First Strike Capabilities

I agree with Matthew Yglesias' general tenor here, but I find this part strange:

Simply put, a scenario in which the United States possesses an effective ability to shoot down a Russian or Chinese ICBM threat would be completely intolerable in Moscow or Beijing. It would, in effect, give the United States a viable a threat of a nuclear first strike. Neither Russia nor China is going to let that happen. Instead, they'll spend money on building up their nuclear arsenals in order to maintain their deterrent capacity. Thus, at great cost to the Unites States, to Russia, and to China we'll be back at the status quo. But beyond the monetary cost, the large buildup in Chinese nuclear capabilities that would result from this situation would force India to engage in a nuclear build-up of its own. And that, in turn, would force Pakistan to follow suit. This large increase in the global stock of nuclear weapons would, of course, imply an increase in the odds of a nuclear accident or the loss or theft of nuclear material. At the same time, a nuclear buildup of this sort might create incentives for Iran to reinitiate its nuclear weapons research program.

In truth, the U.S. already has massive first strike capabilities against China or Russia (or anybody else), and the U.S. already has started building up and modernizing its nuclear arsenal. Neither Russia nor China responded to this by starting a news arms race; those countries still have too many domestic problems which take priority to spend untold billions on weaponry which would still be decades behind the U.S.

Second, India and Pakistan have their own reasons for building and maintaining a nuclear arsenal which have nothing to do with the U.S. or China, and they will continue to stand-off against each other no matter what we do.

Third, N. Korea and Iran weren't persuaded by calls to nonproliferation in the past, nor were they encouraged to pursue nuclear weaponry because of American expansion of arms. Indeed, their programs were begun and expanded during the period of time when the U.S. was dis-arming.

The Nonproliferation Treaty is essentially dead in the water, and that's a shame. Resuscitating it is possible, with the U.S. and Russia on board, but there's no guarantee that the NPT will have any serious deterrent effect in any case. McCain's policy is overly simplistic and uninspired -- as usual -- but it's not as disastrous as Yglesias is claiming it is.

Economics: No Longer the 'Dismal Science'

Alex Tabarrok is optimistic about the future:

People used to think that more population was bad for growth. In this view, people are stomachs--they eat, leaving less for everyone else. But once we realize the importance of ideas in the economy, people become brains--they innovate, creating more for everyone else.

New ideas mean more growth, and even small changes in economic growth rates produce large economic and social benefits. At current income levels, with an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 3% per year, America's real per capita gross domestic product would exceed $1 million per year in just over 100 years, more than 22 times higher than it is today. Growth like that could solve many problems.

In the 20th century, two world wars diverted the energy of two generations from production to destruction. When the horrors ended, the world was left hobbled and split. Communism isolated much of the world, reducing trade in goods and ideas--to everyone's detriment. World poverty meant that the U.S. and a few other countries shouldered the burdens of advancing knowledge nearly alone.

The battles of the 20th century were not fought in vain. Trade, development and the free flow of people and ideas are uniting all of humanity, maximizing the incentives and the means to produce new ideas. This gives us reason to be highly optimistic about the future.

Of course, Tabarrok is a libertarian, and libertarians are born optimists w/r/t the potential of mankind. It is still true that we don't understand very well how development occurs, or how to maximize growth across the board. China and India are growing very fast, but it isn't without side effects. Still, the overall trajectory of the world in the 21st century is better -- so far -- than the trajectory of the 20th. There are good reasons for optimism.