"War is so costly you should give into my demands, because not doing so will mean war."
Thus, the cost of war alone doesn't solve the problem of war.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis we nearly had nuclear war. It was much closer than most people think. Was the principle that Cuba couldn't decide what weapons could be on its soil worth that? But if Cuba could do that what else could the commies do?
I think the most interesting aspect is that war "clarifies". Any amount of bullshit can go on being bullshit until some external objective force tests it. In capitalism that's profit/loss in the marketplace. Between states it can be war.
Capitalism may not have been critical to expansion. In _Evolution of Civilizations_ Carroll Quigley wrote about each civilization being driven by its own instrument of expansion. For instance, on page 358:
"The first stage of expansion in Western civilization lasted for about three centuries (970-1270) and was one of the greatest of such periods in human history. Its instrument of expansion was the feudal system in which a small minority of fighting men and clergy were supported by a great majority of peasants. The contributions of the latter to the former were far greater than the costs of protection and justice they received in return, so that surpluses accumulated in the possession of the upper class. At first these surpluses were used for political ends, to build castles or to rebuild older timbered fortifications in stone. But soon investment in economic activities began."
> Without group selection, the egoists or nepotists inevitably win
I suspect this is not really the case. Although I don't really agree with Ashton and Lee either, I think they have a point when they argue that the reason both Agreeableness and Honesty exist is because low-H egoism allows individuals to exploit others, and low-A is a defense against low-H egoism. It's long been noted that humans with reduced H have some limited ability to form coalitions and tend to do so along nepotistic lines; but punitive and paranoid (low-A) instincts in the surrounding neighbors curtail their success.
> The Vikings that conquered Normandie
I'm guessing "Normandie" is the Swedish spelling? In English, "Normandy"
> Before capitalism, war was a bit like football. That's an exaggeration
Wait... *How* was war like football?
> High productivity caused two phenomena: Very efficient weapons with great destruction power (&) Productive forces that are easy to destroy and difficult to steal.
Quigley didn't exactly describe it this way, but his analysis is similar for all civilizations across history, even before capitalism:
"The Age of Conflict (Stage 4) is a period of imperialist wars and of irrationality supported for reasons that are usually different in the different social classes. The masses of the people (who have no vested interest in the existing institution of expansion) engage in imperialist wars because
it seems the only way to overcome the slowing down of expansion. Unable to get ahead by other means (such as economic means), they seek to get ahead by political action, above all by taking wealth from their political neighbors."
I don't quote Quigley to try to argue specifically; I'm not sure either your analysis or his is better.
But I doubt war has always been more profitable than production; the ancient world produced incredible wealth and technology, which would have been difficult to produce under perpetual harassment. And - though I'm not holding my breath that this will turn out to be *totally* free of warfare - there are hints of civilizations without warfare, such as the Indus Valley Civilization: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130910-200-the-real-utopia-this-ancient-civilisation-thrived-without-war/
I didn't know about Carroll Quigley before. From the Wikipedia page I can conclude that we have one conclusion in common: The idea that democracy depends on cheap weapons that almost everyone can use.
>>Although I don't really agree with Ashton and Lee either, I think they have a point when they argue that the reason both Agreeableness and Honesty exist is because low-H egoism allows individuals to exploit others, and low-A is a defense against low-H egoism. It's long been noted that humans with reduced H have some limited ability to form coalitions and tend to do so along nepotistic lines; but punitive and paranoid (low-A) instincts in the surrounding neighbors curtail their success.
An interesting objection. But I'm not sure it is an objection. Isn't a coalition a group? So then people high in H are good at forming groups. Which make their groups more successful. That is... group selection?
>>Wait... *How* was war like football?
Ernst Jünger was like a very dedicated young football player. He even chatted with his opponents in breaks. No hard feelings - it was just a game. A deadly game, but a game.
>>there are hints of civilizations without warfare, such as the Indus Valley Civilization
> An interesting objection. But I'm not sure it is an objection. Isn't a coalition a group? So then people high in H are good at forming groups. Which make their groups more successful. That is... group selection?
Yes! That is, in fact, what I think! Group selection is controversial among biologists, but I don't think it should be at all. Our bodies are an amalgamation of separate species together, some so intimately that they literally fused into a single cell (our mitochondria used to be a separate organism). Cooperation is a winning strategy for arthropods, lichen, and we're now finding even for trees which share nutrients through the fungal network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network
I believe that in humans, variation in H - and a couple other traits I'll write about eventually - represents variation in the ability to form cohesive, functional groups. Low H groups can function, but their group-mind is stupid, clumsy, and short lived, since the groups themselves tend to fragment and implode.
