Productivity and the Declining Viability of Conquest

Robert Farley has a good post on the question of "Why is it that the United Kingdom, which is in an absolute sense far more wealthy now than it was in 1930, having difficulty maintaining a foreign deployment of about 10,000 total in Iraq and Afghanistan, while in 1930 it deployed many multiples of that total all over the world, plus colonial auxiliaries who were partially paid for by the Crown?" As he observes:

The relative increase in the effectiveness of insurgency strategies isn't just a consequence of the spread of the AK-47 or of the further development of nationalism in the non-western world; it's also a consequence of the fact that modern, wealthy states can now deploy far, far lower numbers of troops than they could fifty years ago. Indeed, in 1965 the United States (with a smaller and much poorer population in absolute terms) managed to deploy half a million troops to Vietnam while at the same time maintaining large contingents in West Germany and South Korea.

Farley gives some good answers to the question, but it's worth noting that this is part of a perfectly general situation. As technology improves, the average level of productivity goes up. And as productivity goes up, wages go up as well, at least over the long term. The wages go up, however, more-or-less across the board whereas productivity has only actually improved in the select areas that have seen meaningful improvement. As a result, things that are intrinsically labor-intensive tend to get more expensive and rarer over time, even as overall living standards go up.

A rich American in 2006 is way richer than a rich American in 1906, but the number of people employing large numbers of domestic servants is dramatically down. Similarly, it used to be that people of modest means by the standard of their time (to say nothing of our time) would own hand-crafted furniture that would be absurdly expensive in the modern day. Similarly, while the art of war is certainly enhanced by better technology, this falls overwhelmingly on the "blowing things up from a distance" side of the ledger. Controlling some conquered territory effectively still requires . . . lots of dudes walking around. But it's much more expensive to employ a bunch of dudes than it used to be, especially since the desire is to find sufficiently high-quality people that they can be trusted to operate the expensive and complicated equipment that's used for the "blowing thigns up" missions.

Comments

We obviously need to outsource our occupations to the Chinese, or pay illegal immigrants under the table to do them.

Posted by Njorl | February 28, 2007 3:47 PM

Under the table? Is that where they're hiding? Don't tell Lou Dobbs.

Posted by Jim W | February 28, 2007 3:51 PM

Intersting but not really convincing. Haircuts are the canonical example of a labor-intensive good that has become relatively more costly, but we still get just as many haircuts as our grandparents did.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | February 28, 2007 3:51 PM

Flowbee!

Posted by SP | February 28, 2007 3:53 PM

This is pretty accurate. I would add that in regards to maintaining an occupation it is not just the quantity but the quality as well. You just don't see ambitious, educated middle class males join up with the military anymore. In Imperial England's case they were the officer class and the backbone of the colonial system. Now with more opportunities these types no longer see the military as the preferred vehicle for social mobility. Which isn't to say today's soldiers are not good soldiers, they obviously are and due to modern day training and technology are probably better ah...destroyers of stuff then soldiers in the past were. But, to competently run an occupation you need soldiers that are more then soldiers. You need soldiers that are also adept at learning and functioning within a foreign culture, who understand where the levers of power are, how to co-opt the owners of those levers, etc... And it's this kind of soldier who is in short supply in today's modern military.

Posted by Lions | February 28, 2007 3:54 PM

we still get just as many haircuts as our grandparents did. - lemuel pitkin

I think that depends on who "we" is. I reckon I get as many haircuts as my grandparents did, but it used to be that in some parts of the country, going to the hair-stylists' was one of the principle forms of socialization ... I reckon that is still the case, but I wouldn't be too surprised with the rise of mass media and the internets on the one hand and the increase in relative costs of haircuts on the other (as well as other social changes), if the "tradition" of certain people of going to have their hair-styled once a week or fortnight is fading away.

Posted by DAS | February 28, 2007 3:55 PM

Here's an example of how cheap labor is in some other countries. The last time I was in India (about 10 years ago), the people I was staying with rented a VCR one day. The VCR came complete with a person to install it, stand around while you watched the movie, and then remove the VCR and take it back to the store when you were done.

Posted by Jim W | February 28, 2007 3:55 PM

Excellent point MY, and I'm sure this has been brought up before but it bears repeating: this is even more true when it comes to education.

