom up would finally lead to its submission. He was of course proven right, because while the Swiss have managed to preserve their independence through the centuries Tuscany was soon to fall under external dominance, but it begs the question if we would have been better off with a more militarized Florence but presumably less inclined to works of art (so no Michelangelo or Galleria degli Uffizi), or if it's ok that things happened just the way they did. Also, see Sparta vs. Athens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Switzerland

Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society".

Unknown (at least by me): "A man of peace must be strong".

I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions drawn by the OP but I don't see how Switzerland is some kind of "counter example". Please clarify as I am honestly baffled.

Thanks.

Go check out sub-Saharan Africa, and see if that aphorism holds.

If you can think of more than just guns, Switzerland is a counter-example because of its politics - instead of the OP's suggested "Japan should just join in the next war, it's necessary to save it's society", Switzerland has pursued a long policy of neutral politics. It doesn't "simply join in on wars on whatever side looks stronger". It specifically avoids doing so.

I would still be curious to hear exactly what yaix was trying to say. Your assertions don't necessarily cast any light on what they had in mind.

What I'm pointing out is that it's not the guns that make the society polite. Sub-saharan africa is a vast conglomeration of countries and tribal societies, bigger than the US and Europe combined, and there you are calling it an 'exception'.

And nice job dodging someone trying to help you be less 'baffled'.

No, no one sane would advocate for another WWII.

However, a nation that implodes is also incredibly unpleasant. The most well-known is going from Rome to the Dark Ages. This path should also be avoided.

Re: resource scarcity, it's counter-mainstream but I'm not sure that's correct... net actionable resources might even be increasing - see, ex, all the energy that can now be gotten out of thorium. If you're a believer in cold fusion being possible (hot fusion already is possible, but isn't economical) then fossil fuels are basically a non-issue. But that's a long conversation. Suffice to say, I think the Earth can prosperously contain many more people than today, and that if it did so, it would be more prosperous. Much moreso, actually, since all gain comes from talented people and groups doing interesting things. But that's a long conversation.

Anyways. My argument is "completely pacifist societies seem to self-destruct" - there are a few rare exceptions that are extremely mountainous or islands or mountainous islands. Even they have some defense forces. But yes, I think a small amount of militarization goes a long ways towards having a more healthy nation that isn't self-destructing, which is important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West

Not really, his main argument was that the western society has lost control of its technology. We (the west) are like a horse carriage where the driver has been thrown of and the horses (technology) are driving the carriage (us) in a wild ride towards the cliff. [An updated version of this philosophical thinking is Bill Joy's Grey Goo article "Why the future doesn't need us." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html]

Population can not grow forever on a planet with a limited amount of resorces. So people either stop having children, or begin killing each other.

(As a nice bonus, this is written by John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP).

Why should this statement be independent of the number of humans in the world?

With regard to the rest of the western world, I think the kind of large scale war you talk about is permanently over -- both because it would be far too expensive for everybody and because there is no winning a nuclear war.

The war in Yugoslavia was not so long ago, for one thing.

For another, Hungary got itself a nice extreme right regime that seems rather keen to transform the country into an authoritarian state. What if they decide, at some point, that the land occupied by some of the Magyars in neighboring countries should really belong to Hungary again?

Keeping the peace in Europe is far from a finished project.

Given the resurgence of nationalism and right movements holding anti-immigration feelings in Europe right now, that's far from an universal opinion. According to these guys, our gates are wide open and the barbarians are breeding in our backyards. Barbarians being, of course, undesirable immigrants from poor third-world countries, not cool white guys from across the pond.

We still have the same "barbarians" as we always had. For the last two decades we just happened to be in a little better relations with them.

There is currently a war in progress in Libya in which one side is supported by the European forces. In 2008 Russian army entered parts of Georgia, mere 15 years after the Red Army was pulled from Eastern Europe.

Nothing changed. It never does.

> I think the kind of large scale war you talk about is permanently over

I agree that large-scale warfare is currently not very likely but I don't think it was ever that common as the twentieth century had led us to believe.

As far as Japan goes - IMO their population is too old to solve the problem on their own. No matter how much propaganda you feed them, 50 year old women cannot have 4 kids.

Personally I think the Japanese population will rebound without any meddling. Every large population has sub-populations of people who have lots of kids. Think Mormons in the US. Eventually one or more of these sub-populations will have enough critical mass to affect the overall fertility rate.

In terms of militarization, well, the Japanese navy is still the most powerful navy in Asia. It would make pretty short work of the Chinese navy in any conflict out of range of Chinese land-based aircraft. Just calling a navy a "naval self defense force" doesn't mean it can't hold its own in a fight. This will still be true even when the Shi Lang is fully operational, though I agree the trends are in China's favor.

1. Democracy

According to the democratic peace theory[1], two stable , long term democracies, rarely or never go to war between them.