> Pacifism is a nice thing. I'm sure there was a lot of it here and there, until someone came and ruined it.
So this wasn't a bad rejoinder. But the Moriori would likely have survived unmolested for centuries without the introduction of modern techology into the region; moreover, their culture was pathologically pacifist, to an extent that may even have been worse than Christianity's pathological cosmopolitanism. I doubt that any outright pacifist societies ever really thrived for long anywhere in the world, or ever will.
Mostly I just want to be clear that I believe populations hanging around the midlatitudes have had areas and times of relative peacefulness past the dawn of the historical record, because, I think that the conditions required for this relative peacefulness prevailed for ten thousand years. This may well be an incorrect belief! But, pointing to the warfare of modern holdovers, even when a few of them live in the midlatitudes of the Southern hemisphere, doesn't really falsify it.
While I agree with your overall argument, I think you will want to reevaluate your model of earlier, pre-capitalistic societies.
Starting with the notion that stealing is more efficient than producing, that is quite a claim, seemingly not recognizing that stealing entails repeated exposure to violence and risk above and beyond merely producing. Hence why such a small proportion of the population can make any kind of a living doing it, and that portion spends a lot of time creating a moral system that justifies their theft as proper. Societies with lower non-theft productivity tend to see more bent towards violence, as the opportunity costs are lower, but even then it is a small proportion.
However, when it comes to war in later but still pre-modern periods, your "herbivores" make up the majority of those in the army. One of the biggest advantages of grain producing farmers, for instance, is that once the crop is planted there really isn't anything much for them to do with it for a few months, and thus the summer is the campaign season. It wasn't only the lords and their immediate men at arms marching off, but the levy of peasants bulking out the force.
>>Starting with the notion that stealing is more efficient than producing, that is quite a claim, seemingly not recognizing that stealing entails repeated exposure to violence and risk above and beyond merely producing.
It is quite a claim. Still, I think it is accurate. When productivity is low, no one can produce more than barely subsistence through working. Those who want more than barely subsistence need to steal the products of several other people's labor. In his book Among Cannibals, 19th century anthropologist Carl Lumholz claimed that the only way for a man among the Queensland Australian Aborigines to be rich, was for him to have several wives to provide for him.
That doesn't support your claim, however. The wives in question are by definition producing above subsistence if they have extra to provide the husband. It also doesn't solve the efficiency problem, as if the husband had to take by force the resources by which he becomes rich, how long do you think it would be before there was a fish bone in his soup? (Or a sharp stick in his sleeping form, whatever their preferred method.)
At best one can claim that stealing is only a more efficient option for a minority of the population, one that is either very non-productive in other avenues or exceptionally skilled in theft. That certainly does describe a certain percent of the population.
From another angle it also is obvious that stealing cannot be more efficient for a majority, as you need people producing to have something to steal. Theft is at best zero sum, usually negative sum, so theft only makes a lot of sense if there are far more people producing than stealing. In your terminology, there is by necessity a vastly larger biomass of herbivores than predators.
>>how long do you think it would be before there was a fish bone in his soup? (Or a sharp stick in his sleeping form, whatever their preferred method.)
It is an interesting question why women subjected to forced marriages so seldom kill their husbands. But they seemingly do that so seldom that men all over the world have found marrying unwilling women a viable strategy.
As practiced by the advanced nations at the frontier of civilization, capitalism encourages extreme specialization, making the cost of war, as you rightly say, prohibitive. But the US is investing in autarky with billions in tax incentives encouraging companies to build it in the USA. Other advanced countries are doing the same. Do these autarkic investments presage more wars involving advanced nations?
The thumbnail version of this column is the quip I once wrote down, but now cannot find the reference, that we've replaced war with market competition and electoral politics.
Interestingly, we don't really let the farmers run things directly, but rather they periodically get to choose the elite that will run things.
Anders introduced me to it and gave up on it much later than me too. But now I think we both have accepted that people don't want to be that rational. They simply want leaders to represent them.