Similar quality teachers (and child-rearers) now cost much more than they did a hundred years ago. This means the cost of education goes up significantly as quality stays the same... or the cost of education stays the same as quality falls.

Posted by Tony V | February 28, 2007 4:02 PM

I agree with Farley's point. I think another factor is that, in the case of the United Kingdom at least, there was a reason for stationing all those soldiers in foreign countries: to make money. The UK extracted a huge amount of wealth from many colonized countries, such as India.

On the other hand, I've read somewhere that colonization in many areas, such as African countries, was actually not profitable.

I would feel a little better about our Iraq misadventure if we were at least stealing their oil. At least in that case, there would be a rational reason to be there, even if it was an immoral one. If we're not getting anything out of it, then why are we there?

Posted by Jim W | February 28, 2007 4:08 PM

You know, there's a name for this phenomenon. It's called Baumol's law, after economist William Baumol.

Posted by ed | February 28, 2007 4:12 PM

As a result, things that are intrinsically labor-intensive tend to get more expensive and rarer over time, even as overall living standards go up.

What's gone up, too, is the cost of caring for the much larger proportion of soldiers who are kept alive with our advanced medical technology after injuries that would once, not so long ago, have killed them.

See it and weep (can stream online at ABC if you missed "To Iraq and Back" on the tube last night): Good news that breaks your heart. The good news of Bob Woodruff's miraculous recovery just underscores the tragedy of all the others who weren't so lucky or privileged. If the Iraq war had been an honest response to a real threat, these terrible injuries and ruined lives -- both American and Iraqi -- would be the tragic price of fighting for freedom. But this war was based on lies, and there never was a real threat to our national security. This war was not a cause, it was a crime.

Posted by Madison Guy | February 28, 2007 4:17 PM

We obviously need to outsource our occupations to the Chinese, or pay illegal immigrants under the table to do them.

A realistic example of something similar to that would be the French Foreign Legion.

Posted by Loren Michael | February 28, 2007 4:49 PM

Another side to this is that the cost of military equipment has rocketed over the decades.

In the 1930's an RAF fighter plane would cost around 4000 pounds. This would translate to around 200,000 pounds today(or around 1 million pounds as a share of GDP).
However the latest fighter to enter service with the raf costs around 70 million pounds per plane.So spending the same percentage of GDP in 2005 as in 1935 gives you 1 fighter instead of 70.

Now the latest planes are infinitely more capable than the 1930's version but they can still only be in 1 place at one time.And of course the cost of training people to fly the latest jets is much higher than training them to fly 1930's tech.

Posted by kb | February 28, 2007 4:56 PM

Intersting but not really convincing. Haircuts are the canonical example of a labor-intensive good that has become relatively more costly, but we still get just as many haircuts as our grandparents did.

How does this disprove anything? There's still no technological substitute for a hair-cut, whereas bombs (in actuality or as deterrent) serve mainly the same purpose as an army. And haircuts are such a small part of expenditure they can go up by a factor of 10 and not matter.

Posted by right | February 28, 2007 4:59 PM

Great post, by the way. I think Jim W.'s first point (about extracting wealth from colonies) is a key one as well in explaining the direct example of British colonialism.

Posted by right | February 28, 2007 5:02 PM

The British typically only had something 110,000 Brits in the old Indian Army to hold a gigantic country. They used local sepoys (often from warlike minorities such as Sikhs and Gurkhas) in large numbers. But, the important point is that they didn't get all that much resistance from Indians until nationalism arrived from Europe. India didn't seem like a nation to Indians, it seemed like a world. The vast diversity of India kept the people from uniting, so the idea that some foreign conqueror, whether Mughals or British, would rule the place just seemed like the natural order of things to most Indians. Gandhi himself didn't start thinking of Indians as a nation until he lived in South Africa where Indians of all castes and religions were lumped into the category of "Indian."

Once, Indians started objecting to British rule on a mass scale, the profit-loss statement went into the red, so the British dumped India quickly in 1947.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 28, 2007 5:07 PM

Yeah, I have to question Lemuel Pitkin's haircut example as well. People still get haircuts, because they don't have a whole lot of choice in the manner. But to my understanding, the industry has changed quite a bit over the years. Not too many people pop into their local barber's to get a shave anymore, that's for sure. So to the degree that it is feasible, I believe people have tried to limit their barbershop expenses.

