# What would the population be if there was no war? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081 "2016-04-13T16:04:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/21 "2016-04-13T20:04:06Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > There are leaps forward in emergency medical treatments during wartime due to necessity (head trauma, pain management, artificial limbs, burns, infection, blood transfusions). These work their way back into general usage fairly quickly so there is already a strong correlation between war and trauma medicine. > > Is there any similar correlation between war and contagious diseases? It looks like there were treatments for malaria developed during WWII, for example. But we have no way of knowing how medicine will develop if war is never known, do we? Perhaps slower for reasons you and other have brought up, perhaps faster for other reasons. I refer back to my initial response to this thread: Too many parameters/variables/butterflies. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/22 "2016-04-13T20:11:30Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > But we have no way of knowing how medicine will develop if war is never known, do we? Perhaps slower for reasons you and other have brought up, perhaps faster for other reasons. I refer back to my initial response to this thread: Too many parameters/variables/butterflies. The specific question in the OP can’t be answered, but the factors that might be involved in determining population size can be discussed factually. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/23 "2016-04-14T00:50:37Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > First of all, infectious diseases have killed many more people historically than warfare. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 60% of the population of Europe, and it is believed that diseases introduced from Eurasia and Africa killed about 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas after contact in 1492. Wars have never had anything close to that effect (excluding perhaps some deliberate genocides). > > Second, there is a positive feedback between population density and disease. Disease can spread more easily in denser populations. So if people weren’t being killed by warfare, an even greater number would have been killed by disease. Warfare generally promotes diseases. It brings large groups of people together into periods of prolonged contact which is a great opportunity for germs. And the people being brought together were generally from a number of different communities so they all brought their own collections of local hometown germs to introduce to new people. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/24 "2016-04-14T00:58:35Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > I’ll agree wars cost money, but it’s not like that money disappears. It gets spent on the manufacture of weapons, trucks, ships, uniforms, planes, etc. Which means the money goes into the economy, workers get paid. Some of the money spent on war does effectively disappear. One group of people gets together and spends thousands of man hours digging up rocks, gathering them in one location, and assembling them into a fort. Another group of people spends thousands of man hours digging up and purifying chemicals so they can manufacture the compound which will throw large metal balls at the fort and knock it down. And at the end, one side is left with a pile of gravel and the other side is left with a bunch of smoke. Not counting the value of the military victory, their efforts have essentially disappeared. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/25 "2016-04-14T01:15:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’m not saying the money disappears, but it would be spent on something different. If the current big crisis is not war but disease, might not the big money be concentrated there? I don’t think we can assume that. The economics are different. Let’s say we have two countries Czarcasmia and Nemoland. The wise farsighted citizens of Czarcasmia spend a significant portion of their money on medical and scientific research. Meanwhile the lazy idiots in Nemoland spend their money on fast food and porn. The result is numerous new discoveries are made each year in Czarcasmia but once they’re made, they’re available to everyone in both countries. The Nemolanders actually come out better because they only need to buy the products that work; they didn’t waste money on research programs that didn’t pan out. So it’s essentially a free rider problem. But military spending doesn’t work like that. That’s competitive economics. Countries win or lose in military spending not based on how much is spent in total but on how much they spend in relation to other countries. If Czarcasmia spends five million on military spending, Nemoland will want to spend ten million. Czarcasmia will then respond by spending twenty million. And so on until you have trillion dollar military budgets. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/26 "2016-04-14T01:22:25Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Is there any similar correlation between war and contagious diseases? It looks like there were treatments for malaria developed during WWII, for example. There was a big push during the early stages of WWII to develop a way to [mass produce penicillin](http://www.lib.niu.edu/2001/iht810139.html). ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/27 "2016-04-14T07:08:27Z")
The economics of modern war are going to be difficult. The concept that **money** is wasted is especially fraught. Economic activity causes money to come into existence. Money travels faster through the economy and overall there is much more liquidity. Whilst you can argue that a lot of that money is wasted in comparison to what it could be spent on in alternative pursuits, a great deal of that money would never had existed if not for the economic engine of war. Human effort OTOH could be argued to be wasted. That is a fixed quantity (assuming close to full employment - which isn’t guaranteed.) But if you look across the entire human effort in a country during a war, it isn’t clear that there is a massive diversion of effort away from ordinary pursuits. But in the margins - the place where the excess available effort after the work of keeping the country running is, that is where you see a change. Infrastructure building, unless in support of the war effort, may cease. Research is diverted to the war. (Which may or may not turn out to be a good thing.) In general, significantly more research may be happening than before. But these are effects that are only true in the last 100 years. Before that, wars occurred very differently. In the past wars were a simple drain on a country. There was scant technology, just lots of soldiers and support that needed paying. But winning typically meant increased wealth from the conquered lands. Wars of conquest were a net economic win if you won. Even the Crusades quickly became little more than a veneer over organised looting raids ---
