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How Technology Promotes World Peace
Hugh Pickens writes "Ayesha & Parag Khanna write in the Atlantic that there are many important differences between the U.S.-China relationship of today and the U.S.-Soviet relationship before the outbreak of the Cold War. One is that the U.S. and China are deeply intertwined through geo-economic interdependence, and the rapid and global diffusion of technology is accelerating these changes. 'As the global economy has become more integrated, states have greater interest in cooperating and less interest in conflict, which can lead to a kind of mutually assured economic destruction,' write the Khanna. 'If military power is inherently competitive — the stronger your army and the weaker your neighbor's, the more powerful you become — then economic power is more cooperative. After all, much of America's power today is economic, but that power would decrease if China's economy collapses.' This economic inter-dependence, the theory goes, promotes peace, but technological power is also cooperative in this way, perhaps even more so. For example, medical research crosses borders, as do the pharmaceuticals or treatments that research can produce. China can increase its power by developing better solar panels — perhaps in part by building on foreign technologies — then turn around and sell them to other high-energy-consuming states, making us all better off. Like economics, technology doesn't just increase cooperation, it is the cooperation. 'The increasingly integrated global system is shaping the states within it, much as individual powers shape the system. The question is thus not who controls technology, but the way in which we develop, guide, and control it collectively.'"
We just need to watch everyone....for peace
So were does state sponsored corporate espionage fit into this "peace"? The goal of "I'm stronger, you're weaker" is still present.
Technology doesn't promote world peace, that's a side effect. Free trade promotes world peace. It's that trade of goods, information and ideas that makes people respect and want to know someone else. Though societies that don't have anything to export are generally pretty good importers of said culture, throwing the "fear of god" into said places.
Om, nomnomnom...
Before technology, we all lived in caves in fear of animals eating us and our families. Good thing the average lifespan was so short, that stress will kill ya! I say we dump this technology and move back to the caves.
I am not a luddite, but I still gotta say this ...
The technologies that we have today have given us a lot of good things
It has made our lives "better", in the sense that a lot of diseases that previously can kill us, nowadays are not that lethal anymore
But, the consequence is that the world human population has exploded
20 years ago, there were less than 5 Billion people
Now, 7 Billion people, and, as we speak, the figure keeps going up and up
Our planet simply can't support it
Either we human completely depleted the planet and we die off - and in the process a lot of other plants and animals wiped off as well,
Or ...
There will be another full scale global war, that ends up cutting down the human population to more manageable size
In other words, the "world peace" that we have today is but only an illusion - our technologies are delaying the what will have to come, ultimately
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you expect me to cooperate with you, or you expect free access to my walled garden (a.k.a. the US marketplace) on your terms, there will be war.
Have gnu, will travel.
No. People do all that, and pretty much always have. It just turns out that we're big on tools and keep making them better.
Maybe the headline should've been something more like, "material interdependence and frequent interaction with different people makes them less alien, and the more you do each, you're proportionately disinclined to murder members of their tribe."
Or something like that... I am not a sociologist.
I can't be bothered to look up the reference right now, but shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, a book was published with the same thesis. That didn't quite work out.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Since the rich run all countries as long as trade exists there is plenty of profit to be made through trade. It's when trading stops or the "wrong" people are given contracts that the trouble begins. Once trade stops war becomes profitable as a resource grab.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I remember reading speculation from dawn of the 20th century, that claimed the expanding global economy made wars between major powers unlikely (sorry, no citation). It was wrong then, and it is probably wrong now. Nucular bombs have done far more to promote world peace than economic inter-dependence.
We have lived almost an entire century where resources were so abundant that major powers simply didn't need to fight each other. We will see what happens once these resources (oil, water, etc) start to dry up.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The same type of arguments circulated before WWI. Surely, in a modern, globalized world where German and English bankers could both own shares in Argentinian railroads, and where British citizens bought German paints and medicines, and Germans bought licences for British patented manufacturing, war could never break out.
Comments, A_Lee
Seeing as a large number of recent wars are ostensibly to control resources (oil - sorry, 'freedom'), I'm wondering if tech will ever be able to mitigate this. With a number of environmental factors at play, tech has a soft deadline to fix things before we may be forced to fight over what's left.
It's the one tech that kept us and the commies from going head-to-head.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Germany and Russia were major trading partners in the 19th and early 20th century.
In the late 1930s, Hitler and Stalin were allies, agreeing to carve up Poland, which they did in 1939.
In 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people. The Eastern Front of World War Two was one of the primary atrocities that the human species has perpetrated upon itself and upon the planet Earth.
Please tell me again how their 'integrated economy' prevented war.
