Econ 101: Guns or Butter

Posted by Frankly Francis on November 8, 2014 under Social Issues/Politics | 2 Comments to Read

I’ve been thinking.

An American 13 year old has never seen the United States not involved in some form of war, combat or violent act. Welcome to the USA children!

It would seem that we, the people, are more than willing to spend enormous sums of our money on military weapons. We are willing to use our military power all of the time all over the place.

We weren’t always like this. Nor do we have to be.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about.

I heard that we recently fired something like 40 cruise missiles at a secondary Al Qaeda organization. A cruise missile costs over a million smackeroos. That’s a lot of smackeroos!

The overthrow and execution of Saddam Hussein has cost at least $1.7 trillion dollars.

So far.

Benjamin Franklin observed that “Wars are not paid for during wartime, the bill comes later.”

That’s just money. How about the price paid in blood? What is that cost?

I am very much in favor of limited government, but if I must have Big Brother looking out for my best interests, then I say to Big Brother, and I mean it – I know that my best interest is living peaceably with everyone through social interaction and commerce.

The cool thing is that we have the resources and capability available in quantities large enough to effect some real change …

…So back to what I’ve been thinking: Instead of destruction and violence, how about bombing people with love? How about covert random acts of kindness? How about special ops teams committing senseless acts of beauty?

I have a feeling that the results would be much better for all concerned.

We are, after all, One Planet, One People.

Further FRL Cropped

Frankly,

Francis