The kind of "three wars" you want will not appear!
Original Luzhou Luzhou Universe 2024-04-13 18:02
Morning Mist / Repost
Recently, there has been a sudden increase in the discussion of world wars, and it seems that people lack the reverence they deserve for war, and instead have an incredible gambler mentality, thinking that they can turn the course of their lives around by making a desperate war gamble.
To put it bluntly, I just think that the world is terrible, and I have to tear it down and start over.
I actually quite understand this mentality, after all, I'm not Wang Sicong or Zhou Gongzi, and it's nothing to regret if I overturn the world. But it's a pity that I'm sane enough to think of the idea of reversing my fate through war, which only a madman would have come up with.
For example, the netizen in the picture above, his remarks should be representative in the views in support of World War III. They firmly believe that war is the inevitable way of redistribution in human society, and this is how Western countries have come. And now it is China's turn to enjoy the dividends of the war, which will also be the only way for ordinary Chinese people to live a rich and idle life.
It cannot be denied that his starting point is indeed good, and he wants the Chinese to live a better life. But the problem is that the so-called war dividend is an out-and-out false proposition. Take World War II as an example, Japan and Germany are both well-known defeated countries, but both countries ushered in economic take-off after the defeat and rose from the ashes to become the leaders of the Eurasian plate.
Germany is the largest economy in Europe, and it is second to none in terms of technology, culture, and people's well-being. Not to mention, Japan is about to become an international model student, the world's first passport-free country, with a per capita GDP of 34,000 US dollars.
In the 90s, it even reached $44,000 per capita, and then it fell back because of the real estate bubble. But it's still 3 times that of China, and they're really average, with a Gini coefficient in the range of 0.2~0.3. It's really the kind where ordinary people live a good life, and if there is really such a thing as war dividends, then the Japanese who suffered from the atomic bomb really ate it...
Let's talk about the Soviet Union, which was also the victorious country in World War II at that time, but did the Soviet people enjoy the dividends of the victorious country? No, after World War II, the Soviet Union was in a state of material shortage and famine for many years, and later it was dissolved. If you want to say that there is such a thing as war dividends, the people of the Soviet area who are starving to death are afraid that they will come out and ask you for it.
Throughout the long history of mankind, it is difficult for us to find examples of ordinary people enjoying the dividends of war. Rome fought Carthage that year, and the result was indeed a victory. But when those veterans returned triumphantly, they suddenly found themselves bankrupt, the fertile land was barren, the debts were heavy, some properties were mortgaged, and the worst ones were even separated from their wives and families. Only a few nobles took the opportunity to annex land, buy assets at a low price, and make a fortune.
Therefore, the dividends of war are ridiculous, and you can't even enjoy them in peacetime? How can you get the dividends of war? To give you another recent example, the United States invaded Iraq in '03, which can be described as bloodless. During the 10 years in Iraq, more than $3 trillion was spent on pre-war and post-war reconstruction, which directly terrified the Americans, and they did not dare to fight again for the next 20 years.
Iraq, on the other hand, had a population doubling in the decade after the war, and its GDP soared eightfold, as reported on CCTV that year. Many times, I don't see the dividends of the victorious countries, but the dividends of defeat come from time to time. Well, that's a bit awkward......
The picture above is the graduation ceremony of an Iraqi university student, with a decent outfit and modern architecture behind him, which is enough to make people who were heartbroken about Iraq doubt their lives. So, it's hard to say whether a world war will break out, but the kind of world war you want will not happen.
Of course, it is very rational to say that there is indeed no basis for the outbreak of a world war in today's human society, and it is unlikely that China will be involved in a world war.
In the past, the reason why mankind fell into frequent wars was first of all the existence of a so-called "Malthusian trap". The implication is that population growth always exceeds resource growth, and once a tipping point is reached, war is inevitable.
In other words, the wars of the past were not to create welfare for the poor, but to take out the surplus poor and consume them intensively. To use a hilarious phrase, it's to let you go to a place you've never been to and kill people you've never met. Only in this way can it be ensured that the rulers maintain their class position.
