Davos

[Brad De Long]

>Well it *was* supposed to be a *deliberate* echo of Dr. Johnson. And
>I do agree with him: Economic Growth is at least a positive sum game.
>War and Theology are clearly negative sum games--as the computer said
>in "War Games," "...interesting. The only way to win is not to
>play..."
>
>
>Brad DeLong
>
>The positive sum game claim that is stated above is formally undecidable
>[Albin, 1998; Daly, 1996]; as an empirical claim, what's the experiment that
>could perform

Empirical Experiment: The Twentieth Century.

War: outcome, 60 million dead. Imperial German regime gone. Nazi 
German regime gone. North Vietnamese regime a gang labor boss for 
Nike. North Korean regime combines all the delights of hereditary 
monarchy with those of high Stalinism.

Economic Growth: Annual world GDP today: $30 trillion; annual world 
GDP (2000 prices) in 1900: $3 trillion.

Net effect of war? 60 million people dead. No utopias created.

Net effect of economic growth? A much richer (albeit more unequally 
distributed) world with higher levels of education, less hunger, and 
longer life expectancies.

Brad DeLong