Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astronomy

Re:Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astro... by simonh on Monday July 25, 2022 @12:45PM (#32227009)

What we get for the money is a whole lot of aggressive expansionist wars, all over the world, that never happen. Unfortunately some still manage to slip through the net, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but if the west generally didn't spend a whole ton on military preparation I believe we'd see an awful lot more of those sorts of conflicts everywhere. Here's a historical graph of deaths from warfare.

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea...

You can see that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, deaths per population from warfare dropped off a cliff. Unfortunately deterrence is hard to quantify because it's about making things not happen.

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Re:Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astro... by Nevermark on Monday July 25, 2022 @01:29PM (#32227832)

Unfortunately, the spending also provided a huge military comfortably capable of over-responses and misdirection in the context of small but dramatic threats.

A vast amount of US "defense" spending since 9/11 has been a "war on money" in the form of massive unending offensive plays against countries that had/have undesirable aspects, but that didn't declare war on the US.

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Re:Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astro... by DiogenesKynikos on Monday July 25, 2022 @01:06PM (#32227444)

We also get all sorts of aggressive wars and foreign interventions from the US and its allies. Iraq, Libya and Yemen come to mind.

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Re:Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astro... by simonh on Monday July 25, 2022 @01:45PM (#32228132)

When what you have is a hammer... but that isn't an argument for not having a hammer in your toolbox.

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