For example, in the later period of the Qing Dynasty, because of the population explosion, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement appeared in the south, and the Boxer Rebellion appeared in the north, both of which almost killed Aixinjue Luo. The slogan of the Boxers at the beginning was to eliminate the foreigners first, and then settle accounts with the Qing court, but they were later co-opted. Then he was used as cannon fodder, and after the war, he became a scapegoat. Nearly a million boxers were inexplicably consumed like that.
Of course, human society has long since escaped the Malthusian trap. For example, in China, in the early days of reform and opening up, it was an agrarian society, and it would have had a population of only 7 or 800 million, and it began to engage in family planning. Today's population of 1.4 billion people is encouraged to have two or three children. Because the strong productive forces of industrial society have long made the burden of population a thing of the past. Like those developed economies in Europe and the United States, they directly use cash to subsidize childbirth, and even open up immigration to introduce population.
In addition, there is indeed a bottleneck period in industrial society, that is, the "zero-sum game" dilemma in the gold standard era. This is dictated by the monetary system, as the total amount of gold is roughly limited, and the more wealth people earn, the less wealth they have left. As a result, on the eve of World War II, Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States occupied nearly three-quarters of the world's gold reserves.
So they have to face a real problem, the gold is running out, who are you going to sell what you produce next? So the economic crisis of the international capital camp broke out, the banks collapsed, the factories closed, the workers were laid off, and it gradually evolved into a world war.
Sell to? This is the ultimate philosophy of capitalism. Regular readers should have read this article I wrote. So after World War II, economists from all over the world began to gather in the United States to think about this problem. The final answer is: sell to the United States. As a result, the US dollar standard was born, replacing gold as the new settlement currency for global trade. Compared with the deflationary characteristics of gold, the United States has both deflationary and inflationary functions.
In this way, there is no upper limit to the wealth of mankind, you can print it yourself, if you print too much and it will depreciate, you can tighten it and ensure that the value of the currency is stable. Later, with the internationalization of currencies such as the euro, the Japanese yen, and the Australian dollar, the new international monetary system also became more diverse and robust. At this point, the international jungle law of zero-sum game has been completely bid farewell. Because you don't need to deliberately plunder the assets of other countries, it's just a pile of credit-based paper. Unless the paper you print yourself is worthless, then you have to earn dollars to maintain financial stability.
The point is that human society has collectively escaped the Malthusian trap, and European and American societies have escaped the dilemma of zero-sum games, so the basis for world war no longer exists. Of course, China will not provoke a war either. This is because war is a movement to the death that has the potential to cause class upheaval. As a powerful person, do you think they would provoke war to add risk to themselves?
And the masses at the bottom, they do not have the ability to wage war. Otherwise, when Pelosi visited Taiwan, a war would have started a long time ago. And a large part of the reason why the public is too optimistic about the war is that they are confused by propaganda. If it weren't for Ip Man to watch it a few more times, Donnie Yen would really be able to beat Tyson.
Objectively speaking, if China wants to take down Taiwan with dignity, it is a small probability event. It is indeed easy to engage in a scorched-earth policy, but it will inevitably lead to strong rejection from the international community, and then they will become lonely and will once return to the pre-reform and opening up. Then it is not common wealth, but common poverty.
Of course, in the current situation in China, many people are extremely dissatisfied with the status quo. I've seen a problem with the paper before.,Roughly said that I won't come in the next life (normal society shouldn't have this kind of paper)?The results of the highest praise are all negative.,Saying that I don't want to come again.。
For many people, poverty and toil, at a glance, make them full of desire for change. However, in their cognitive toolbox, only the extreme means of war is left.
The poor are so poor that they want a world war, and this should hurt the face of a big country, right? But in fact, China is not short of money, and its annual aid to its brothers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is in the unit of 100 million yuan. Black students come over, and they basically receive a subsidy of 100,000 yuan per capita. Why not use this money to improve people's livelihood, is it that everyone has enough food and clothing, carefree, and there is no incentive to hate the United States?
Information source: 2024-04-13 WeChat public account Luzhou Universe
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