2. Nuclear weapons

The threat of nuclear weapons does change the rules of war substantially. I can't see a peaceful nation, that has nuclear weapons , totally conquered by an enemy.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

Then we are doomed to conquer ourselves. Or at least, be totally conquered in the economic sector. I don't think we can use nuclear warheads to settle China's stake in the US, lest we receive a serious credit downgrade from S&P.

P.S. It's funny because it's true.

Heck, if we inflate our currency aggressively enough, other countries could wind up simply not accepting our money. It's hard to imagine today, but it's a real possibility- the value and purchasing power of your money is entirely rooted in everyone else's confidence in it's stability.

Yes, the exchange rates may well decline further, and this will force you to reduce your net imports - but that's only fair. You can only profit from other countries' work for so long without sending something tangible in return.

And as far as the "addiction to debt" is concerned, it gets a bit old to repeat the same things over and over again, but have you heard of the sectoral balances? Analyze the flows of money between the three macroeconomic sectors (the federal government, the domestic private sector, and the foreign sector), and it should become clear to you that the massive increase in debt over the last two years is simply a reflection of the fact that the US private sector has managed to amass insane amounts of wealth. [1]

The distribution of that wealth may be very lopsided, but then it's the distribution of that wealth that needs to be challenged, not the buildup of debt.

[1] Part of the debt build-up obviously also reflects foreign holdings, but the one thing that really stands out in the last few years in the US is how the private sector has gone from a deficit to a surplus as people attempt to fix their balance sheets.

Again? Over what time period?

I think an investment ban, even one widely hailed as a good thing would fall apart within 30 years of its inception.

Governments change, companies rise and fall, and people die. After a while, others would be looking at America and asking "hmmm why don't we invest in those guys, they're a whole different generation different from their parents".

You don't need soldiers to control a country a puppet dictator will do.

Or, more likely, it's part of the cause. Maybe women in Asia are delaying marriage in part because they have more leverage, similarly to the black men in the U.S. who aren't in prison.

In the case of Japan birthrates have been a subject of concern for at least the last two decades. There are many potential contributing factors, not the least of which is the enormous amount of stress on the average family and the exorbitant cost of living in a megalopolis such as Tokyo; the stress of working long hours and having high expenses is enough to prevent people from having kids and even having a relationship.

Although geopolitically Japan is generally a peaceful society de facto I would argue that that is not necessarily true culturally. And even in the context of geopolitics there is a fair amount of drama in Asia that involves Japan, e.g. between the South Koreans, China, Taiwan, and Japan.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_9_of_the_Constitution_o...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan#Disarmament

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Self-Defense_Forces#Defen...

Have a look at the Hyuga class "helicopter carrying destroyer": http://www.jeffhead.com/worldwideaircraftcarriers/16ddh.htm. On thing you notice is that unlike almost every other amphibious assault ship in the world the Hyuga class has an offset island, meaning you can land fixed-wing aircraft. Officially it carries 18 helicopters, but it has everything you need to carry an air wing (range, fuel, ammo, maintenance, and communications). So all they really need to to is fly off the helicopters and fly on some sort of STOL aircraft (like the F-35C) and presto! An aircraft carrier about on par with the British Invincible class.

Recently the Maritime SDF (you know, Navy) got the go-ahead for a "helicopter carrying cruiser", which would be the same thing only bigger, although still officially not an aircraft carrier.

It's an interesting claim. I don't think I buy it--the U.S. is entering our period of decline right now, and our belligerence is, if anything, accelerating that--but maybe you'll make a longer argument with examples on your blog.

The last few wars were attempts to strengthen the US - quite frankly Oil really is more valuable for the US than winning the title of prom king.

Regardless of your or my personal opinion on what the war is doing there can be little doubt that Iraqi and Afghanistani Oil is going to play a huge part in the US keeping its position in the world.

The thing that actually unsettled things is that the Wall Street people got out of control and made too many inroads into the Government and started stealing from the Average American.

The standard quote about all the peace in Switzerland leading to nothing other than the Cuckoo Clock and all the strife in Italy leading to the Renaissance comes to mind.

*

As human beings we want to give 'meaning' to our lives and underplay the role genetics and survival of the fittest play.

We also want to pretend that we don't have a baser nature and that we can 100% 'civilize' ourselves.

So we often make the wrong assumption that the perfect natural state is perfect harmony where everyone taps into some global 'peace wave frequency'.

Is it possible? Who knows.

It's just interesting that it's never happened. Ever. There has never been a point of time when the entire world was at peace. There are always wars because human nature never changes - no amount of 'civilizing' can change that, nor can everyone pretending that we are flawless perfect peace-loving creatures.

The full quote is:

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The thing is that all countries eventually collapse just like all things eventually collapse. Remember, stars die too. I could easily make the claim that a lot of countries destroy themselves in a time of war. The loser of a war doesn't always rises from the ashes.

A nation probably has a timespan that it can be alive. Eventually it will just die and a new one will be formed.

Finally, correlation is not causation. Just because the two seem to show up together doesn't mean that one causes the other. It is an interesting idea though.