I am no expert, but there has been a lot of fretting in the US since Trump was elected that political parties are needed as a way to screen out populist impulses. I've accumulated a number of quotes along these lines:
Well-functioning parties are political gatekeepers, necessary to representative democracy but antithetical to the utopian alternative, direct democracy. -- Charles Lane, "If the GOP had superdelegates, we might not be in this Trump mess"
As Lupu notes, the death of a major party can lead to substantial instability in a political system. Venezuela was able to resist a coup attempt by Hugo Chavez when it had a functional party system, but in its absence, he was able to assemble a winning political coalition. Democracies, it seems, are surprisingly fragile in the absence of functional parties. And it's no coincidence that the last time a major American political party died, a civil war shortly followed. Parties provide a way for a democracy to process issues politically, rather than violently. -- "Yes, political parties can die" by Seth Masket in "Mischiefs of Faction"
Thus, populism has become synonymous with voting based on emotions, almost exclusively negative emotions. Both parties have been harnessing this power source for some time now, but with the continued rise of the influence of the internet, one party lost control of its populist movement and the other party had a fairly close call. -- PostmanSays analyzes the elections of 2016
This assumes that populists are not giving any information that the political process can use to get better outcomes, which is a big assumption.
I will take something simple on this topic. Trump was the only Republican who called the Iraq war a mistake and ran on an anti-war platform in 2016. This was clearly a message the career politicians needed (still need) to hear.
I don't think it is capitalism as such that has discouraged war. War happens when we fail to negotiate an agreed settlement between the parties.
Negotiated agreements between buyer and seller are at the heart of the capitalist process. Ronald Coase, a 20th century Englishman wrote very insightfully about this (Coase Theorem). However, when 'transaction costs' are 'high' the parties can find it very difficult to reach agreement. When countries are involved those transaction costs are often ideological ie they have beliefs which they are just not prepared to change on any terms. For example, Ukraine wants to be free to trade with who it likes (namely western countries) as an equal. Whereas Russia regards Ukraine as a province of its empire that needs to take direction from Moscow.
So far the costs of the the war in Ukraine are still cheaper than the costs of compromising on those ideals. Both capitalist and noncapitalist countries undertake wars when they are not prepared to compromise. Which is what we are also seeing with Israel's war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza (but I don't intend to discuss the morality of that here).
In 2014 the elected government of Ukraine was overthrown violently because it favored one trade deal over another. In a functional society the side that didn't get the trade deal it wanted would simply have waited till the next election, tried their luck again, and signed a different deal if the people chose to back that in democratic elections.
Compounding this the overthrow was backed by hostile foreign powers who then proceeded to arm and train the Ukranian army for the next eight years.
What would have been better for everyone involved is if they participated in the democratic process rather than sponsoring color revolutions.
If they could not be satisfied with the democratic process then perhaps they should have separated the way the Czechs and Slovaks did.
"So far the costs of the the war in Ukraine are still cheaper than the costs of compromising on those ideals."
I don't know if they are cheaper, but at the outset of the conflict they seemed cheaper to the participants. Putin clearly thought there was a decent change the government would just fall immediately. Also Ukrainian leadership overestimated how effective western support would be, in part because the west made a lot of promises it either could not and/or would not keep. Probably a prescient person could have seen that, but the future was sufficiently obscure that one can see how people could get it wrong.
A lot depends on what you think a "western" Ukraine would look like. I think it looks like a failed state no better then what they had to begin with, so I don't think its worth fighting for. Ukranian's seem to agree (they are an entirely slave conscript army at this point that has to be dragged off the street to fight).
Yours is a familiar line. I can have no impact on the outcome of Russia's war against Ukraine so there is no value in recruiting me to your viewpoint. Perhaps you have been recruited yourself and feel the need to proselytize for your new cause?
As to what effect I can have its the same with any public issue. No one individual can affect it, and yet public opinion is made up of individuals and does affect policy eventually.
I don't feel very good about my country wasting lives and treasure. I'm against the war the same way I was against the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War or many of our various covert, bombing, and proxy campaigns around the world.
Public opinion took a long time to end many of those conflicts, but it eventually did. Without it perhaps many would still be going on.
I meant to say, I think Liberalism, that of Adam Smith, JS Mill and lets say President Eisenhower as a rep for the post WWII USA dominated global order, is the primary reason we have had somewhat fewer wars in the recent past than we might have otherwise expected. Perhaps we are having more wars just now because many countries are seeing the USA, as the dominant global power, turning away from liberalism and towards a more selfish and self-righteous (partisan/tribal/exclusive/judgemental etc) stance by both its political parties.
Eisenhower made it clear that he was going to defend countries from communist aggression, but he wasn't going to try to overthrow existing communist regimes. This was the correct stance.
