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You're argument is incredibly weak. You are confusing the justice system with the military system. What are you getting at with the "let terrorist bomb other countries so man can advance" comment? And how is it the same concept?
I'm still confused as to your logic. And "what people are saying" means what? Is that the people around you, the media, the US, the middle east, Russia, China, etc...i think you get my point. Your whole argument is weak. And this argument is what world governments should spend more money on. Maybe I missed something here....
The only way for man to survive is to spread out past Earth, and while it'll take a long time, we should get started so that our children, or their children, or their children can move past this death trap.
At some point the earth is going to die, whether by asteroid, changes in climate, or if we make it all the way until the sun begins to die (in about 3 billion years it will turn into a red giant, kind of it's last hooray before burning out, at which point our beloved planet will be burnt like a blade of grass in a bonfire and not even the cockroaches will survive.)
The china comment is hilarious! Hell, you know what technology they're using?Panda Express! I told that as a joke years ago but I'm starting to believe in my own humor. Soon the thin Chinese will come over here and we'll be way to fat to move from our couches and our fingers will be too fat to pull the trigger! I'm a space enthusiast all the way. Space technology investments are more crucial to the progress of mankind than military. Sometimes they actually go hand in hand, but what benefits to military technology pose for the US? Hell our government military budget right now is ridiculous! Maybe spend a little of that money on education or dare I say space program?! Atomic bombs are enough of a threat, why do we need more? On the other hand, if we were able to explore space, we could locate another inhabitable planet and expand our species.
Curiosity about the universe is something deep inside almost all of us. And if we explore space and learn about the universe, we may find answers to some of the most profound questions we ask ourselves. Granted, we may not. But it's worth a try. Certainly worth more than creating bigger and worse weapons making it so that if one major country decides to use them, most of the world is destroyed. So should we come up with better ways to kill and destroy each other, or reach for better ways to find answers about life, the universe and everything(or even just the universe)?
Granted, I do think a military is necessary, but if the world as a whole focused less on military technology and more on space technology(which is the question of this debate), I think that would be very very beneficial to humanity.
this has to be the right side of the argument because space is much bigger than our earth and so if we can find more planets to live on we could colonize there and then we would reduce the earth's population by 50% meaning that more people would have homes for homes instead of the streets.
At some point, the sun is going to explode and then implode, killing us all, and ensuring that there will not be any habitable planets in this solar system. Even if that didn't happen, cosmic rays or an asteroid will do us in. So, we have 2 options:
1. Die (I dislike this plan)
2. Find a reasonable way to find and colonize another planet. Well, so far we've only been to the moon. This could take us a while, and the sooner we get started, the better our chances of doing it before we are destroyed.
Yes please.. Stop investing on weapons of destrucyions. If you intend to die then lets have the space responsible for it. Mess with the space. Lets have a little humanity before we die. And if this happens it should be all over. Not just a part of the World investing..
I think space technology for the following reasons:
1) Hopefully you don't need a military
Who has ever dreamed of world peace, no war, and other related topics? Pacifism and peace is obviously better than fighting for everything, and if you can successfully have this then you will not need a military - and what does a military accomplish anyway besides leaving scores of dead people, many of them innocent?
Without the military the world would be safer, and if you can make this happen the space technology is surely the best thing to have.
2) Space technology is more profitable.
The opportunities, if we harness them correctly, for space travel are almost limitless. At the moment we have left this planet in a state of global warming and it will continue to decrease in this way unless we can find resources elsewhere or harness the power that we can gain from other planets. If we continue to invest in the military then there is no way that we will move forward as a nation; war holds people back and it will never bring them forward.
The resources available in space if we can harness the resources effectively are too good to ignore.
3) For the sake of the planet in the long-term perspective space travel is more advantageous.
War kills a lot of people every day. It has done in the past and it will do in the future. The threat of nuclear power and the things that it can mean for us is surely not a good thing for us. Our planet is more likely to exist short-term than long-term if military power becomes the dominating force. However if the future and striving for better things becomes the dominant force then people will surely take the side of space power, and this has the capacity to save lives. We learn all kinds of things and many dreams and lives are created via the idea of space. The idea of someone dreaming to go into the army kills people.