Posted by mpowell | February 28, 2007 5:09 PM

This idea that occupation used to be easier because local populations didn't object so much is really weird to me. I mean sure, it makes sense and I'm convinced that its part of the story. But its interesting that people now seem to so universally object to foreign rulers. But the question to me is: why do they care so much? I mean sure, India is better off now running itself instead of having that wealth siphoned off by the British Empire... but is that really true for large parts of Africa? Why would those people object to a competent foreign occupation instead of a incompetent kleptocracy? I guess part of the answer is that the occupations weren't always competent, but that gets into a debate on the merits. The real issue is, what is the fundamental difference between a foreign and native-born dictator?

Posted by mpowell | February 28, 2007 5:15 PM

In a primarily agricultural economy with low increases in the output per acre farmed, conquest made a lot of economic sense. If your population was growing faster than your output per acre, it made a lot of sense to go steal acreas from your neighbors. This was essentially the logic behind the Japanese attack on China in the 1930s -- with international trade in ruins, Japan's per capita consumption of calories per day was falling in the 1930s, so conquering China appeared to have an economic logic.

Hitler thought in the exact same terms ("lebensraum"), but I've never seen evidence that the economic calculus made sense in Germany in the 1930s -- Germany had far more farmland per capita than mountainous Japan. Germans weren't getting hungrier. Hitler's piratical perspective was probably centuries out of date. Bismarck understood the economic realities much better 60 years before -- he fought three wars to unify Germany, then stopped fighting Europeans, and didn't get very excited about African colonization either, which he understood was a waste of money. Once unified, Bismarckian Germany was rich and strong, so why go looking for trouble? But Hitler, more than anybody else in history, wanted to go look for trouble. And got it.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 28, 2007 5:15 PM

But it's much more expensive to employ a bunch of dudes than it used to be, especially since the desire is to find sufficiently high-quality people that they can be trusted to operate the expensive and complicated equipment that's used for the "blowing thigns up" missions.

Excellent point Matt.

Posted by Jimm | February 28, 2007 5:26 PM

There's a way to obtain labor for the armed forces at a price below market. It's called the draft. Iraq is the first time since the Mexican War that the US has fought a multi-year conflict without one. In the Civil War, both North and South used conscription. In WWI, when we added 3 million men to the Army and put two million fighting men into Europe, we did it with conscription. Over 2.7 million men were drafted, and only 300,000 volunteered. Not to mention WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. So much for the cheap labor theory.

If Iraq had ever posed a genuine threat to the US, we would have had no problem raising an army of half a million troops. There would have been a draft, and people would have accepted it. But Iraq has never posed a real threat. The administration has always known that the American people wouldn't have supported this war if they'd actually been asked to fight it. That's why the war is destroying the army. It's got nothing to do with the cost of labor.

As for Britain, the U.K. is having difficulty keeping 10,000 men in Iraq because the British people don't want them there. The relevant figures have nothing to do with the cost of maintaining troops. The numbers that matter are the poll results for the popularity of the Labor Party.

Posted by bloix | February 28, 2007 5:27 PM

"What is the fundamental difference between a foreign and native-born dictator?"

It's a good question, but the answer is that "people care." It's insulting to be ruled by somebody from abroad who is not one of you. It makes your people (and hence you) look inferior. We all (especially young men) want to belong to something bigger and stronger than us, a winning team. And who rules whom is the ultimate team sport.

I just read Barack Obama's 1995 autobiography. It's extremely well written and revealing. It's fascinating in how tormented he is on the inside when he seems so suave on the outside.

From adolescence onward, he always desperately wanted to have a race to belong to, a bigger team than himself in whose accomplishments he could take pride. Of course, it was unthinkable in his nice liberal white family to take pride in the accomplishments of his mother's race, so he fully identified himself with his absent father's race.

The problem was that the bottom line evidence of who conquered whom -- what Lenin called the eternal great question of "Who? Whom?" -- was dismaying. The race he wanted to identify with had been enslaved and colonized by the race he didn't want to identify with.

