The proper role and scope of government

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

It's easy to agree with your first sentence,
but I don't think you want to hang your hat on the second.

Eisenhower recognized and told the US people something about that.
Regan ignored his remarks in striving for his 600-ship navy.
"Star wars" and "Haliburton" are a couple of the more current memes.
It was all about making $ and profits from the common defense.

Popular notion, but I'm thinking in terms of a society's overall creation of wealth, not in soldiers and government contractors getting paid their livings.

The weapons of a state might be analogized with the antlers of a deer: they defend the deer, they aid the deer in promulgating his genes through deer-dom -- but they exact a cost to the deer's metabolism, growth, energy. Such expenditure might have been laid out in some other part of the deer, right? And yet, the deer would not do so well without them, in the end.

Necessary, but not wealth-generating overall; wealth-consuming instead.