The fall of the USSR initiated a period of privation that involved a significant population decrease through starvation. This event did nothing to improve their economy, indeed it hobbled it.

You are correct that some wars have helped economies improve. Protip: it's the massive economic reorganization rather than the death that does that.

Edit: it is true that in Europe, the black death eventually resulted in considerable economic growth but that was an utterly different economy and the changes were on the order of hundreds of years, not decades.

Edit2: Re: regarding the randomness of disease: the deaths involved in wars have generally fallen on the less well off, at least in the times modern warfare (Post US civil war and the machine gun). Contrawise, the deaths involved in the collapse of the USSR were fairly widespread and uniform because most previously existing enterprises became unviable and so many otherwise skilled laborers and professionals were left unpaid.

The whole point of the "deadly plague" comment is that it kills kings and paupers alike.

War creates demand for labor which means that people doing the work have leverage. (See: my note about dividing the 1000 richest people artificially into "Red" and "Blue" teams and putting them into war.) Without it, the world seems to be run by yes-men and visionless cost cutters (do the same damn mediocre thing with less resources) than people with the leadership and creativity to actually advance the world.

It seems to be a pretty dismal fact of humanity that the only thing that prevents social cancer (i.e. the emergence of a parasitic, non-producing, and aggressively self-enriching elite that causes increasing dysfunction in the society, while labor's leverage approaches zero) is the existential threat to a society posed by major war. I wish it were otherwise. I wish we were a species that could mobilize around solving cancer or clean water in the way we are able to mobilize around killing people.

The problem is that, during peace time, the good seem to become complacent and bad peoples' superior ability at social ascendency and ingratiation puts them into positions of leadership (see: the rightward lurch of American politics after 1980, and the increasing mean-spiritedness of Corporate America beginning around that time). Eventually, the social rot reaches an "overflow" point where the dysfunction of one society or more causes violent conflict. Then there's war, which makes good and bad people warlike both.

Wars don't always make economies improve, of course, and war is pretty much the worst thing imaginable. However, to this point, humanity hasn't come up with anything else that gives the disenfranchised enough leverage to shock society out of a cancerous state.

I really hoped that Silicon Valley would show the world a way out of that idiotic cycle, but the actual behavior that is in it, thanks to the VCs turning it into Hollywood for Ugly People, has rendered that impossible.

In addition, war demands investment in the most rational enterprises at the state level. The biggest of which? Science and technology (Manhattan, Apollo, etc.). There is no time or resources for consumerism and advertising. The civilization that is the most efficient, and invests most rationally, will win. Compare this with modern publicly funded research, which is receiving cut after cut and appears doomed to stagnation and decline.

Contrast a president like Eisenhower with Obama based on political platform, policies enacted, and individual merit. Absolute night and day, and a concise yet poignant case study on the decline of American society.

IMHO it's not just the elite that's getting parasitic and non-producing (how many people are on welfare these days?)

What should folks with severe cerebal palsy do? Should they just die already to make you happy?

Every hard look into the idea that there are mostly "welfare queens" milking the system has come back to show it's bullshit. Plenty of the most needy people (in really poor states like Georgia) can't get any kind of assistance because of attitudes like the one you posted.

Georgia has fewer than 4000 (out of 10 million) residents receiving welfare and is 33rd in median income. Keep in mind that the state's income figures are being propped up by Atlanta, which only has half of the states' residents. In Savannah, many restaurants are closed on weekends or only open at all on weekends; that's how little economic activity there is in the state.

I didn't say that, I'm all in favor of helping the truly needy, but are they really the majority? Are sick/disabled people really where most welfare goes? I don't have numbers for it, but it's hard to believe it; people in genuine need (because they're unable to work for health reasons) can't be more than 1-2% of the general population, and I feel it should be cheap to take care of them.

Regarding Savannah, if there's so little economic activity there, the solution is to take measures to boost activity, not keep everyone on welfare. What happens when the money runs out?

EDIT: Also, please keep it polite. I will not be intimidated out of my opinions, and will not "back that shit up".

Things would be better if only we destroyed some existing value.

If you applied the same logic to the whole world, it would mean billions dead, because hey, what good are those 600 million Chinese living on $2 a day. Any time an argument begins with: hey you know what we need, a billion dead people - you know immediately the argument is false.

If you have vast under-utilization of labor, there are numerous obvious solutions to that problem that don't involve millions dying.

You said: "It's totally horrible for me to say this but a deadly flu pandemic is needed for the health of our economy."