From age 10 onward, he was deeply wounded psychically by the fact that, in the past, his mother's race could (not so much _would_ but _could_) enslave and colonize his father's race. There can be forgiveness for whites that they would do enslave and colonize, but there can be no forgiveness that they _could_ enslave and colonize. How can you apologize for being more competent than somebody else? You can't.

So, the world is better off with 200 different countries, even if the indigenous rulers are often pretty incompetent, because the psychic scars of European imperialism -- of Europeans being _able_ to imperialize -- can slowly fade.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 28, 2007 5:31 PM

Obviously the giant welfare state (whose benefits, you'll note, include children not dying of tootaches) has nothing to do with it.

Posted by Linus | February 28, 2007 5:42 PM

Sailer is absolutely right about India. India is a country only because it was unified as a colony by the British. If there had been no colonization, or colonization by different powers, India would have coalesced into many different countries, with different languages and cultures, as Europe and southeast Asia have done. Even with colonization, the fault line between Muslim and Hindu was just too great, and what the British knew as India is today India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Posted by JR | February 28, 2007 5:42 PM

yeah, linus, let's cut veteran's benefits, in fact let's make that a centerpiece of the Republican platform for 2008

as for the UK, I have no idea what a soldier makes, but considering the fact that they have to live somewhere and that that the housing market in the UK has been exploding for the last 12 years, I'm sure it's not cheap to pay those wages - the cost of living over here is simply really high

Posted by novakant | February 28, 2007 6:20 PM

It's not labor, it's the cost of equipment which makes it so hard to field big armies these days. Most of the army budget goes into equipment. If we just slapped a uniform on our soldiers and handed them a rifle like we did in the Civil War, we could afford a huge army.

But all those tanks and planes and APCs and body armor and cannon and all the fuel, etc...that costs huge amounts of money.

Posted by John Biles | February 28, 2007 6:27 PM

Another issue that has not been mentioned is the cost of keeping a grunt in the field in terms of support personnel (referred to as the "tail"). In Vietnam, it took 3 support personnel to keep one combat soldier who actually did the fighting in the field. As the sophistication of weaponry has increased, the length has also increased more then proportionally. I don't know what the length of the tail is in Iraq but recall that General Shinseki estimated before a Congressional committee that in excess of 300,000 troops would be required to pacify Iraq.

Posted by SLC | February 28, 2007 6:32 PM

As noted above, education is also a labor-intensive activity that's gotten relatively more expensive because we haven't figured out how to mechanize it.

The same is true in healthcare, which means war is now a two-fer.

As more soldiers survive their wounds and need more long-term care, we're going to have more medical costs. That's exceptionally bad news, because those are costs we haven't exactly budgeted for...and each of them isn't part of some inevitable old-age decline, they're people who would otherwise have been hale and hearty and productive.

Posted by anonymous | February 28, 2007 7:08 PM

"yeah, linus, let's cut veteran's benefits, in fact let's make that a centerpiece of the Republican platform for 2008"

It would be grand if they tried it (though clearly - I hope - not because I'd want it to happen).

But why is not okay to point out the obvious?

If Britain or other European countries had militaries the size of America's (relative to GDP) as well as welfare states as large as they tend to be over there they would have to tax their middle class at above 70% I'd guess. I hope Americans are forced to choose between empire and entitlements in coming years, and I hope they make the same choice as the Europeans.

Posted by Linus | February 28, 2007 7:27 PM

"If Britain or other European countries had militaries the size of America's (relative to GDP) as well as welfare states as large as they tend to be over there they would have to tax their middle class at above 70% I'd guess. I hope Americans are forced to choose between empire and entitlements in coming years, and I hope they make the same choice as the Europeans"

Not really. The UK spends around 2.8% of it's gdp on defence as opposed to the US 4%. To get up to the US's level the UK would have to increase total public spending(and hence taxes) by around 3% of it's current level.

France would have to increase about the same rate (and of course france doesn't have 150,000 troops occupying a conquered country to pay for)

Posted by kb | February 28, 2007 8:00 PM

Re: A rich American in 2006 is way richer than a rich American in 1906, but the number of people employing large numbers of domestic servants is dramatically down.