Space technology allows for dreams to be fulfilled and the resources gained will help us live easier lifestyles in the future, whereas military technology kills people.
If they focus on military technology, I tell you the result will always be war. Many people's lives will be sacrificed. Many innocent people who has got nothing to do with it will die. It is very unproductive.
They should spend more on space technology; search for answers and search for the truth, the purpose of life and our existence.
More investment should be pumped into space technology.The world is in a dire state. With the imminent threat of globalization, it is a matter of fact that Earth will soon become an unlivable barren wasteland. This threatens the existence of mankind. Hence, it is of every man's responsibility to ensure an everlasting continuity of human kind. By that,we need to find and explore new territories to live in and that is only possible by venturing out of Earth through space technology. Instead of investing so much on military technology to kill one another, world government should unite and work together to find an alternative breeding ground for human to live in in future, to ensure the sustainability of our species.
Interesting, though I must vote for this side of the argument. I think that getting this race onto another planet, or even off of this one, is much more important than fighting each other. Because if we stopped fighting each other, then, at least until we discovered someone else in the galaxy to fight against, we would A. be a peaceful planet, and B. we would have an immeasurable chunk of money (especially the US, and all the money we spend on military aspects of our world) to work with.
us no longer fighting doesn't mean they don't stop fighting.
yeah, it'll be great if everyone stopped killing each other, but it doesn't work that way. they attack us and we attack back so they don't do it again. really, that's the only way to really stop all the killing.
Ok, I think I finally see where i'm getting thrown off with your arguments! You use the "we" which I assume is the United states. Again, you fail to address the Debate. It cleary states "Should our world governments spend more on space technology or military technology?". The point I'm making is that it says World governments not "we", whatever the we is, government. Do you see my point?
I'm telling all of you! China is coming to get us and if we are not prepared we will fall. So investing more money for military technology to better defend ourselves from the Chinese invasion is the smartest thing that we can do at this moment in time. (;
Why would they get pissed at you? (Actually, wanna know a secret? The whole world is already pissed at you... And I'm gonna tell you, it's not because of your amazing freedom ;)
I have no particular reason in mind. But who knows? Shit happens. What if we run into some irreconcilable conflict of interest? Like say... some catastrophe drastically cuts the global food supply. Who gets to eat? My money's on whoever has the bigger gun.
The world doesn't hate America anymore. We got rid of Bush. (Well, except for Islamic countries, but that's understandable :)
Well, so it's not about China and all their billion people getting pissed at you anymore... A global catastrophe for sure makes more sense than mere imperialistic power games, being the world's first economy.
In any case, I think that coming up with ways to prevent or live through such a catastrophe are more productive than just researching about human-killing machines, which will probably be used even before the worst case scenario in some political games. If such a disaster happens on Earth, wouldn't it be nice to have some extra crops on the moon for example?
Well that was just one scenario. The true dangers are the ones we haven't thought about, the ones that nobody see coming.
I agree that military research is a bad way to spend money, but in our imperfect world, we sometimes have to accept bad things. See Prisoner's Dilemma.
Totally agree on the true dangers, more reason for us to unite and be productive rather than destructive. And you know what's the most stable tactic in the prisoner's dilemma? Tit-for-tat, a reciprocal altruism. Which means "don't look for trouble and trouble won't find you either." =)
There we go again.... hehehe So, sticking to the subject here, you think investment in the military is necessary to enforce global cooperation? I think cooperation is not the kinda thing you can push down people's throats - you gotta teach them, make them see for themselves that it's desirable.
The optimal strategy is to screw the other guy?! What if he comes to the same conclusion? When talking about super powers in the world - this means the end of the world - everybody gets screwed. The optimal is for both to cooperate, always.
No, I think investment in the military is necessary if we don't have global cooperation. When you have a bunch of autonomous entities acting without any regulation and you combine that with scarce resources necessary for survival, life or death competition is the inevitable result.
I agree that cooperation is usually the most logical strategy. But the key point illustrated by the Prisoner's Dilemma is that this is not always the case. There are situtations where we have what's known as a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium.