When the facts of measurable reality (in our case, history) disagree with your theory, your theory must be thrown out and disregarded. In every science people to understand this, but in History they so often ignore it for some bizarre socio-bio-emotional reason. People appear to be fascinated by theories, and don't really care about the data.
The primary difference between the US-Soviet pre-cold war relationship and the US-China is that in the first instance, we were forced together (fighting germany in WWII) and never really developed a trading relationship, where the current US-China relationship formed from common economic forces. If you look at the US-China relationship post WWII, and pre-Nixon, it might remind you a bit of the US-Soviet relationship. Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then...
The turning point with china? Basically Mao's death in 1976 and US agreeing that taiwan was part of china in 1979. These have nothing to do with technology. The change in leadership and economic orientation made the economies more compatible (perhaps best summarized by the quote "I don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice").
The turning point with Russia? Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin started things along, but of course Mr Putin's influence basically rendered their economy (apparently some wikileaked documents called it a virtual mafia state) incompatible with ours.
I think we technophiles hate to admit it, but events (even in the world of technology) often revolves more around people (e.g., rms, linus torvalds, bill gates, steve jobs, in the tech world etc) than any underlying technology.
Trade benefits from peace and trust, but also helps build mutual trust and peaceful cooperation by way of incentives.
Because people can produce more stuff and more complex stuff by dividing the work, specializing and cooperating, trade tends to promote shared interests and cooperative dependencies.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Everything said in that summary is so obvious I hope the authors were given a super hero medal for figuring it out.
It's individuals that start wars, not countries. Sure you might think USA invaded Iraq, or Russian invaded Afganistan but there were a few people making the propaganda to make it happen, and behind those people even fewer people, and behind those one man.
Whenever you see a country war, it's the result of one man on one or other side that thinks they can win something in his own interests. Look at the Republicans, they follow Fox, Fox follows Roger Ailes. All the big money supports to GOP you see, they're as much a victim of Fox news propaganda as the rest, they genuinely believe they are doing good when they donate. Meanwhile Roger Ailes is the behind the scenes man pulling the strings there.
And it follows that it isn't the COUNTRIES economic interests that matter, its THAT INDIVIDUAL PERSON's interests that matter. So if it makes more sense to keep oil dominant, even though you import it at great expense, and if the individual has oil interests, then of course they will do that.
The US military presence in Germany and throughout the world is also a stabilizing force. European nations are not diverting financial resources to stand up their own armies and investing those savings to their economy. Also, the last time we left the Germans unsupervised, WW II began.
It's amusing to watch "serious thinkers" labor under the seemingly self-imposed restriction that basically says "all important things come down to money.". Apparently , this is the only way to taken seriously in America today- do a "we' re all economically interdependent " jig ala Thomas Friedman -who turns out is wrong-o on, like, a regular basis:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/03/friedmans-follies
Look, one thing that unites us at least as much as money is porn. Porn porn porn. The porn the Navy seals found in bin Laden's son hard drive. It's non-trivial. The world view that women are fundamentally non-sexual or worse, a kind of livestock to be owned, collected, traded and bred, is not going to survive the Great Porn Onslaught coming from developed nations. You can't be exposed to image after image of two chicks fucking each other with gigantic purple gel dildos while one guy fucks one up the ass and the other administers a deep-throated, lipstick-perfect blowjob to a tanned and muscled Mr. 10 inches and continue to see the sight of a woman's bare ankle, or hair or uncovered mouth as a dangerously provocative sight.
And then there's the flood of pages questioning religion through everything from mockery to lists of holy book contradictions and ridiculous assertions to sane and sober dismemberment of core religious tenets .
As far as China goes, knowledge of what the West had started with TV and now is spreading into the areas of the intellectual, political and associational freedoms people in western nations enjoy. These are the things that change nations by changing people's perceptions, one person at a time, sitting alone in front of their computer, reading something forbidden, exhilarated at the ideas being encountered and idealizing what life might be like to live in a country where men and women were able to speak so freely.
Or whacking off to dirty Tumblr-after-dark pictures.
http://tumblr-afterdark.tumblr.com/
There ya go.
As populations become urbanized, the birth rate falls. No global catastrophe is necessary.
The Romans also established peace via superior technology. The point of this article is ... ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
How do you describe in one sentence an agnostic, insomniac, dyslexic?
Its someone who stays up late at night wondering if there is a Dog!!!
