Men built civilization to accommodate women and children. Men are the disposable element of society as proven by war. Is there a mathematical way to sum up mens value to society compared to women?

[–] • 0 pt

(edited )

Interesting problem.

GDP is probably the wrong target.

Assuming the death rate of women in war is negligible as compared to men is probably a bold leap but that would be a good place to start.

Net worth is tied to military and political dominance of a nation (and if this were not the case, moving to a different location would not be highly correlated with income).

American's, even the "poor" are relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world, though thats an aside to the problem at hand.

If the inability to defend a nation reduces the value of the nation (resource, manpower, leverage internationally), then the inverse of that suggests the value of a nation is directly tied to military and political power. Political power is hard to quantify, but as it's war by other means, military expenditure should be a proxy for political power, with few exceptions (see north korea for details). Also being strong politically, doesn't mean being legitimate, or stable as a nation. Likewise, the inability to provide for a military means a nation might as well not be defended, so the value of a productive citizen is a factor that influences the military just like the value of a soldier (and we see that with nuclear policy that targets cities).

So we have the beginnings of something that can be used to rank and compare nations on down to individual tribes in bumfuck nowhere.

Military force.

But what is military force?

Obviously it is not simply expenditure (because the u.s. wastes dumptrucks of money on the pentagon), nor is it simply measured by man power.

I'd like to suggest it's the resources (in this case, cash) spent PER person.

Now, disregarding confettimoney printed by fiat and delivered by helicopter like manna from heaven (the fed), cash is really just a proxy for all other available resources and production in a nation's economy.

And that takes people to do, because nothing happens minimally without someone to 1. ship the goods, 2. someone to operate the machines, 3. someone who has a demand for those things.

Therefore we can reduce the cash or resource requirements to a simple ratio of 1. people not in the military, versus 2. people in the military.

The effects of sex or 'gender' as the fucking commies call it, not withstanding. Obviously everyone in the military are not warfighters. The U.S. has something like 1 soldier actually fighting for every 20 people in noncombat roles, and for the size and complexity of the u.s. forces, we'll assume this is a necessary ratio. In a lost tribe in south america for example, maybe they have 0 people in their 'army' in support roles for every soldier. Every male of age is essentially a soldier. Fat lot that does them against say, a predator drone, but our goal isn't to measure the effectiveness of any one military, our goal is to put a value on males in society as a function of military expenditure.

The loss of one tribesman is a major loss. Because the smaller the group, the less people they can afford to lose. Consequently, the more people it takes to support a soldier, the more devestating the loss. This is counter-intuitive. Can't the soldier be replaced if you have lots of people supporting them?

Well, in a small tribe that has close sex ratio, theres less 'margin' for losing people. Of course mates are 'fungible', but thats not the point. The smaller the tribe, the more people you need fighting for you in order to muster an effective force, not only because small groups have lower specialization (and thus less research, less effective weaponry and less production). So, when the tribe is small enough, the ratio of non fighters to fighters is 0.5 And the ratio of non-combatant military supporting the fighters versus the actual fighters approaches 0. In other words, it's a part time job for them, they're conscripted, or volunteers. The loss of a soldier then is worse, because you're losing both warfighting capability, AND economic capacity.

In a small setting it can then be said, that the population reduces not to three groups, civilians, military noncombatants, and combatants, but essentially to two groups: noncombatants (gatherers) and combatants (hunters).

So this gives us some context to understanding the problem.

Assuming a military is predominantly male wherever you go (not too much of a leap), the value of a male is then

(total population/total manpower of military)

If you want to put a cash value on it, I think you'd do something like military expenditure / total national expenditures per year = r and then take r and divide it by the number of people in the military.

The sex ratio, if theres enough males, gives you a margin for error, because men can father multiple children at once, but women usually only carry one child to term at once. So in a large enough society the value of men approaches zero as a ratio to the value of women, assuming women act as the bottleneck to a nation's future productive and warfighting capacity.

For the u.s, our total forces are 1.3 millon active personnel, and 800,000 reserve, for a total of 2,100,000‬ people.

With a population of 327.2 million as of 2018, the r value of the U.S. would be 2,100,000‬ people / 327.2 million = 0.00641809290953545232273838630807‬

The inversion (1/n) of which is fairly close to the monkeysphere number, and also within the range of the size of a u.s. military company (60 to 200 men), but may just be a coincidence.