War between first world countries wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the world. Let's go with the food example. Food supplies are cut to 1%. There are riots everywhere. Now let's say the Chinese government decides there's not enough food for both America and China and that China will have to take control of the food supply by force or perish. Their best plan would be to quickly and covertly eliminate our ability to return fire, say by bombing all of our nuclear launch sites with missles that can't be detected by radar. So they do that. And then China takes the food and America can't do anything to stop them.
So how do we prevent this from happening? Military spending. We build missle defense shields, new radar to detect currently indetectable missles, other means of inflicting damage to create a deterrant.
Of course the exact same scenario could happen in reverse, and so China must dump money into its military as well.
Both countries are behaving logically, yet both are worse off.
Funny how you summarize the whole world into "America" (which is a continent, the country is called USA) and China. And even funnier how you want to feed the whole China or the whole US with 1% of the global food supplies... Eeeeven funnier how you happily work to pay taxes for military research which will not defend specifically your interests when the necessity comes... Also very funny how you are so eager to perpetuate a way of thinking which might take your own kids to go die for their country in some war...
Ohhhh wait wait... You do know that patriotism is as bad as religion when it comes to brainwashing people into believing there is an "us and them" and that your nation is worth dying for, right? Man, poor Chinese, I wonder what have they done to you besides wasting their lives in factories so you could have all the goodies you like so much... And here you are, already planning to get rid of people who manage to live with a dollar a day so your dear fat nation can continue with your wasteful capitalist lifestyle.
You want a solution for when scarcity comes? Start by telling your own people that they should be more like the Chinese!
jessald, I got your point... I'm just saying life doesn't have to be a game, or if it is one already, we should try to change it, because we know better already... It's like two gladiators who refuse to fight...
Anyways, the question here is not if the US should invest in military, but if all the world governments... The gladiator argument takes care of that...
And I don't think space technology should be priority right now... There are other real technologies more necessary to us at the moment, which definitely doesn't include military... That was basically the point of my last argument - things are being done wrong in the world, and military technology is not the way to solve it.
Refuse to fight, huh? Going back to the food example, think what that would require. Say there's only enough food to feed 50% of the world. In order to have a peaceful solution to this problem, half of the world would need to willingly sacrifice their own lives so that the other half could eat. Do you honestly think that would ever happen?
I know right now you're probably looking for holes in my contrived scenario. Getting ready to call me fat ignorant imperialistic scum or some such. But that's just avoiding the fundamental question: Do you really think that half the world would allow themselves to die so that the other half could live? You would need a world full of Jesus Christs and Mohandas Gandhis to achieve that.
You say we shouldn't spend money on the military, and there's not a person on this planet who disagrees with you. But in a world where violent confrontation is always looming around the corner, we don't have that luxury. The gladiator wouldn't just be throwing away his own life; he would be throwing away the lives of his children, his neighbors, his whole country.
Should we change this situation? Of course. But until we do, we have no choice but to defend ourselves from potential threats.
The debate is about priorities... And my argument is simple. Production over destruction, as much as we can. And this implies investing more in things which can make our planet and our lives better, than on things which can kill many of us (if not all of us), while using up valuable resources. Debate solved.
Anyways... If you do want to make this into a debate about the distribution of food in the world... Man, I'm here really wondering what you are talking about... First you claim there isn't enough food to feed the whole world, and that justifies capitalism. And now you are saying that if there wasn't enough food to feed the whole world (in your head, apparently, a hypothetical situation), people would fight to death for food. You wonder if people would willingly sacrifice themselves? Well, I don't think it's very willingly, but 58% of all deaths in the world, today, are because of hunger. And as far as I know, all these people are dying without much of a fight.
Military power is what is assuring, not only food, but all the basic necessities of life for those who do have them? You know it's not like that. What military and economic power is assuring is that some people can waste a lot of crap while others simply die. Is military confrontation looming around the corner because of the basic necessities of life? Far from that. So, are military forces necessary in your scenarios? I don't care, we need proper distribution of resources now.
