me:
> On the other hand, military efficiency > does not automatically imply efficiency > in general. In 1940, for example, the > Germans (arguably) were much more > efficient than France in military > matters. But wasn't France more efficient > at serving its population's wants and > needs at that time?
Julio:
You're referring to concrete, shorter-run accidents. I'm referring to the general, longer-run rule. Obviously, for a given nation, the best (most sustainable in the long run) path to military supremacy for a given nation cannot be the degradation of their productive force, the decay of their economy. Actually, often that may happen as a result of its emphasis on military force, as history shows.
the empirical validity of the concept of "hysteresis" or "path dependence" tells us that concrete short-run accidents can have longer-run effects. That is, the world is _not_ tending toward some (unique) predetermined long-run equilibrium (as, say G.A. Cohen's theory of history would imply) but is instead always at a crossroads, where slight differences in the balance of power and even minor accidents can have major long-term effects. (What if the US hadn't been able to figure out the Japanese military's secret code and then had lost the battle of Midway?)
But back to the topic: The argument about the commons is about the general, long-term, historical viability of a communist society. At least, that's the way I thought you had alluded to it, the first time you mentioned it.
I didn't know we were discussing the commons anymore. Maybe others are, but I was concerned with the issue of efficiency. -- Jim Devine / "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."