The U.s. military spent $633.57 billion for the year of 2018. That puts a price tag on your average soldier that totals to $301,700‬, (or 'male' considering militaries have historically been almost all men)

Obviously some soldiers are lazy worthless shits who definitely don't come anywhere near being worth that level of expenditure, and some certaintly are worth more, this is just an average and theres a lot of useless spending by the pentagon too. Infinite funnymoney is not a normal situation in history either, but thats not the point. Because our infinite funnymoney is backed by the force of the military and politics.

Likewise we can assume the rest of the population, because we have a professional military, produce useful economic output that in some part goes to the support of that military (owing to the fact we're no longer hunter/gatherers).

We spent $4.109 trillion ($4,109,000,000,000‬) in 2018. If economic production is essential to a warmachine in an industrial nation, then so is the population that runs it. Ergo, the total expenditures to military budget, in turn divided by the total population (assuming a gender balance, without which a nation is politically unstable long term), tells you the value of any one non-military male.

That comes out to 6.48

A productive worker is worth 6.48 times a person in the military (sounds wrong frankly).

The average length of service in the u.s. military is 6.7 years.

U.S. Army pay's an average of $58,229 a year. Going off this number (which, no doubt doesn't represent the other branches)

The average worker is worth $377,323.92 a year.

The beauty of this is that if you take this resulting value and then divide by the value of a military male, we SHOULD get the ratio of real economic loss for every male or person conscripted into a military say during war time.

Lets just go with walmart as an example for a 'less than average' worker as an example.

Walmart revenue (not profit, revenue): $514 billion with 2.2 million employees

revenue/employees = $233,636 per employee

233,636/377,323.92 = 0.619, or 61.9% economic loss

from a walmart employee joining the military.

Sounds about right. Why the fuck would the military hire walmart employees? They're a net loss!

We could confirm this by perhaps looking at VA expenditure per veteran to see if this lines up with our assumptions about the pricetag the military puts on each soldier.

These numbers of course are likely to wrong because I haven't looked at the problem real closely or double checked the math, so take it with a grain when you read this.

If anyone has further insights I'd be interested to read them.

Edit: If you want the absolute value, at least for the u.s, assuming the military is recruited primarily from the working poor and middle lower class, it'd be something like the walmart value of employee averaged with the military's average expenditure per employee. $305,479.96‬

Average yearly income, real disposable income is $45,646 * 6.48 (value of civilian economic output versus the investment cost of a single soldier) = $295,786.08‬, which comes pretty fucking close to the average listed above.

Also, theres undoubtedly a bunch of shit I'm missing, getting wrong, and just overlooking, so again, take it with a grain.

