O'Regan, Emlyn wrote:
> Spike, I think that the cycle would actually continue ad-infinitum without
> anyone being able to stop. But you could get extremely wealthy discovering
> this logical flaw.
Emlyn, I could not go to work each morning with a good conscience if
I believed this. First of all, my job will never make me rich: that is
reserved
for the local software developers. In fact, it is difficult to survive in
Santa
Clara county on the wages of an ordinary rocket scientist. My neighbor
the software developer came home last month in a $90K humvee. {8-[
I do believe that a nation needs a strong and competent defence system, if it has anything worth taking, otherwise it presents too much tempation to its neighboring dictator to smash it and enslave its people. History is full of examples. A little old lady with a thousand in her purse is a much more inviting target than a brinks truck with ten times that amount.
In my corest of core values, I am a fanatic pacifist. War is horrifying, so unimaginably more expensive than the fireworks expended. I could not go to my job, if deep inside I did not believe that mankind will eventually put an end to it.
The cheerful side is this: for the very first time in human history we are standing on the threshold of a dream. Alfred Nobel had it, Feynman and the bomb developers had it, and now, it really is getting so expensive to wage war, the worlds dictators may opt to not do it. For the petty dictators, the cost must be in actual wealth, not mere human lives that they place so little value upon, but in their own bank accounts. We have shown that we can take a war directly to a dictator's summer cottage in the country, and leave the rest of the population and infrastructure unharmed.
It really isnt about getting rich, or at least not for me. There are much better ways to get rich. If I am part of the technological push to put a final end to war, I will feel like my life has counted for something. I will go into the dewar with a sense of fulfillment. spike