I have read your piece now. I agree with you. As the destructiveness of our technology for making war has increased the consequent costs of such destruction have discouraged politicians from initiating large scale (near peer) wars. Still there have been plenty of wars where the initiating side believes the costs to themselves will be tolerable.
As I suggest in my reply to myself I suspect a lot of the reduction in large scale wars since 1945 has come about through the imposition of the institutions of a 'liberal' world 'order' by the USA (and the UK) in the years immediately following 1945, which may be breaking down now (for about 30 years through American hubris (political elite infighting). I consider GW Bush senior the last Liberal President of the USA. While Clinton was economically liberal, I suspect his administration was too much of the 'American patriot' in orientation to think clearly about how to respond to the collapse of the USSR, though a Republican might see things differently.
>>Still there have been plenty of wars where the initiating side believes the costs to themselves will be tolerable.
Yes, exactly! The risk of retaliation is the key. The cost of bombing Third World countries that can't retaliate in any efficient manner is not very high. So that has been done rather liberally.
May I be curious and ask what train of thinking lead to your post 'On war'?
I wonder why Putin was not detered and why would Hamas gleefully induce Israel to destroy a substantial part of Gaza (given that in the past Israel has repeatedly destroyed parts of Gaza which have been rebuilt with international aid and remittances from Gazans working abroad).
It is a thought I have had for many years. I'm habitually a bit off the news and don't think much more about things because they are happening right now (a bad property for a blogger, I know). My guess is that Putin went mad/selfish extreme and got away with it and that Hamas' whole existence builds on making war with Israel, which makes them undeterred by the cost (much of which is paid by someone else, international aid, as you said). But, as I just admitted, I'm off.
I'll call that a humble brag as clearly you're an astute thinker.
I regard Putin as eminently rational. Clearly he thought he would get away with it and clearly still thinks that (otherwise he would be presenting proposals for peace talks).
As for Hamas and Israel, there were bad incentives for both sides (international aid for Hamas, USA aid for Israel), but also neither side wants to implement the idea of a '2 state solution'. They remain intent on achieving a different reality.
Yes, they have. I remember a claim from Napoleon Chagnon's books on the Yanomamö: Yanomamö villages seemed to invent needs in order to trade with other groups.
I don't think the special thing with capitalism is trade, but the vulnerability of its means of production combined with the difficulty of stealing those means of production. People in capitalistic states know that if they attack a neighbor, that neighbor will retaliate. And that is very costly in terms of lost production and destroyed capital.
Let's see. I think your idea that the risk of mutually loosing the increasingly sophisticated production systems we are developing during peace does deter major/peer wars. Though war also encourages innovation and selects for good management of resources.
What about Piketty's thesis that accumulated/inherited wealth grows faster than earned/produced wealth? That is, capitalism inevitably increases wealth inequality and the good thing about major/peer wars is that they destroy capital thus returning a more equitable society after the war.
Your argument that the producers have begun to out compete the warriors is the reverse of his thesis. I suspect many economists (and liberals) would like to agree with you.
Very interesting questions. Unfortunately I haven't read Piketty's brick-sized book, but I find his idea that inequality increases over time in the absence of war self-evident. Basically, there is a floor for how poor people can be. Below that floor people die. There is no ceiling for how rich people can be. So the richer can always grow richer, while poor people can, and do reproduce at subsistence level. As Thomas Piketty says, capital destruction is the only solution.
During Malthusian times when resources was a zero-sum game, that phenomenon was mediated through uneven reproduction. The poor reproduced less, the rich reproduced more. That made capital disperse somewhat among a growing number of rich families and thinned the ranks of the dispossesed. Now poor people reprproduce as much as rich people, because it is possible to stay alive with very little resources. If capital grows at any rate at all, that should mean that inequality is growing for every generation.
So basically I agree with Piketty (although I'm not sure that I agree that economic inequality is such a big deal). My thesis is not that society has become more equal in economic terms, but in military terms. Modern warriors need workers to supply them with advanced equipment, so they can't oppress the workers as they could before.
Your comment about malthusian and post malthusian times is relevant. Post malthus in Britain, society rather than absorbing any surplus by expanding population (and vice versa) undertook to allocate some surplus to additional research and development to further increase production and thus a virtuous cycle of increasing production was initiated that became the industrial revolution that began in Britain. Interesting this occurred even as Britains population was increasing.
