1) Yeah, the 300 million firearms in the US wouldn't be any impediment at all to an invasion C'mon. There are no barbarians at the gate.
2) Yes, there are good economic side effects that come from spending 600B on just about anything. Lifting people out of poverty a few inches couldn't possibly be less economic waste than grossly disproportionate military spending.
3) You've got a pretty novel definition of slavery.
Perhaps. FWIW, my definition of slavery is that the value of your productivity is owned and controlled by someone else, not you. I see the movement towards basic income as the promotion of a world of poor people in chains.
Money grows out of power, not the other way around. If money alone created power, lottery winners would all promptly take their place in the halls of power. They don't. Most wind up bankrupt within 5 years.
When things are done right, capitalism does not have to mean that. Employees can, for example, own stock in the company where they work. Some companies basically insist that employees do so and intentionally develop an employee-owned company culture.
Of course, when workers and stockholders are entirely separate classes of people, then, basically, yes. But that is not an inevitable outcome, even though it seems to generally be the state of things currently.
2) Yes, there are good economic side effects that come from spending 600B on just about anything. Lifting people out of poverty a few inches couldn't possibly be less economic waste than grossly disproportionate military spending.
3) You've got a pretty novel definition of slavery.