Interesting problem. GDP is probably the wrong target. Assuming the death rate of women in war is negligible *as compared to men* is probably a bold leap but that would be a good place to start. Net worth is tied to military and political dominance of a nation (and if this were not the case, moving to a different location would not be highly correlated with income). American's, even the "poor" are relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world, though thats an aside to the problem at hand. If the inability to defend a nation reduces the value of the nation (resource, manpower, leverage internationally), then the inverse of that suggests the value of a nation is directly tied to military and political power. Political power is hard to quantify, but as it's war by other means, military expenditure *should* be a proxy for political power, with few exceptions (see north korea for details). Also being strong politically, doesn't mean being legitimate, or stable as a nation. Likewise, the inability to provide for a military means a nation might as well not be defended, so the value of a productive citizen is a factor that influences the military just like the value of a soldier (and we see that with nuclear policy that targets cities). So we have the beginnings of something that can be used to rank and compare nations on down to individual tribes in bumfuck nowhere. Military force. But what is military force? Obviously it is not simply expenditure (because the u.s. wastes dumptrucks of money on the pentagon), nor is it simply measured by man power. I'd like to suggest it's the resources (in this case, cash) spent PER person. Now, disregarding confettimoney printed by fiat and delivered by helicopter like manna from heaven (the fed), cash is really just a proxy for all other available resources and production in a nation's economy. And that takes people to do, because *nothing* happens *minimally* without someone to 1. ship the goods, 2. someone to operate the machines, 3. someone who has a demand for those things. Therefore we can reduce the cash or resource requirements to a simple ratio of 1. people not in the military, versus 2. people in the military. The effects of sex or 'gender' as the fucking commies call it, not withstanding. Obviously everyone in the military are not warfighters. The U.S. has something like 1 soldier actually fighting for every 20 people in noncombat roles, and for the size and complexity of the u.s. forces, we'll assume this is a necessary ratio. In a lost tribe in south america for example, maybe they have 0 people in their 'army' in support roles for every soldier. Every male of age is essentially a soldier. Fat lot that does them against say, a predator drone, but our goal isn't to measure the effectiveness of any one military, our goal is to put a value on males in society as a function of military expenditure. The loss of one tribesman is a major loss. Because the smaller the group, the less people they can afford to lose. Consequently, the more people it takes to support a soldier, the more devestating the loss. This is counter-intuitive. Can't the soldier be replaced if you have lots of people supporting them? Well, in a small tribe that has close sex ratio, theres less 'margin' for losing people. Of course mates are 'fungible', but thats not the point. The smaller the tribe, the more people you need fighting for you in order to muster an effective force, not only because small groups have lower specialization (and thus less research, less effective weaponry and less production). So, when the tribe is small enough, the ratio of non fighters to fighters is 0.5 And the ratio of non-combatant military supporting the fighters versus the actual fighters approaches 0. In other words, it's a part time job for them, they're conscripted, or volunteers. The loss of a soldier then is worse, because you're losing *both* warfighting capability, AND economic capacity. In a small setting it can then be said, that the population reduces not to three groups, civilians, military noncombatants, and combatants, but essentially to two groups: noncombatants (gatherers) and combatants (hunters). So this gives us some context to understanding the problem. Assuming a military is predominantly male wherever you go (not too much of a leap), the value of a male is then (total population/total manpower of military) If you want to put a cash value on it, I think you'd do something like military expenditure / total national expenditures per year = r and then take r and divide it by the number of people in the military. The sex ratio, if theres enough males, gives you a margin for error, because men can father multiple children at once, but women usually only carry one child to term at once. So in a large enough society the value of men approaches zero as a ratio to the value of women, assuming women act as the bottleneck to a nation's future productive and warfighting capacity. For the u.s, our total forces are 1.3 millon active personnel, and 800,000 reserve, for a total of 2,100,000‬ people. With a population of 327.2 million as of 2018, the r value of the U.S. would be 2,100,000‬ people / 327.2 million = 0.00641809290953545232273838630807‬ The inversion (1/n) of which is fairly close to the monkeysphere number, and also within the range of the size of a u.s. military company (60 to 200 men), but may just be a coincidence. The U.s. military spent $633.57 billion for the year of 2018. That puts a price tag on your average soldier that totals to $301,700‬, (or 'male' considering militaries have historically been almost all men) Obviously some soldiers are lazy worthless shits who definitely don't come anywhere near being worth that level of expenditure, and some certaintly are worth more, this is just an average and theres a lot of useless spending by the pentagon too. Infinite funnymoney is not a normal situation in history either, but thats not the point. Because our infinite funnymoney is backed by the force of the military and politics. Likewise we can assume the rest of the population, because we have a professional military, produce useful economic output that in some part goes to the support of that military (owing to the fact we're no longer hunter/gatherers). We spent $4.109 trillion ($4,109,000,000,000‬) in 2018. If economic production is essential to a warmachine in an industrial nation, then so is the population that runs it. Ergo, the total expenditures to military budget, in turn divided by the total population (assuming a gender balance, without which a nation is politically unstable long term), tells you the value of any one non-military male. That comes out to 6.48 A productive worker is worth 6.48 times a person in the military (sounds wrong frankly). The average length of service in the u.s. military is 6.7 years. U.S. Army pay's an average of $58,229 a year. Going off this number (which, no doubt doesn't represent the other branches) The average worker is worth $377,323.92 a year. The beauty of this is that if you take this resulting value and then divide by the value of a military male, we SHOULD get the ratio of real economic loss for every male or person conscripted into a military say during war time. Lets just go with walmart as an example for a 'less than average' worker as an example. Walmart revenue (not profit, revenue): $514 billion with 2.2 million employees revenue/employees = $233,636 per employee 233,636/377,323.92 = 0.619, or 61.9% economic loss from a walmart employee joining the military. Sounds about right. Why the fuck would the military hire walmart employees? They're a net loss! We could confirm this by perhaps looking at VA expenditure per veteran to see if this lines up with our assumptions about the pricetag the military puts on each soldier. These numbers of course are likely to wrong because I haven't looked at the problem real closely or double checked the math, so take it with a grain when you read this. If anyone has further insights I'd be interested to read them. Edit: If you want the absolute value, at least for the u.s, assuming the military is recruited primarily from the working poor and middle lower class, it'd be something like the walmart value of employee averaged with the military's average expenditure per employee. $305,479.96‬ Average yearly income, real disposable income is $45,646 * 6.48 (value of civilian economic output versus the investment cost of a single soldier) = $295,786.08‬, which comes pretty fucking close to the average listed above. Also, theres undoubtedly a bunch of shit I'm missing, getting wrong, and just overlooking, so again, take it with a grain.

link

(post is archived)