Conveniently ignoring historical examples because they don’t precisely fit your model is foolish. The decades leading up to WWI have an absurd amount of comparisons to today’s environment. Intelligent people (like Norman Angell) thought there was too much commerce between the European powers for there to ever be a…

I think of economic opportunity afforded in a global system as the carrot, and threat of force as the stick. The global economic system cannot be both the carrot and the stick. History has proven that.

“This plane makes profits, not security.”

The military needed a jet to replace 4 different other jets. I’d love to see NASA get a larger budget, but this isn’t the program to cut in order to do so, as the F-35 is a legit military need. Let’s cut the things the pentagon doesn’t want but congress shoves down it’s throat in order to placate their voting…

Yeah your characterization of me is profoundly incorrect. There’s a small volume of my comments on FA articles that illustrates my worldview and understanding of policy. I have studied globalization and international security, but you and I disagree on which came first.

If installing a CIWS allows you and your neighbors to freely trade with each other and make large profits without getting harassed, then yes.

People like to forget where the Internet came from...

Yep I didn’t even mention the J-20 or J-31.

It’s like arguing with Vasser grads.. Oh and they’re not aircraft, they’re weaponised tools of government destruction, suppressing free thought and action via the hashtag#MilCompIndustryBad.com Army that exists only to reap destruction on poor uncivilised countries who are innocent of anything like the mass…

This is like talking to high schoolers who think they completely understand the world because they recently started watching the news. Apparently we only will ever need airplanes to “shoot brown people in mud huts”.

Thanks for this. People who have never been further east than Kansas City don’t understand this concept.

My family is from India - I’ve travelled there plenty and driven there too. I just want to crack a joke that these cars will never be going fast enough to be in any real danger - the only places where you’d even get up to such speeds are places where there’s nothing to hit.

How is it poor logic? Cars are safer than the other options. In a country where the middle class is barely above the extreme poverty line anything that increases vehicle costs even a little bit puts literally millions more into much more dangerous transportation options. And let's not get started on the traffic…

And you would be wrong. Motorcycle and bicycle death rates in India are far far higher than for autos.

Unfortunately, people who have never seen real poverty aren’t very good at imagining a needs/wants scale so different from their own that safety becomes a luxury. The tragic truth is that for many people around the world, what we would consider basic safety is something they simply cannot afford.

No, seriously. In India it is extremely common to see entire families on motorcycles, 5, 6 or even 7 people on a single motorcycle. No Ringling Bors Circus experience required.

unless you work in Ringling Bros.

Using your baby as an airbag is generally frowned upon.

I bet they’re all safer than a motorcycle with five people on it, which is realistically what these cars are competing with. Making the cars safer will make them more expensive, which will make more people stick with the motorcycles, which will make them less safe.