Quote:
Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla
Popular notion, but I'm thinking in terms of a society's overall creation of wealth, not in soldiers and government contractors getting paid their livings.
The weapons of a state might be analogized with the antlers of a deer: they defend the deer, they aid the deer in promulgating his genes through deer-dom -- but they exact a cost to the deer's metabolism, growth, energy. Such expenditure might have been laid out in some other part of the deer, right? And yet, the deer would not do so well without them, in the end.
Necessary, but not wealth-generating overall; wealth-consuming instead.
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But when horns are too big, the animal goes extinct, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Elk