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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
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Comments (219)
Is it too dangerous to the heat/light level of the discussion to ask what Iraq tells us about how that would go?
I said conquered, not trashed by a bunch of Westphalians who weren't planning on owning the place afterward.
Wait, you think Iraq would have gone better if we had just ruled it with a military governor and then tried to annex it?!
I'd have to turn this over to Michael Vassar if you want details. He's the one who convinced me that the British used to be really good at this.
One key point is that it doesn't do you much good to be conquered by conquerors who are too squeamish to keep order. Remember when the Iraqis were wishing for Saddam back because he might have been utterly evil but at least his reign of terror kept peace in the streets? That's why I mentioned China. The old-time British would've been better, but you can bet China wouldn't tolerate warfare in cities they planned to go on milking. Life in China isn't perfect but it's a whole lot better than living in a failed state.
I seriously think that Earth would be better off if we got out of the way and let China conquer everything that isn't a democracy.
Well I think the British were really good at that but they were good at it during a time when the areas they were taking over didn't have expectations or traditions of sovereign statehood. Nor was there a vocal international community with the same expectations. We're all Westphalians now. You just can't get away with taking over territory anymore.
That could theoretically change in the future, but in a world anything like this one China invades Africa and deals with a popular and violent resistance movement that only grows.
I think you underestimate the effectiveness of authoritarian methods of pacification. There is an enormous difference between the methods the Coalition forces are using in Iraq today, and large scale use of concentration camps, hostage taking for actions against occupying forces and all those other good things. Imagine what Eastern Europe would have looked like during WW2, if German resources weren´t committed fighting the Soviets. Another good analogy is to look at is how things are in Tibet.
If you don't have ethical qualms there are certainly more effective ways to combat resistances but even the Nazis had a lot of trouble quelling resistance in places with strong national identities (France, mainly but Britain would have been hell to hold on to).
All of this is a lot easier if you're already at war with most of the world-- if you also want to maintain good relations with the developed world there are some pretty firm limits on what you can do. What do you think the reaction of Europe and the Muslim world would have been to the US deciding to annex Iraq and abandon ethical restrictions on their counter insurgency tactics?
It was my belief that the counterfactual was that the rest of world agreed to stand by and allow China to take over all of the non-democratic world. The US would have faced a lot of flack if it decided to annex Iraq, yes. However, the only people who could effectively fight us in a non-Westphalian world are Russia and China. The entire Muslim world could be conquered (in the sense that got George Bush to say "Mission Accomplished") in less than 2 years. The US, however, would not embrace the tactics necessary to pacify that territory, nor would we be able to raise the number of troops necessary to control the territory. China, on the other hand, has a 2.25 million strong army and the ability to impress far more and to engage in the sorts of tactics that allow actual pacification.
I'm not sure we hold different views then. A world where no one objects to China taking over the non-Democratic world is a very different world from the one that we live in. Nonetheless, in that world it would be a decent idea.
What exactly are you planning to do once they control all the former non-democratic states, consolidated their territory and a ready to get on with business?
What exactly are you implying China would do then? No matter how much of the world they controlled, they still couldn't invade the US or any other nuclear power.
Off the top of my head, they could:
Michael Vassar, could you give the details on this?
How do you feel about Russia doing the conquering? They've still got the guts to use brutal methods when necessary; they were still willing to go all Stalin on Chechnya even after they were no longer Communist.
Russia seems grossly incompetent compared to China. I don't know if the conquerees would be better off.
Russian person here and I don't want to conquer anyone! Don't get me wrong, it's kind of neat to hear you and Vassar agreeing with Moldbug about colonialism, but seriously: I don't see how annexing Tajikistan would help our economy. They're already sending us all the cheap labor we want :-) This arrangement is better than back when we owned Tajikistan and a host of other now-independent countries, which were all huge money sinks.
(IMO economically it would even make sense for us to let Chechnya go, but we can't do that because they'd just start the attacks again with money and volunteers flowing in from Arab countries, as it happened in the first two wars.)
Yeah, conquering foreign countries isn't very good at generating wealth for the conquerors these days. You used to be able to go take an army into a city, round up all the valuables, and sell the population into slavery. Not so much any more.
This is really strange then:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=per+capita+gdp+of+russia%2Fper+capita+gdp+of+china
Russia had a head start - and has oil wealth. For comparison, Saudi Arabia's GDP per capita is on the order of $17,000. 45% of its entire GDP is its nationalized oil industry; private industry is only 40%.
It's true. However I think people get a little caught up in the China is growing story. Russia is a dying country in a lot of ways. However, both are heavily controlled by corrupt leaders.
EDIT:was->ways
That is not clearly relevant, since the graph was not about Russia being richer, but growing faster. That the USSR numbers were higher might be relevant, if it makes it easier to return to them.
Russia has a similar amount of oil exports to Saudi Arabia, spread over five times the population, but has similar GDP per capita. Simply going from 0 to its current oil doesn't account for the change over the past decade. If you throw in gas, aluminum and steel, it might be a big piece of the change, though.
Oops, I only noticed the number, not the graph.
If we were serious about it, then I think so. And by "serious", I mean "willing to massacre populations that didn't fall into line." We'd have a higher body count, but things would be better after about a generation and a half.
See also: Philippine-American War
Also, in hindsight, the U.S. probably shouldn't have interfered with the Soviet Union's misadventure in Afghanistan.
Also in hindsight, the US should not have turned Haiti back over to the Haitians. Losing the corvee and getting Duvalier is, I think, a bad trade.
Looks like you are assuming that the west - England, France, Spain etc conquered other countries to improve those countries. In reality, the primary motivation was to get economic leverage against the competing powers at the time. And often times, this is done at the expense of the economic well-being of the people of the conquered countries. For example, the British Raj destroyed the budding local textile industry and trade between India and other European countries, Persia and Turkey.
If not, what makes you think it would be any different with Africa?
No one is assuming that. Everyone here assumes that the conquerors would be motivated by self-interest. The argument some are making is that the conquering would still have the side effect of making life better for the conquered.