Are you taking into accounts day care and lawn services? whil not servants in the old sense, these people do provide the sort of work servants used to do.

Re; This idea that occupation used to be easier because local populations didn't object so much is really weird to me. I

Once upon a time the average person was a rural peasant who had rather little interaction with his rulers, who traveled little and had few cares beyond his own village. As long as he could feed his family and was not subjected to gross injustices he really didnlt care whether the person sitting on the throne was some poobah of his own nationality or some distant potentate across the ocean. Also, many of the "nations" that fell prey to colonialism were not real nations at all: India, Africa and pre-Columbian America consisted of a complicated mix of ethnic and tribal groups none of whom had gotten around to conceiving of themselves as a "nation"; hence even that local poobah was most likely not of the same ethnicity as most of his subjects. By contrast the countries with a sense of nationhood (Japan, China, Thailand, Iran, Ethiopia, even Afghanistan) were far more likley to resist the Europeans and to do so successfully.

On the larger matter here, the analysis holds true as long as we are talking about a volunteer army. A ocnscript army is another matter since the government need not compete (in monetary terms) with the larger economy to obtain military services. The draftees of WWII and Vietnam were paid diddly compared to civilian workers and they couldn't do a thing about it either.

Posted by Jonf | February 28, 2007 8:18 PM

MY's idea is clever, but, seemingly, totally wrong. Military manpower is still vastly cheaper than civilian manpower -- GI wages are a joke. However, whereas civilian technology keeps getting cheaper and more efficient/productive, military technology keeps getting more expensive. The vast bulk of military expenses doesn't come from paying guys to walk around on patrol; it comes from the unbelievable cost of the weaponry they're carrying and sitting on, and the logistical support services to put those guys in the field -- all of which should theoretically be benefiting from the same efficiencies which have made tourism, restaurant food, and consumer electronics and handguns far more affordable for our generation than they were for our parents'. The reasons for the astronomical increase in the cost of our military lie in technological fetishism, lack of competition, and cost-plus outsourcing of spud-peeling responsibilities from cheap conscripts to expensive private companies.

On the other side, don't mix up the World Wars with Empire: the numerical troop deployments necessary to create and sustain the British empire were pretty small. It was a "we have got the Maxim gun/and they have not" thing. I would think that much of the reason for the unsustainability of occupations in this day and age comes from that side of the spectrum: now, they DO have the Maxim gun. And once you get over that automatic-weapons hurdle, the subsequent increases in ability to slaughter people (like occupying troops) are incremental.

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 28, 2007 9:05 PM

"To get up to the US's level the UK would have to increase total public spending(and hence taxes) by around 3% of it's current level.

France would have to increase about the same rate (and of course france doesn't have 150,000 troops occupying a conquered country to pay for)"

Okay I guess we're going down the rabbit hole. Europeans pay higher taxes and their countries have smaller militaries but larger welfare states. America has a larger military, a smaller welfare state, and lower taxes.

Which part of this is in dispute?

Posted by Linus | February 28, 2007 10:09 PM

You just can't get good help these days,...

...certainly not to work at reasonable wages.

It is simply not reasonable to blame the fact that imperialism has fallen out of fashion on an insufficiency of troops in the armed forces of countries that, in some people's minds, are failing to shoulder the white man's burden. We sent over 500,000 troops to Vietnam, and that worked out even worse than Iraq.

The West had pretty much given up on colonialism after WWII, until this glorious GWOT, because we had lost our stomach for genocide. There's no such thing as successful "counter-insurgency" that isn't genocide. If we were willing to give those Marines who made an example of that neighborhood in Haditha medals instead of court-martials, we could clear the "Injun Country" out there in Iraq. And if we had ethnically correct settlers ready to move into areas depopulated by the ethnic cleansing involved, we could hold and build in these areas. Nothing less than this will work. We could send a half million soldiers to Iraq, but if we don't set them to work under an effective program of genocide, their presence would no more allow us to win in Iraq than similar numbers gave us victory in Vietnam.

The wage scales involved have nothing to do with it. We could save enough by ditching programs like Star wars, that have no bearing on the imperialist enterprise, to pay for as many boots on the ground, at First World pay scales, as any theorist would think necessary to make "counter-insurgency" work.

