Originally Posted by
Totoro Man
I may be misunderstanding PwrdOn a bit... but I'll give it a shot.
I think what he's getting at is.... people are both a limited, but renewable resource, for nations. you only have a limited number of people. but these people do reproduce. so, the critical thing is to keep them healthy. get at least half of them to reproduce. you keep your numbers up with a little bit of immigration, and thus preserve the nation state.
in that vein: I like to remind people that the defeat of France by Nazi Germany in 1940 was not ultimately the result of the French being incompetent cowards when confronted by Germany. It wasn't just a matter of the Nazis being superior in organization, tactics, technology, and training... the Nazi victory was also based on all of that AND the fact that they already had more people than France. they also had a higher sustained birth rate, and could simply afford to lose more people.
A lot of Americans like to say "well, we would have fought to the last man!" right, LOL. the same country that threw a fit about all of those needless casualties from Gulf War II and the occupation of Afghanistan. China lost more than 10 times that many people in less than three months fighting the Japanese in Shanghai in 1937. "these colors don't run" because they're separated by two massive oceans, and it would be logistically impossible for even a coalition of nations to invade and conquer the United States by purely military means. that's why most people who have been trying to defeat the US tend to buy up US real estate, take away US jobs, buy out or get a controlling interest in US companies. and, of course, the joys of internet hacking.
back to France: when a country is faced with the very real possibility of fighting to the last man... they have to decide whether they want the nation to disappear completely, or to surrender and lay dormant until they can summon enough people to rebuild the population again. Americans tend to judge France as being "cheese eating surrender monkeys". but, I gotta tell you, that if somebody instantly cut off our internet access and gasoline supply... America would probably surrender in far less time than 46 days.
it certainly didn't help that France didn't have a single-nation strategy for fighting against Germany. to make matters worse Belgium and Great Britain were only partially cooperative. neither of those countries was prepared to make the sort of sacrifice that they made in WWI. so, France had no choice but to surrender and wait to get liberated.
and that's not a bad strategy. sometimes taking a long term strategy can pay off for a group of people. look at Poland. they just waited, and waited, and waited... and eventually found a chance to become a nation again (a couple of times)
another example: most people understand that global warming is bad. we're running out of oil. but our entire society is built around the combustion engine, and more specifically the automobile. in order to counteract that global warming trend, we would essentially have to try and create a neo-feudal economy where all of the basic types of jobs and services would be available within walking distance. failing that, we might have to outlaw motor vehicles that aren't essential to the economic infrastructure (aka cargo vehicles). but people don't want to 'repeal the 20th century' because of all the 'progress' that has been made. even if that progress is effectively destroying the entire world in slow motion.
politicians can't tell people that they ARE the problem and get away with it. but, wait, don't lose hope! religion can do this every single day and endure for thousands of years! ;-)