Tread lightly on the things of earth

Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, writing in Taipei Times article The effect of war on the US economy, says, “War is widely thought to be linked to economic good times … Today, we know that these propositions are nonsense.” [via Stand Down]

Of course it’s nonsense. But it’s even worse than believing something that’s not true and then having to pay the economic price later.

To believe that “war is good for the economy” — and therefore justifiable for that reason alone — implies deception into the darkest depths of the unholy. This belief that the death and destruction of war is “good” for anything is only possible in the absence of love, understanding, compassion, empathy. What has the power to exterminate these virtues? Pride, and its younger sibling, Greed. (Pride’s most frequent visible manifestation: intense self-righteousness.)

Of one who believes so:
A blind man bragging about his 20/20 vision is very, very sad.

2003-01-31 update: Prof. Stiglitz talks about this topic in the January 21, 2003 Marketplace radio program.