Economic IS peaceful, but only when the 2 economies are interdependent. Chinese leaders work hard to block Western goods, but make the west dependent on them, while building up their own economy AND military. Since China's economy has grown massively and CHina has amassed a load of dollars (us and australian) and europes, they should see their money rise relative to these money. But that is NOT the case. Likewise, in a normal economic relationship, there would be regular 2-way trade. There is not. Resources account for the vast majority of what the west trades to CHina. When something like an auto is exported there, if it is selling well, then China will put a tariff on importing that specific companies cars, until they move manufacturing there. Once it is there, they will subsidize the energy there, and then encourage the company to sell it on the global market. Just recently China put a massive tax on ALL GM cars. That is, until GM turned over the patent rights for electric cars to CHINESE GOV. IOW, GM was going to be killed from manufacturing or importing cars there, unless they allowed 100% of Chinese made cars to have free and clear access to their entire patent DB related to electric cars.
This is NOT about economic trade. This is a cold war. Sadly these 2 idiots are like the rest of the ppl that ignore facts.
Now to wait for the Chinese lobbyists that will post here as ACs claiming that I am lying.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think I know the reason:
economic interdependence is the real world equivalent of spaghetti code, or lack of proper modularization in code. One change here, breaks down stuff that shouldn't be even related.
Code and economies which focus on modularity, locality, are more resilient. Why do we want less resilient economies? where a flood in thailand makes hard drives places skyrocket on the other end of the word?
Economy of scale, is the excuse. Nope, it works only when the cost of shipping stuff around is low, and there are no barriers. Artificial barriers, even. Those kind of barriers people used to protect local interests in the past (e.g. tolls), and that the rulers use to protect global interests now (e.g. patents on stupid ideas).
And nobody cares if the economy of scale makes a laptop cheaper, when you don't earn anything because your country shuts manufacturing down.,
The reality is that, just as spaghetti code, the fake globalism provides control. Those who operate at a global level can effect changes, all the rest is sheep. Oh but you vote for national governments? too bad, no government today, even if composed by saints, can do all he wants in its own territory.
Cue now the guys who say, "yes, the last persons who talked like this about plutocracy and autarchy wore svastikas and fasci".
I say "yes, and they led their country to ruin. But who financed the ascension to power of those great leaders? do your research, and if it matches mine maybe they were useful idiots, today's world was shaped IN REACTION to them, after all."
I don't say autarchy is always better. Exchange of ideas, goods, has always been beneficial. When there are two healthy and independent subjects. The problem starts when you depend so much from outside that your own existence is impossible otherwise. That is the moment when you become disposable, those who make themselves sheep will be eaten by the wolf.
How technology promotes whirled peas:
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Waring-PBB209-Professional-Bar-Blender/4107234/product.html
Oh yes, "stealing" non existent property. I forgot about how everything was built independent from each other and technologies never build on one another. Like how if I want to, say, build a computer I need to create an electricity delivery system, re-invent a real-time clock, research the properties of electricity myself, etc.
Technology builds on the existing technology. Literature builds on existing literature. Music builds on existing music. Culture builds on culture. Etc.
Trade benefits both parties, I for one am glad that China has given us a much higher standard of living by reducing regulations allowing for cheaper products for me to buy to improve my standard of living.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The more people have a stake in someone else's lives, the more people can "mod down" the warmongers. It works if there is an economic investment (Foxconn and Wistron do more to guarantee peace between Taiwan and mainland China than the USA fleet), but having any stake at all - even a facebook friend - works the same way. That's how Germans in Philadelphia stopped fighting with Irish immigrants. Exposure and familiarity promotes peace.
Gently reply
One is that the U.S. and China are deeply intertwined through geo-economic interdependence
What's the difference between geo-economic interdependence and the good old garden variety economic interdependence?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Wish I had mod points for you, this is both interesting and informative.
Global interdependencies in our economies tie us all together. The only technology required for large scale global trading are containerships and telephones. Internet, global spot trading, airmail, Bitcoin, they're all just sugar icing on top.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
not really, photography is one of the biggest anti-war tools, kings always knew what war was like, but after photography everyone did(gradually). it's tech. so is global communications and tourism. you're less likely to start a war with some guy who can tweet you.
internet, airmail etc are what brings those communications to ordinary citizen level.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"countries are too interdependent on trade to start wars"
"dynamite is the doomsday weapon: too terrible to use" - Arthur Nobel, inventor of dynamite
"no large war since 1815 (Napoleon). countries have learned to live in peace"
From 1914 to 1989 Europe was in one war or another, among the deadliest in history.
as long as Hostess can make twinkies we as a planet will always have something to eat.
besides as far as resources go we are always finding new ways to either recycle what we have or tap new sources/methods.
Short of %BIGSPACEROCK% hitting us and wiping out a large portion of the planet we are going NOWHERE (could we maybe try to get to at least the Moon first??)
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Luckily you can't get pregnant from porn nor from cute kitty videos, and given the current trends on internet, it seems that technology has already found its own way to curb the "too much human produced" problem.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]