Anyways... If we are talking about the States, a country which lives with constant external threats, of course you guys can't just quit the military now. I wished you all understood, though, that getting more armed is not the way to get rid of the need for more military.
Again, everyone agrees with you on principle. I'm not saying military spending is a good thing, I'm saying it's a necessary evil. Cutting military spending is like forgoing insurance; everything seems ok until disaster strikes.
I'm not trying to make this a debate about food. I'm just using a food crisis as an example of an irreconcilable difference. We could swap out food for water. Or instead of a resource crisis, we could say a fascist dictator suddenly rises to power in an industrialized country. There we have the same problem -- we are faced with unavoidable conflict and we need a means of defending ourselves.
Anyway, food is a complicated issue. I wasn't aware of that 58% number. That sucks. But the reason that third-worlders are dying without a fight is that they couldn't put up a fight even if they wanted to. If they were capable of taking control of the global food supply by force, they would. If first-world countries started starving to death, there would be a huge push toward war.
Honestly, I do agree that the US spends way more on the military than we need to. An absurd amount, in fact. How much we should cut back and where we should redirect that money are of course very hard questions. Really the only reason I entered this debate is because I'm intrigued by the implications of the massive population difference between the US and China.
OK, I think we've reached a semi-agreement. I understand that the military won't just disappear completely at the moment, and you agree that too many resources are being spent on the military right now.
We just don't agree about where should space technology fit in all this. =P
First, they will turn into a first world economy. You really should look at the change the world went through after the dropping of the atomic bomb. If anything is going to happen, it's going to be a mixing of cultures, American and Chinese. But I'm very curious to see what's going to happen in the future because Russia has so many raw materials. Who knows.... I don't think this debate is getting anywhere because the space arguments are for the long term and military arguments are more for the current term. But when does it ever stop? I don't think China is as much of a threat as the media plays it out to be.
You know what would be smart? To invest in a world where there are no geographical barriers, and therefore, one less reason for war. We are all human beings the same way. Why would the Chinese attack the US if you guys were not a military threat? I don't see terrorist attacks or war threats against peaceful countries...You guys are the only ones responsible for getting other nations mad and scared of you, for being the target of terrorist attacks and for having the international community hating your imperialist mindset.
I hear what your saying but isn't it nice that you can say that without having to be arrested for speaking your mind. I hate wars as well who really seriously likes them. I don't believe that our government wants to be in any wars. However when we are up against an enemy that hates us so bad that they will kill mothers, babies and grandparents in the name of ALA such as 9/11 we can't just sit back and do nothing. USA is a great country we are not perfect by any means but most countries hate us because they want to be us and can't. It's just like High School when the most popular people are also the most hated. It's human nature. But as a country we give more money to other countries than all others combined. And when there is a catastrophe the rest of the world looks to the US to come to the rescue.
The whole world wants to be like you and can't? I know that's what you guys hear on your media over there, that the world envies your freedom and your power. But guess what, we don't. You know this high school mentality you say is the reason the world envy you, well, actually, it's the reason people get pissed at you guys. Because while everyone else has moved on to adulthood, you guys are stuck at power and popularity games. You keep on trying to build an empire, and making enemies in the process. The world doesn't envy you, the world envies the nordic european countries with their high quality of life and much more freedom than you have over there... And much more peace. What about that?
So just like France in World War 2 who had the same sediment when they needed Big Brother like the US to come in and die for their freedom. So will the passiveness of the Eastern Nordic countries. Why do you think they remain such good allies with the US? So just incase, they know that we will be there to die for and fight for them if needed. Remember that there are other countries that would love to do harm to your pieceful country if needed, and guess who will be there to help defend it.
China consumes 7.578 million bbl/day of oil and is growing at a rate of 8-10% a year, while their population, on the other hand, has been slowly declining due to the "one child per family" law that was instituted several years ago. So why are they requiring more oil to support an economy where the population is rapidly decreasing?
One simple answer: Military advancements to expand their borders into the U.S.
In truth, It isn't only weapons that come out of military funding. Advances in military technology help to further along technology as a whole.
