(TFT) War, supportability, and economy

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

Jay et al,

At 16:21 -0400 3/21/09, Jay wrote:
> A hundred cows and one bull equals massive heard growth whereas one 
> cow and a hundred bulls...
> Well maybe that's time to go to war...

	Going to war is a time-honored way to get rid of surplus 
males, no doubt about it.

	Not that such a thing as human "surplus males" exist except 
in a society where females are seen as chattel and alpha males want 
to demonstrate power by hoarding (female) chattel; by design, birth 
rates are very close to 50/50 male/female.

	What's overlooked often is that societies with high ratios of 
females/males did *not* grow rapidly in most cases. The jealousies 
and other emotional imbalances between the wives (and hence mothers) 
led to jealousies and other emotional imbalances between the 
offspring, which very often led to civil war, fratricide, lack of 
productivity, lack of scientific advancement, etc.

	The best ratio, in terms of growing the population *and 
having the resultant population be productive*, vs. being mostly 
criminals, is very close to 50/50 (I contend).

	In game-writing terms, and backing off a bit on the focus, I 
would recommend two (or possibly more) parameters that describe the 
"health" of a population in mental/emotional terms.

	The first would be something like "emotional stability", 
"moral fiber", or similar and relates to the average citizen's desire 
to "do the right thing". On a personal scale, in a society where this 
number is very low, having your cart break down by the side of the 
road means you'll probably get robbed. Where it's very high, you'll 
probably get a ride to the next town and your cart will still be 
there when the cartwright brings you back with a new wheel. On a 
societal scale, the economic productivity of a society would 
positively correlate with this number, due to minimal vandalism or 
theft, not many resources spent on justice system or security, etc.

	The second would be "entrepreneurship" or something similar. 
This represents a combination of the educational level and the 
independent spirit and zest for innovation in the society. Higher 
numbers here would correlate with faster technological innovation, as 
well as a higher rate of infrastructure creation, and hence again 
there would be a positive correlation between this number and 
economic productivity. (I could certainly see an argument for 
breaking this further into "education" and "independence". For 
example, in Ming China, education was pretty good (among the upper 
classes) but innovation was *not* valued.)


	Some examples:

Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish:
	pegged high on moral fiber, medium low on entrepreneurship. 
Still pretty productive economically, since they stay alive despite 
being far behind technologically.

Russia, modern-day:
	Pegged high on entrepreneurship, near-zero moral fiber. Crime 
lords rampant, much instability, much economic waste due to competing 
factions, very high security requirements on all infrastructure, etc. 
Moderately competitive economically.

13 colonies, North America, 1770-1800
	High, both moral fiber and entrepreneurship. Very competitive 
economically.

Somalia, modern day:
	Near-zero moral fiber, near-zero entrepreneurship. Economic 
basket case.


	I would say that severe gender ratio imbalance would place a 
very low upper limit on the "moral fiber" rating for a society, and 
hence restrict its economic growth potential.
	Other factors would of course come into play; strength and 
character of religious institutions, education of the leadership (cf. 
Queen Victoria), homogeneity of the population (probably adversely 
affecting entrepreneurship for a very homogenous population (cf. 
feudal Japan vs. 19th-century America)), and many others.



At 16:21 -0400 3/21/09, Jay wrote:
> War fixes an economy?
> RIIIGHT!
> If your Rhet Butler.
> Even He got disgusted with himself over the profiteering.

	I'd make some important distinctions here.

1) *Losing* a war will total your economy. No more factories, no more 
farms, no more infrastructure. Hope you like the stone age, that's 
where you are now. By definition, a civil war is "lost" by up to half 
of the country, so civil wars always fall into this category. Higher 
technology generally accents this case, though the huns, etc. did 
pretty good about scorching the earth behind them.

2) *Winning* a war really does "strengthen" your economy in many real 
terms. People work that would not have worked without the threat to 
national security (c.f. "victory gardens", "Rosie the riveter", 
etc.). In addition, the populace will accept government controls (and 
spending) that might have caused rebellion in peacetime, and that 
*can* lead to a more efficient economy (c.f. Russian space program 
and development of atomic weapons, essentially beating a far stronger 
American economy in total time to develop.) Finally, technology 
skyrockets (pardon the pun) in wartime.
	However, in addition to "strengthening" the economy, war 
moves it in directions different from sustainable peacetime growth. 
Almost certainly the "moral fiber" number discussed above goes down, 
even for the winning side. (cf  higher divorce rates and unhappiness 
among retired/mustered out military, "military brats", "combat 
fatigue" etc.) The new infrastructure is optimized for military use, 
and it's not trivial to convert to appropriate civilian use. (c.f. 
Interstate Highway system (spit!) vs. a good national rail system; 
Boeing stratoliner vs. later non-bomber-derived airliners). High 
government spending results in massive debt; etc. I think it's 
debatable whether the overall effect on the economy is positive in 
this case, but I certainly don't think it's a slam-dunk "bad for the 
economy" *if* the economy under discussion is on the winning side.

	I don't have a good way to generate rules on this, as there 
are a *lot* of factors (technological advance being perhaps the 
hardest to nail down).

--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
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