War has to be one of the most absurd concepts humanity has invented. Somehow we, as a race, are so incredibly stupid that we can’t even see the absurdity of people dying in the name of colorful pieces of cloth that denote imaginary lines on a map. Beyond the absurdity of the concept itself there is also the additional absurdity of the wasted resources that go into blowing one another up. In fact I think this picture concisely shows the mind boggling waste involved with warfare:
Consider for a moment the cost of war. Not only does it cost human lives but every ton of metal, hour of labor, and gallon of fuel is wasted on destroying other things made of metal by human labor that are powered by fuel. You don’t only have resources sunk into building weapons of war but you also have to sink more resources into replacing everything that was destroyed during the war. If you’re a military contractor or a construction company this may seem like a good idea but even for them it’s not. Warfare is nothing more than the biggest example of the broken window fallacy ever conceived. While it seems the military contractors and construction companies are getting rich off of warfare they fail to consider all the resources they’ve sunk into blowing stuff up and replacing stuff that was blown up could have been put into creating new and better things.
People often complain about the consumer culture we live in today where products are thrown away into of being repaired. Warfare is a great example of this on a very large scare. Think about the Javalin missile, an $80,000 tube that can only be used once. $80,000 thrown down the tubes every time you launch one of those missiles. On top of that you also have the massive cost of resources required for research and development to create the missile. Who thought that was a good idea?
Some groups have figured out that Achilles’ heel of warfare and have begun relying on cheap technologies and easy tactics to win wars. When you consider what warfare is you realize it’s nothing more than a competition to see who can maintain the most resources. If you’re tossing away $80,000 missiles willy nilly and your enemy is using cheap easily constructed explosives you’re not going to last in the long run.