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gwern comments on Rationality Quotes November 2009 - Less Wrong
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That has almost nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with the new world order after WW2. Half of Europe was inside the Soviet Union. The other half was mostly being used as an American front against the Soviets and didn't dare to have internal wars. Later, EU precursor organizations cemented the Western European alliances among the more important countries.
Of course all this hasn't stopped the Western European countries from having wars outside Europe, and there have been plenty of those in the last 60 years.
Today, European politics are such that multinational business & industry organizations, and private international alliances, are vastly more powerful than any hypothetical nationalistic power. So we can't have an internal European war. This is unrelated to democracy, and would work just as well in any other well integrated pan-European system.
"The other half was mostly being used as an American front against the Soviets and didn't dare to have internal wars."
Really? Suppose the German invasion of 1941 was more successful, the Soviet Union was heavily weakened, and the demarcation line between the two was on the Vistula instead of the Elbe. Which European countries would have fought each other?
"Of course all this hasn't stopped the Western European countries from having wars outside Europe, and there have been plenty of those in the last 60 years."
Between two Western European powers? Which ones?
"Today, European politics are such that multinational business & industry organizations, and private international alliances, are vastly more powerful than any hypothetical nationalistic power."
Evidence? Spain, Italy, France, the UK, and Germany have gross revenues of more than $1T each, more than three times those of the largest corporations.
The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights...
What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?
Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums - a few thousands or millions. The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical.
"The British and the French fought multiple times in the 1800s, and also in the early 1900s. One would expect further fights..."
Citation? Britain and France haven't fought since Napoleon's defeat in 1815.
"What stopped de Gaulle from thinking about being a second Napoleon, if not US hegemony?"
The fact that the French population would never stomach it, given that they had just gotten out from under four years of brutal German occupation with American and British support?
"Said revenues are controlled by political processes, which are staffed by people that can be influenced or outright bought for trivial sums - a few thousands or millions."
Ross Perot lost, and Bloomberg never even tried.
"The returns to investing in lobbying are well known and can be astronomical."
Citation?
The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it's not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s. We don't know that their enmity and warring are truly over, any more than we know whether great power conflicts are truly over.
And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge? Italy and Germany were right there, and American and Britain wouldn't've seriously objected to France invading (in this hypothetical nuke-less Communist-less world) - they weren't in any position to stomach stopping France. The American & British support didn't mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his force de frappe.
Waggish answer: What, the past couple years of American politics haven't made it painfully obvious how valuable lobbying can be?
Serious answer: if the returns weren't high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?
More serious answer: The Mickey Mouse Protection Act
Most serious answer: http://www.google.com/search?q=return+on+lobbying+investment and specifically http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041102035.html :
"The Napoleonic wars were at least 4 wars; then there was the Merina Conquest of Madagascar and the Hundred Days. 6 wars in 15 years is pretty impressive. And it's not like France was peaceful after that, there was all sorts of wars all over the place, yes, even in Europe. And then Germany and Russia have kept the 2 busy all through the 1900s."
This is a blatant dodge of my original claim, which was specifically about Britain and France. No one who had ever cracked a history book would ever claim that there were no wars in Europe during the 20th century.
"And no country occupied has ever wished for revenge?"
Germany was destroyed, the government was completely dissolved (and largely imprisoned), all the cities were bombed into rubble, and more than ten percent of the population was killed (including, I believe, a majority of the men of military age). You couldn't get a more thorough revenge if you obliterated Berlin with a 50 megaton H-bomb.
"The American & British support didn't mean a whole lot to de Gaulle and his third way."
Historically, after the war, we know that the French didn't want another war against Germany. Why would it be different this time?
"Serious answer: if the returns weren't high, then why do some companies invest so much in lobbying instead of putting the money into Treasuries?"
Because there are points on the real line between "3%" and "22,000%".
"In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. "
OK, that's a legitimate citation, but it ignores the non-monetary costs of lobbying, which far exceed the monetary ones. A company may hire a lobbyist and pay him $100,000, but if both the company and the lobbyist don't have connections with people high up in Washington, they won't get anywhere. And it's much more difficult to acquire those connections than to acquire $100K.