**Author:** ![Crazier\_Catlady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Crazier\_Catlady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazier_Catlady)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/28 "2016-04-14T08:48:41Z")
WWII caused the development of nuclear bombs. The existence of nuclear bombs caused the US military to have a network developed that could withstand a nuclear attack, which led us to the internet. So you could say that all the economic gains caused by the internet wouldn’t have existed without WWII. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/29 "2016-04-14T13:44:21Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Some of the money spent on war does effectively disappear. One group of people gets together and spends thousands of man hours digging up rocks, gathering them in one location, and assembling them into a fort. Another group of people spends thousands of man hours digging up and purifying chemicals so they can manufacture the compound which will throw large metal balls at the fort and knock it down. And at the end, one side is left with a pile of gravel and the other side is left with a bunch of smoke. Not counting the value of the military victory, their efforts have essentially disappeared. Sort of… but on the government’s books, not the broader economy’s. If anything, wars tend to stimulate economies through the usually massive infusions of government money for things like uniforms, food, munitions, war machines, and a lot of relatively mundane stuff. I’d bet that 1940-1945 were the salad days for toilet seat manufacturers, for example. They had all those toilet seats in every airbase in England, every Pacific island, every base and camp built in the US to supply, and that demand wasn’t there in say… 1937. The big question is if and how fast your government can pay off the debt it almost certainly incurs to finance the war. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/30 "2016-04-14T13:45:19Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > The economics of modern war are going to be difficult. The concept that **money** is wasted is especially fraught. Economic activity causes money to come into existence. Money travels faster through the economy and overall there is much more liquidity. Whilst you can argue that a lot of that money is wasted in comparison to what it could be spent on in alternative pursuits, a great deal of that money would never had existed if not for the economic engine of war. > > Human effort OTOH could be argued to be wasted. That is a fixed quantity (assuming close to full employment - which isn’t guaranteed.) But if you look across the entire human effort in a country during a war, it isn’t clear that there is a massive diversion of effort away from ordinary pursuits. But in the margins - the place where the excess available effort after the work of keeping the country running is, that is where you see a change. Infrastructure building, unless in support of the war effort, may cease. Research is diverted to the war. (Which may or may not turn out to be a good thing.) In general, significantly more research may be happening than before. But these are effects that are only true in the last 100 years. Before that, wars occurred very differently. > > In the past wars were a simple drain on a country. There was scant technology, just lots of soldiers and support that needed paying. But winning typically meant increased wealth from the conquered lands. Wars of conquest were a net economic win if you won. Even the Crusades quickly became little more than a veneer over organised looting raids The notion isn’t that money is “wasted” alone, but rather, that massive opportunity costs are incurred. This is the basis of the “broken windows” fallacy (as in: why not celebrate when a little boy goes around smashing widows for fun? It provides more work - the glassmaker, the policeman, the window-installer etc. so value is being created. For a naughty little boy, read “war”). The impact of that effect may be masked though because war can act like a big Keynesian stimulus program. This certainly seemed the case in the US, after WW2. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/31 "2016-04-15T17:32:28Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Sort of… but on the government’s books, not the broader economy’s. If anything, wars tend to stimulate economies through the usually massive infusions of government money for things like uniforms, food, munitions, war machines, and a lot of relatively mundane stuff. > > I’d bet that 1940-1945 were **the salad days** for toilet seat manufacturers, for example. They had all those toilet seats in every airbase in England, every Pacific island, every base and camp built in the US to supply, and that demand wasn’t there in say… 1937. > > The big question is if and how fast your government can pay off the debt it almost certainly incurs to finance the war. Is that what “salad days” means? I thought it meant that a couple didn’t have much money, and had to subsist on rabbit food most of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/32 "2016-04-15T17:44:02Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Is that what “salad days” means? I thought it meant that a couple didn’t have much money, and had to subsist on rabbit food most of the time. 😃 Originally it was a Shakespearian pun: “my salad days, when I was green in judgment” - meaning, “inexperienced youth”. In common usage its meaning has morphed from “youth” to “heyday”. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/33 "2016-04-15T20:33:04Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Sort of… but on the government’s books, not the broader economy’s. If anything, wars tend to stimulate economies through the usually massive infusions of government money for things like uniforms, food, munitions, war machines, and a lot of relatively mundane stuff. > > I’d bet that 1940-1945 were the salad days for toilet seat manufacturers, for example. They had all those toilet seats in every airbase in England, every Pacific island, every base and camp built in the US to supply, and that demand wasn’t there in say… 1937. > > The big question is if and how fast your government can pay off the debt it almost certainly incurs to finance the war. The thing is government spending is essentially redistribution of money. The government collected money from its citizens in order to spend it. So the money spent buying toilet seats wasn’t spent buying other civilian goods. In some cases that can benefit the economy. The government might decide it needs to break enemy codes so it spends money developing early computers. After the war that computer technology enters the civilian economy and improves it. Government money spent on projects like education or health care or building infrastructure generally benefit the overall economy. But military spending? Not so much. If the government spends thirty-eight million dollars buying an F-14 Tomcat and another sixty-two million operating it before retiring it to some field, what value did it receive for that hundred million dollars? It taught some service members some skills but it’s hard to believe they couldn’t have learned those same skills in a less expensive manner. The main argument for military spending is avoiding negative costs. It’s basically saying _“Sure, we didn’t get any significant value out of the hundred million we spent on that aircraft. But if we hadn’t operated that aircraft, some other country might have taken action against the United States that would have cost us more than a hundred million dollars of damage. So operating that aircraft was a economically sound decision because it cost less than the problem it prevented.”_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081.md?page=1)