Mass death is needed for the health of our economy, is what that says. Emphasis on needed and for the health of our economy.

1) populations will grow far above reasonable levels and extremely far above sustainable levels.

2) this WILL get resolved.

This theory was considered state of the art in 1798 (when Malthus proposed it) and refuted by 1838 (when Verhulst came up with a better model, which fits actual population data much better).

Populations do occasionally grow "far above reasonable levels" and then crash, but this requires pretty extreme circumstances. The best example I can think of is the Kaibab Deer population -- various human decisions (killing off predators, changes to hunting policies, changes to livestock grazing policies) caused the deer population to explode over the course of 20 years, and the deer population crashed a few years later as it overshot what the environment could sustain and caused substantial damage. That population curve is more or less A-shaped, with a steep climb and steep dropoff.

Populations in general don't behave that way. Most populations of most organisms we know of have an S-shaped curve, with a steep growth phase and then a leveling out phase that involves very little "overshoot" and very little "catastrophic resolution". (Human population looks to be following exactly such a trajectory, and is on course to level off somewhere in the 9-12 billion range.)

A deadly flu (which is something that used to be and will again be common) seems like the LEAST mean/stupid option to me.

It assumes that one person's wealth is an impediment to another person's opportunity, such that there is a finite amount of wealth to go around and no more is ever created. Classic fraudulent economic argument.

In 1932 your argument would have held just as much weight then as it does now, and would have been just as false. We're vastly better off and wealthier as a nation across the board than we were then. Wealth is not finite, and one person's success (or failure) does not mean there is less or more wealth to be had. A simple proof of this in action, is the stock market crash of 2009. Trillions were lost by the 1%, and that wealth should have been picked up by the 99% in your theory; it wasn't however, specifically because wealth can created and destroyed, it is not only transferred as your premise assumes. The 1% suffering a 40% haircut on their wealth did not create more opportunities for the 99%, which again your theory proposes to be the case.

Sure, wealth gets created, but that doesn't mean you can't have a confluence of conditions that cause an economy/to decline.

Arguing that we're fucking ourselves over long-term is not the same as saying wealth is finite. If my premise is flawed, it's no moreso than your response.

If you do this, you have artificially created an irreparable cleavage in the elite. You will suddenly have unprecedented social mobility in the world (and, likely, full employment) as Red vs. Blue recruit the smartest people they can (and pay them handsomely) for their existential struggle. I can't say that this will improve the world. It may cause more problems than it solves, but it will shift power and wealth to talented people in a way that would otherwise never happen.

Conspiracy theories are a massive oversimplification of what actually goes on, but elites would rather collude. If you don't give them an immovable enemy within themselves, then their enemy becomes us (and that's not a fair fight). Obviously, this Red/Blue thing is an impractical fantasy, but it may provide insight into why the world seems to demand that wars (despite their being extraordinarily destructive and seemingly utterly undesirable) happen.

Thank you for explaining this in a way that won't cause the kneejerk hate-response from people. This is exactly it, but I'm a jerk and like to phrase things in ways that provoke.

If it comes to that, I prefer a French Revolution style class war. Fewer deaths, more gain for each death and in total, thus more efficient. Between 10 million deaths, no correlation between dying and deserving it, and chaos and no reason to believe in political progress, versus 200,000 deaths, a high correlation between dying and deserving it (i.e. higher death rates among the current elite) and the likely deposition of the corporate upper class, I know which one I'd pick.

I'm not sure I agree with your premise-- I don't think society ever needs traumatic death, and I wouldn't want the violent revolution or the flu pandemic-- but if it were true, there's a much better way of getting it, which is to rise up and depose the assholes running the world now.

I think the problem is related to what you are saying but much more prosaic. For the most part, humans are myopic and reactive, and the people who tend to rise in organizations (in peace time) are even more that way than the general population. They make shitty leaders, though, due to their lack of vision. The result is that, when there is progress, such people would rather cut costs (and involve fewer people) than do more. That, in a nutshell, is why Corporate America is so depressing: it's run by mindless cost-cutters, not leaders.

Couple this with the mean-spiritedness of the US society and you have long-term joblessness and, eventually, widespread, cancerous poverty of a kind not seen since the 1930s.

While the most famous people executed during the French Revolution were from the aristocracy, the vast majority of people executed were not. Inciting rebellion and food hoarding were the common accusations.

This source[1] puts it as 6.25% "nobles", 2% noblesse de robe, 14% upper-middle class, 10.5% lower-middle class, 6.5% clergy, 31.25% working class, 28% peasants, and 1% unidentified.