The military also spends alot of it's funding on Aerospace technology, and alot of the advances in the aerspace engineering field come as a result of the military and it's funding.
So really funding the military is the same as funding for space technology, the real difference being that in spending more on the military it's like getting a 2 in one deal, and spending more on space technology really is only one thing.
I agree with Pyggy on this one (this must be a record!) I believe he is correct in his ideas. In order to do so, however, we must keep an absolute balance between the two. The powers of the world are also working on their space programs and military forces, so we must at least try to keep at an even pace with them.
The point of picking a side is to pick a side. Stop sitting on the fence. You say you favor Military technology and then you go into how we should balance the two....What is your view? Spend more on one or the other? Choose.
First of all...do you see the little tag on the bottom that says Military Technology? That's my choice! If you're not savvy enough to comprehend the importance of balancing the two vis-a-vis what other world governments are spending their money on, then I suggest you inform yourself.
Secondly, do not EVER tell me I'm sitting on a fence of any kind. Since you're new here I'll overlook it this time. FYI, here at CD you may go with either answer or create an answer of your own if you feel both sides have value or can tie them into one. See where it says "Tag your argument:", well that's exactly where you can add another tag that suits your views better, if you wish.
Besides that, NOTHING is black or white. One must consider the necessity of the two factors being argued. We need both and I believe we need them in equal parts in order to keep up with the world...which is what this debate is about.
First of all, I'll tell you whatever I want. Second, I respect you giving me the benefit of the doubt. I did not know about the "tag your argument" option. I will carefully consider this in the future. I made the assumption that you had to choose a side and stick to it during the entire debate. (that explains enough) As for the last paragraph, I completely agree. Better to know now.
That kind of talk is why our country is falling behind year by year. First, the chances of us exploring the entire universe is slim. Second, to add the arrogance that we will rule space/universe is just mind boggling. How does military technology include conquering space? Enlighten me please.
No I did not but I get what you're pointing out. It's nice to get a rise out of the community. You've all convinced me that space technology and military go hand in hand but again if I had a choice i would still say spend more in space technology. I just don't agree with the methodologies most of you speak of. The expanding of our species mainly on a military conquer methodology. I'm more of let's be friends scenario as opposed to the I'm going to beat you up and you respect me scenario aka conquer. Here is a the definition of the word conquer...
That is not the way we should go into the universe. That's what separates us from animals. Violence can always be deterred. And with the threat that the planet continues to ensue we need to look to a good plan b if this planet ceases to be. Meaning explore space and find another inhabitable planet; think about how long that will take. The more money that is invested in space technology the better for our species. We don't have any other threats at this point except ourselves. Military is plan b when compared to expansion of humanity/space technology.
I don't mean to literally conquer the entire Universe... just have the overwhelming power up there over all other nations.
GPS technology was developed for the military and it was a space program. Most research we do in conquering space is for military purposes. Many of our missiles will be controlled by satellite, and pictures we take through satellite are mainly used for military recon.
US military research has a lot to do with conquering space now. not literally, but at a large amount.
Well, you need to be specific. Expect when you leave something so open to interpretation to be misinterpreted. I don't read minds so please from now on be very specific.
What do you mean with this, "I don't mean to literally conquer the entire Universe... just have the overwhelming power up there over all other nations."?
I'm thrown off by the overwhelming power up there over all other nations aspect...
Unless if there is a threat of aliens coming to take us over we should put our resources in smarter technology we already have the best in the world. I agree with that one person saying China will be an eminent threat they have an army of 100 million strong going to be tuff to defend that.
We should upgrade our ability to destroy I.C.B.M.'s and such quick and efficient. We also should develop ways in detecting nuclear weapons because the threat of mutually assure destruction does not scare those crazy terrorists at all. So finding the devices before they are used would be nice.
When I was younger I would have said, space technology in order to get people off the planet. Specifically people that annoy me and as a last resort, get me off the planet and away from said people.
Now that I'm old, I probably can't pass the physical to go on a spaceship and I'm too cranky to let other people get off the planet when it would probably more fun (and cheaper) to take them out here on Earth using some new fangled military technology. So I vote for military technology (;