By contrast post malthus France allocated the surplus it acquired from restraining population growth to the material benefit of wider society (this is actually disputed but appears to have been so) ie more equal consumption across society. France didn't experience an industrial revolution while doing this because increased consumption didn't lead to more efficient production. Arguably because 'labour' was more powerful in France than in Britain, at least locally where the goods were being produced. France and its labour only accepted a move to industrial production in the later 19th century as an effort to catch up with Britain. It seems like the current western focus on consumption lead growth is somewhat like France's approach to redistribution, which seems fair but ultimately just exacerbates power conflicts between 'productive' labour and 'elite' consumption.
Now apply this process to military actions. Consider the role of liberal beliefs in initiating and perpetuating Britain's industrial revolution. Is this analogous to what happened after WWII and are events post 1970 or 1980 or 1990 and ultimately 2020 analogous to France's path?
I'm a bit confused about your "the current situation should be more like Britain then".
Current economists tend to argue for government redistribution of the proceeds from growth to over come the tendency towards inequality which is not what Britain did. Rather during the early industrial revolution they moved manufacturing to the 'regions' (Iron Bridge territory) because that was cheaper for them and which effectively enriched the locals. A bit like USA manufacturers enriching China over the past 20 years.
Of course, none of this relates to current (western proxy) wars which I consider as conflicts of ideologies (rather more than over resources). My impression too is that China's view of Taiwan is more ideological than resource (chip fabrication) based so the destruction of the chip fabrication industry and all associated institutions maybe won't be enough to deter it from invading Taiwan.
High costs to war create a different problem.
"War is so costly you should give into my demands, because not doing so will mean war."
Thus, the cost of war alone doesn't solve the problem of war.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis we nearly had nuclear war. It was much closer than most people think. Was the principle that Cuba couldn't decide what weapons could be on its soil worth that? But if Cuba could do that what else could the commies do?
I think the most interesting aspect is that war "clarifies". Any amount of bullshit can go on being bullshit until some external objective force tests it. In capitalism that's profit/loss in the marketplace. Between states it can be war.
Capitalism may not have been critical to expansion. In _Evolution of Civilizations_ Carroll Quigley wrote about each civilization being driven by its own instrument of expansion. For instance, on page 358:
"The first stage of expansion in Western civilization lasted for about three centuries (970-1270) and was one of the greatest of such periods in human history. Its instrument of expansion was the feudal system in which a small minority of fighting men and clergy were supported by a great majority of peasants. The contributions of the latter to the former were far greater than the costs of protection and justice they received in return, so that surpluses accumulated in the possession of the upper class. At first these surpluses were used for political ends, to build castles or to rebuild older timbered fortifications in stone. But soon investment in economic activities began."
> Without group selection, the egoists or nepotists inevitably win
I suspect this is not really the case. Although I don't really agree with Ashton and Lee either, I think they have a point when they argue that the reason both Agreeableness and Honesty exist is because low-H egoism allows individuals to exploit others, and low-A is a defense against low-H egoism. It's long been noted that humans with reduced H have some limited ability to form coalitions and tend to do so along nepotistic lines; but punitive and paranoid (low-A) instincts in the surrounding neighbors curtail their success.
> The Vikings that conquered Normandie
I'm guessing "Normandie" is the Swedish spelling? In English, "Normandy"
> Before capitalism, war was a bit like football. That's an exaggeration
Wait... *How* was war like football?
> High productivity caused two phenomena: Very efficient weapons with great destruction power (&) Productive forces that are easy to destroy and difficult to steal.
Quigley didn't exactly describe it this way, but his analysis is similar for all civilizations across history, even before capitalism:
"The Age of Conflict (Stage 4) is a period of imperialist wars and of irrationality supported for reasons that are usually different in the different social classes. The masses of the people (who have no vested interest in the existing institution of expansion) engage in imperialist wars because
it seems the only way to overcome the slowing down of expansion. Unable to get ahead by other means (such as economic means), they seek to get ahead by political action, above all by taking wealth from their political neighbors."
I don't quote Quigley to try to argue specifically; I'm not sure either your analysis or his is better.
But I doubt war has always been more profitable than production; the ancient world produced incredible wealth and technology, which would have been difficult to produce under perpetual harassment. And - though I'm not holding my breath that this will turn out to be *totally* free of warfare - there are hints of civilizations without warfare, such as the Indus Valley Civilization: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130910-200-the-real-utopia-this-ancient-civilisation-thrived-without-war/
I didn't know about Carroll Quigley before. From the Wikipedia page I can conclude that we have one conclusion in common: The idea that democracy depends on cheap weapons that almost everyone can use.