I know you say "if it comes to that", but anyone wishing for a real revolution to enable some kind of social justice is deeply misguided. The poor and downtrodden may not be the first against the wall, but they will be there in much, much larger numbers.

[1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881548

Lower-classes get fucked in greater numbers when there is any social turmoil. They are a proportionately larger group of people. I don't have any numbers to look at but I think it's pretty likely that more than 60% of the French population during the Revolution was working class or peasants...so proportionately they may have fared better, because you have to look at their numbers in the population, not the percentages from who was killed.

Anyway, the long-term social effect was (from where I'm sitting) positive.

The positive social effects of...the Reign of Terror? You might as well throw in the Holodomor, the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, The Great Leap Forward, etc etc etc as everything's much better now than it was then. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, amirite?

I think that's pretty damned positive.

And it was published four years before the executions started in ernest. Even if it hadn't been: all revolutions cause birthing pains, but it is fallacious to argue the converse.

Eventually those in control of a mean, sexist elite were forced to modify their perceptions because of economics.

I'm ultimately just saying that the only thing that will force a mean, privileged elite to modify their perceptions will be economics.

Class war sure would give my sense of vengeance a boner, but I think it's both less likely and much more risky for those who we'd like to benefit from it (at present).

I think those that have struck rich through entrepreneurship are the extreme minority and the numbers we've seen back it up. In fact most founders lately seem to be either the working-poor or at parity with salaried developers working for established business. Regardless, as a group, they are in no way the kings and policy makers in our society and are barely significant stakeholders.

I think it's much more likely that the "rich and powerful" who influence the direction of our society all engage in primarily rent-seeking activity.

I'm sure patent trolls consider themselves entrepreneurs too.

If someone is a greedy asshole at the expense of others, I have no problem advocating putting them up against the wall.

So in the most notable instance of class war at least, not everyone got the axe. The point you're asking me to respond to is a separate discussion entirely.

You say in another comment that you're just being "cheeky", but frankly I find your and michaelochurch's comments deeply disturbing. If it's just dorm room BS, perhaps you could find a more appropriate forum.

tl;dr: tech entrepreneurs are not the 1%.

Again, how do you expect the "class war" for which you have a "boner" to distinguish between entrepreneurs and "rent seekers"?

It's pretty obvious what they do and how they do it. If you think entrepreneurs have a lot of overlap here, I'd hate to think of what you consider being successful in business, because you'd have to either not be looking or be a sociopath. I already mentioned patent trolls as an obvious example of rent-seeking behavior here.

You're fixated on the mechanics of how a class war happens, which isn't even worth discussing because that's predicting the unknowable. Maybe you seem to think it only happens in the way you picture it in your head?

When you have a society that denies quality health care to the majority of its citizens, has a militaristic police force and imprisons large and biased proportions of its population, YOU ALREADY HAVE CLASS WAR. It's happening right now and you don't even realize it.

How does it "deny quality health care"? Not giving it away for free isn't "denying"; if you have money or good insurance, you get quality health care. The harsh reality is that health care costs money (in other words, resources), so it can't be free and plentiful.

Also, the upper class is not "entrepreneurs"-- most of them are well-connected influence peddlers, which makes them the farthest thing from entrepreneurs-- nor is it the same set as "rich people". (Not all upper class are rich, not all rich are upper class.) The upper class is a closed social network that happens to have a stranglehold on most of society's resources, but there are rich people entirely outside of that network, and not all people in that network choose to become rich (although most do, because it doesn't take them much work).

Is overthrowing the upper class, violently, desirable? No. I'd rather see them peacefully and gracefully decline into irrelevance. They even get to stay rich. It's their belligerence-- that they keep taking more each year-- that gives cause to kill them. It's not what they have, it's the risk (likelihood?) that they'll take more each year, leaving less for the rest. Is overthrowing the upper class morally acceptable? Yes. This is a problem for us to solve, and it may come down to our generation. Violence should be a tool of last resort, but they are already using it against us (if you live in the US, you know about our health insurance system) so we'd already be in second-strike territory. I have absolutely no moral problem with the violent overthrow of the global elite-- they've already earned it several times over-- but in terms of practicality, desire, and preference, if a nonviolent solution can be had, I'd rather it be that.

OK. Name some names. Who has cause to be killed by your standard solely because they "keep taking more"?

In fact, some folks in New York have recently gotten the ball rolling on that one.

You know what living entity also relies on continuous growth? Cancer. We're cancer.