Like some of you, I am a regular listener of Stephan Molyneux's youtube videos. Often while discussing war I have heard him make the claim that World War I wiped out all of the capital accumulated in the 19th century. While I have no doubt that it was a supremely destructive war, this is quite a claim and I've been wondering what his source is for this. Alas, I have never been able to find it. Does anyone here know where he got this datum or if he is entirely wrong?
Thanks in advance.
It's incredibly difficult to calculate something like that.
Of course the people who died constitute the biggest loss, but you can't possibly calculate how much a person is worth in economic terms. It's not just the actual physical destruction of people and property, though... Even if you survived without being seriously hurt, you were sitting in the mud for x many years instead of doing something useful. Likewise, all the factories which patriotically switched over from manufacturing economically useful items to manufacturing armaments, ammunition and other war supplies constitute a terrible, immeasurable loss.
Still, there are some forms of capital which weren't destroyed by the war... Technical innovations won't be destroyed, and some new ones may even be discovered by the process.
It's also one thing to consider the Great War in isolation, and another to consider that we are still living through the knock-on effects created by it. The Second World War, the Cold War and the current situation are all, in essential ways, a result of the Great War.
World War I wiped out all of the capital accumulated in the 19th century
Patently impossible. Obviously there was at least something existing after the WW1, which didn't exist before the 19th century (various machines come to mind). Well, unless he meant capital in some aggregated sense, which is not the usual terminology for austrians.
Molyneux has been known to make some far-reaching claims at times, whether through careless phrasing or something else. This claim simply cannot be true. A meteor of sufficient size could wipe out all the capital accumulated over a century, but WWI did not.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under - Mencken
I addition, WWI was fought along the trenches- yes, that ripped to shreds those 2 lines (there was trench warfare Germany vs Russia, but the trenches were typically ~1 mile apart),
there was no bombing of the industrial centers though- the physical stuff, including houses even, were still there.
I DID figure he was being pretty hyperbolic but, hey, I've been surprised by the facts more than once. Figured I'd ask just in case. Thanks for the answers, gentlemen.
By the way, does anyone know just how much economic devastation WW1 caused, or where I can find that information?
World War II probably came pretty close in some parts of Europe. Just look at the images of the cities... Every city that was fought through was shelled to smithereens.
There’s a simple way to see that it didn’t: the welfare state in Europe survived and even grew after the war, so it still had a huge pool of capital to feed upon. I believe Molineux’s point would be an indirect one: that the new mentality that brought the war outdid everything the XIX century had done.