09-07-2016, 12:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-07-2016, 12:50 PM by Eric the Green.)
(09-07-2016, 12:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(09-07-2016, 12:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: So the people can't decide, whether by politics or revolution, what kind of military technology they should have?
Did you read the article? No, people can't "decide" to eschew iron age technology in favor of sticking with bronze, nor to stick with plate armor and swords when the enemy is using firearms. People who so "decide" will soon - which is to say, within a small number of generational cycles - be conquered by others who use the more effective technology.
You didn't read the article, did you?
Yes I did!
People and societies are not solely determined by their technology; people decide what technology they have. I know that's a different philosophy from materialism, but the facts about how societies evolve are a lot less clear than any doctrinaire single-cause philosophy (even mine that I just expressed) can assert.
Your theory is so full of holes that it's a waste of time to refute them all. You need to think more clearly.
The arms you mention here are all individual arms. So according to your theory, of course 18th and 19th century individually-operated arms will "trump" the earlier ones. All that means is that advanced technological societies will conquer less advanced ones. No shit; but so what? That doesn't say a thing about those societies. Arms are not the only thing that determines what kind of society people have. Such a one-sided theory of causation is worse than Marx.
Who says that history is still all about who conquers who? We now live in a world where unjustified conquest of other states is frowned upon and even resisted by the international community.
And our democracy does not depend on a bunch of gun fanatics who refuse to go beyond their fearful ignorance. And armies have never been made up of militias composed of individual firearm owners. You seem to forget that little detail. States provide for armies by taxing their citizens and providing arms to the soldiers they draft or hire.