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Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by jacquesm on Thursday May 22, 2014 @05:15AM (#7782866)
In 1913 the world looked like a tinderbox waiting to explode. War was in the air everywhere in Europe and looked to be all but unavoidable. It may have looked like a pretty decent place but that would have been deceptive and I don't think that it looked like that unless you were pretending to not notice.

Nationalism was on the rise, new technology gave access to weapons on an unprecedented scale (and weapons production was already well underway in 1913). I won't say it was inevitable, but it did not take much of a spark to set Europe in flames. People have compared it to a forest with tons of deadwood lying around just waiting for the right combination of draught, wind and a little bit of activation energy.

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by mnadkvlb on Thursday May 22, 2014 @05:53AM (#7782982)
I think poverty is worse than war. That is the whole point of the article, you make masses of people poor and then turn them helpless and harmless by social benefits. Poverty is worse than slavery because people feel sad about themselves than identifying the cause of unequal distribution of the resources.
Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by jacquesm on Thursday May 22, 2014 @06:16AM (#7783046)
Makes you wonder how many people that have lived through a war agree with you.
Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by arethuza on Thursday May 22, 2014 @07:53AM (#7783328)
In general, I would agree with you, but in some occasions the effects of extreme poverty can almost be indistinguishable from a kind of civil warfare:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29

Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by lclarkmichalek on Thursday May 22, 2014 @08:26AM (#7783437)
No one wins in the misery olympics
Re:We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) by Ygg2 on Thursday May 22, 2014 @09:08AM (#7783603)
Poverty also leads to civil war or worse. Cannibalism also is frequent during famine.