I was thinking about how world leaders have little hesitation in engaging their countries in war. They can sit comfortably in their offices and decide for the entire country to enter a war. Thy don’t have to risk their own lives or suffer any consequences. Meanwhile, the soldiers will have to risk their lives for a war in which they have no say in whether fighting a particular country is a good idea or not.
So, what I suggest is that world leaders get into a room and play war simulation games on computers instead. The loser will have to pay the winner $100 billion. Thus, nobody will have to die in the process and the winning country will be $100 billion richer. Already, just the war in Iraq is costing the US over $124 billion. So, why not just save time and avoid any military and civilian casualties?
And if we don’t do this now, eventually we will be doing it. War is increasingly being fought with Unmanned Bombers, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Armed Robotic Vehicles, etc. Soon, warfare would be entirely fought by robots so that no human lives will be lost. With all of these robots being controlled remotely by computers, why even have robots at all? Why not just have everything in the computers themselves? Sitting in front of a computer, how would one really tell if a robot hundreds/thousands of miles away really blew up another robot or it’s just a simulation? A lot of money would be saved by not having to build, deploy and ultimately destroy the robots. Thus, war will eventually evolve into just a computer simulation.
Some might argue that it’s good for the economy to pump money into the military so they can buld weapons. So, it’s actually better to have a real war than a simulated war.
Well, a Tomahawk missle typically costs $1 million each. But, ultimately it will be blown up to smitherines. Why not just also build several Lamborghinis and put them into a parking lot and then blow them up? The process is the same.
Won’t war correspondents be out of a job if war all goes digital? Well, they can still report on the status of the war simulations. Plus, they won’t have to risk getting their heads chopped off by unsympathetic terrorists.
So, I think it makes good economic and societal sense for world leaders to play video games to replace conventional warfare.