Yet, we did no wars, made no commercial/art explosion (even food we don't produce).

It's not about wars, allies or anything else. I summarize it to the following:

- Justice: Yes, justice is point number one. You must have justice.

- Values: That's why religion works, it keeps values deep inside and transmit them from a generation to another.

- Education: To avoid mess, and poverty.

Military? No, you don't really need it. You need values. Look at 2006 war between Isreal and a few folks in Huzb Allah. Isreal has the strongest military in the region, along with support from the USA and Liban (gov), yet they failed.

More people have died on armed conflicts in the name of religion than for any other reason. National Socialism, for example, is a drop in the bucket compared to it.

In the 'States, non-religious people are much less likely to be in jail.

Religion is great at transmitting values, no doubt, but it's usually the wrong ones.

[1]: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatz.htm

Nietzsche represented this point of view better in his 'Will to Power' back in the 19th century. In the decades since, a lot of paper was devoted to criticism of his work.

Also, one nation that actually tried to live by his principles failed spectacularly.

I would expect that peaceful societies are conquered by warlike societies, at a lower rate than warlike societies are conquered by other warlike societies.

Logically this ought to be true since (a) the conditions for long standing peace should necessarily mean either a protection from warmongers due to natural geography or political reality and (b) warlike societies seek out conflict and each conflict carries with it the chance of societal death.

The theory you have can be noticed by other travellers and students of history; so I would have to ask: what have you observed and analyzed that led you to this conclusion?

Long enough ago, this was as simple as raising certain classes and races of people as slaves and telling them what to do and enforcing it with violence. However it seems that no matter how much you try to control it, societies eventually achieve enough self-awareness of the general inequality of things to revolt and re-order society to make things more fair. The next system of control is then instituted, and is seen as a vast improvement, and thus accepted by those who rebelled against the previous, even though it may be simply a more complex version of the previous system (slave-owners/slaves,land-owners/indentured servants,royalty/peasants,ruling class/working class, etc.).

In this way, I believe it's similar to the quote from HHGTTG: "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable." I think that what happens is every time a society reaches the level of self-awareness required to realize what's happening to them and has the will to change it, a simply more complicated and harder to understand and harder to destroy system ends up replacing it.

I think in this way, you can describe the cyclical nature of societies coming and going, and applying the reasons behind this fundamental change, understand why your theory of war being beneficial fits right in: war simply leaves no room for questioning society's demands of the individual. The reason this works is that members of a militarized or war-time society are indoctrinated, and those who end up members of the military trained from day one to obey orders and follow authority. After leaving the military, if you do you happen to survive and get out of the war, working a factory job and having a few kids is damn near paradise compared to the hell you went through. It is a very effective way to keep individuals from questioning their place in society or the fairness of it's structure and thus why I think it has the society-prolonging effect you've observed. War shifts individual's thinking from long-term (career, legacy, mark on the world, children's future) to short term (survival, employment, simply procreating).

If you buy into any of what I am saying, you might also hypothesize that the U.S came close to becoming self-aware of and motivated to change it's societal inequalities around 2008 with the reaction to the Government bail-outs and the housing market crash. I think the only reason that energy hasn't really gone anywhere yet is twofold: 1) With the economy in the shape it's in, it makes those who are employed more happy with their current employment situation than usual, and more unlikely to try to change things in general, since they are "lucky to even have a job in this economy", and aren't really feeling the inequality in their day to day lives. And it's not bad enough to where mass unemployment is giving people enough free time to organize and actually try to restructure the way our government works. 2) The act of electing public officials to office helps stave off the idea that "we need to restructure society" as it lets people restructure a symbol of society to them. Elections act as a relief valve for political pressure, since it allows people to 1) have input and make changes and 2) it buys time for the newly elected official to "get settled" in their office before people become dissatisfied again or economic/societal conditions improve, whichever comes first.

Sources: Just my theory on the matter, please point out where I am wrong (I'm sure I am in more than one way)

Sadly, most of his books weren't translated from russian. One that I could find is http://www.amazon.com/Ethnogenesis-biosphere-L-N-Gumilev/dp/....

EDIT: found a free on-line version of the book - http://cossackweb.narod.ru/gumilev/contents.htm

Also a theme that shows up in 1984.

Wait... Maybe that means the reason they are declining is because we neutered them...?

P.S. I suspect the reason your theory has not been explored much in public writings is because it has an implied support of continued military activity, funding and dominance, which is a very unpopular position in the US today. Ironically, probably because we reside exactly in the part of your described cycle corresponding with military decline!

I think things have sufficiently changed since the 1940's that re-militarizing could happen without too much hostility, given good diplomacy with USA and China.

I actually think America would like another friendly military power in the Pacific.

It might lead to diplomatic tension, but there's like a 0% chance it'd lead to a declaration of war. They've got their hands way, way too full elsewhere.

I don't disagree with your thesis that peaceful societies tend to amuse themselves to death, but I don't see how military spending is a magical way out of that trap, unless you go looking for trouble.