Practically speaking, we certainly could, if we were evil and ruthless enough, succeed at a frankly genocidal program in Iraq. And the success of such a program would require outsourcing to the underdeveloped world. But the need for "replacement laborers" would not be driven by differentials in the cost of labor nearly as much as differentials in willingness to carry out genocide. Yes, you probably could get Americans to do just the killing involved. But that would only clear territory. To hold it, you have to get reliable people in quickly to settle the land, and replace the former, unreliable inhabitants, or their remnants will seep back in. I don't see you getting Americans to do this, so you would have to turn to some swarthier race to shoulder this part of the white man's burden. Maybe the Serbs would give it a whirl, but would they prove adept enough to make it work? There's the Jews, who have proven they can do this work, but they seem to have their hands full just now with the Zionist Project. Surely Indians could make this work, but are they barbaric, er, tough-minded, enough to be willing to do what needs to be done? Africans? See above, for concerns reference the Serbs, plus concern that they might prove in time as surly and ungrateful as the present inhabitants.

Like I say, you just can't get good help these days.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | February 28, 2007 11:37 PM

"India would have coalesced into many different countries, with different languages and cultures, as Europe and southeast Asia have done. Even with colonization, the fault line between Muslim and Hindu was just too great, and what the British knew as India is today India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Posted by: JR on February 28, 2007 05:42 PM"

This assumes though that the European form of a nation-state was going to be an inevitable construction, instead of, for instance, a biproduct of Europe's unique fragmented geography. In many parts of the world, the nation-state has been forced on places where it never really fit, such as Sudan. It demands a level of identity purity and conformity that fit with the empires and civilizations of old. For instance, Greece and Turkey are two of the older nations on Earth, yet when they tried to become nation-states, they had massive population transfers between their nations and Turkey commited genocide against the Armenians. Korea is often held up as one of the better examples of a pure nation, yet centuries ago it was split into various states like Goryeo and its enemies. The Korean language is rather young. If it wasn't for the rather weird turn European politics took in the 17-19th centuries, different forms would likely have risen all over the world.

Also, for all the talk about empire in Africa, it should be noted that the imperial administrations there were often incompetent. For instance, in French colonies explicit steps were taken to make the locals use more "scientific" European farming methods that just left the crops weaker and dried out. At its best, it was extractive. Railroads ran from places where raw resources were located (mines, etc.) to the coast with no real infrastructure in between. The only infrastructure the Europeans built up was for the colonial administrators. Add in the fact that even the "civilized" British empire killed 40-60% of the local populations in various areas during its conquest. Except for Mugabe, a lot of the incompetent African leaders were installed or propped up by major outside powers (the US, the USSR, France, the UK), such as Mobutu.

Posted by Reality Man | March 1, 2007 12:06 AM

For the British Empire, what paid off was:

1. Settling temperate continents without dense native populations (North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope)

2. Grabbing strategic chokepoints and entrepots: Gibraltar, Malta, Cape Town, Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Suez Canal, etc., from which Britain could assure freedom of the seas for itself and deny it to Continental enemies

3. Sugar islands where slaves could be brought in (Barbados, Jamaica)

4. Mineral bonanzas (Johannesburg)

5. India -- which appears to be a special case -- a densely populated, moderately productive region that could be administered surprisingly cheaply.

What didn't pay was tropical Africa, other than maybe some cool highlands like parts of Kenya, and other tropical farming regions like Burma.

Looking at this list, only #2 -- strategic islands, like Diego Garcia -- still seem economically viable. Even oil regions seem to require an acquiescent local population to prevent sabotage, as in Iraq.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 1, 2007 1:07 AM

Plus we're fat and happy so we don't actually have a need to go out and take territory.

Although I wonder, a lot of western and second-tier nations are hamstrung now because conquest is just not done anymore. You don't head over to your neighbor, kick his ass out and take over the people and resources anymore. If there was no stigma associated with this what we as a civilization have more success with it now even if our soldiers are far more expensive than they were a hundred years ago?

Posted by MNPundit | March 1, 2007 1:57 AM

lots of dudes walking around

Best euphemism for urban combat units ever.

Posted by Saheli | March 2, 2007 1:56 PM