>>Although I don't really agree with Ashton and Lee either, I think they have a point when they argue that the reason both Agreeableness and Honesty exist is because low-H egoism allows individuals to exploit others, and low-A is a defense against low-H egoism. It's long been noted that humans with reduced H have some limited ability to form coalitions and tend to do so along nepotistic lines; but punitive and paranoid (low-A) instincts in the surrounding neighbors curtail their success.
An interesting objection. But I'm not sure it is an objection. Isn't a coalition a group? So then people high in H are good at forming groups. Which make their groups more successful. That is... group selection?
>>Wait... *How* was war like football?
Ernst Jünger was like a very dedicated young football player. He even chatted with his opponents in breaks. No hard feelings - it was just a game. A deadly game, but a game.
>>there are hints of civilizations without warfare, such as the Indus Valley Civilization
Not a civilization, but:
https://www.stoneageherbalist.com/p/the-maori-genocide-of-the-moriori
Pacifism is a nice thing. I'm sure there was a lot of it here and there, until someone came and ruined it.
> An interesting objection. But I'm not sure it is an objection. Isn't a coalition a group? So then people high in H are good at forming groups. Which make their groups more successful. That is... group selection?
Yes! That is, in fact, what I think! Group selection is controversial among biologists, but I don't think it should be at all. Our bodies are an amalgamation of separate species together, some so intimately that they literally fused into a single cell (our mitochondria used to be a separate organism). Cooperation is a winning strategy for arthropods, lichen, and we're now finding even for trees which share nutrients through the fungal network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network
I believe that in humans, variation in H - and a couple other traits I'll write about eventually - represents variation in the ability to form cohesive, functional groups. Low H groups can function, but their group-mind is stupid, clumsy, and short lived, since the groups themselves tend to fragment and implode.
> https://www.stoneageherbalist.com/p/the-maori-genocide-of-the-moriori
> Pacifism is a nice thing. I'm sure there was a lot of it here and there, until someone came and ruined it.
So this wasn't a bad rejoinder. But the Moriori would likely have survived unmolested for centuries without the introduction of modern techology into the region; moreover, their culture was pathologically pacifist, to an extent that may even have been worse than Christianity's pathological cosmopolitanism. I doubt that any outright pacifist societies ever really thrived for long anywhere in the world, or ever will.
Mostly I just want to be clear that I believe populations hanging around the midlatitudes have had areas and times of relative peacefulness past the dawn of the historical record, because, I think that the conditions required for this relative peacefulness prevailed for ten thousand years. This may well be an incorrect belief! But, pointing to the warfare of modern holdovers, even when a few of them live in the midlatitudes of the Southern hemisphere, doesn't really falsify it.
Wow, life really has been hard lately. I missed something like three months of Stone Age Herbalist without realizing it.
I'll say something more substantive in a bit
While I agree with your overall argument, I think you will want to reevaluate your model of earlier, pre-capitalistic societies.
Starting with the notion that stealing is more efficient than producing, that is quite a claim, seemingly not recognizing that stealing entails repeated exposure to violence and risk above and beyond merely producing. Hence why such a small proportion of the population can make any kind of a living doing it, and that portion spends a lot of time creating a moral system that justifies their theft as proper. Societies with lower non-theft productivity tend to see more bent towards violence, as the opportunity costs are lower, but even then it is a small proportion.
However, when it comes to war in later but still pre-modern periods, your "herbivores" make up the majority of those in the army. One of the biggest advantages of grain producing farmers, for instance, is that once the crop is planted there really isn't anything much for them to do with it for a few months, and thus the summer is the campaign season. It wasn't only the lords and their immediate men at arms marching off, but the levy of peasants bulking out the force.
>>Starting with the notion that stealing is more efficient than producing, that is quite a claim, seemingly not recognizing that stealing entails repeated exposure to violence and risk above and beyond merely producing.
It is quite a claim. Still, I think it is accurate. When productivity is low, no one can produce more than barely subsistence through working. Those who want more than barely subsistence need to steal the products of several other people's labor. In his book Among Cannibals, 19th century anthropologist Carl Lumholz claimed that the only way for a man among the Queensland Australian Aborigines to be rich, was for him to have several wives to provide for him.
That doesn't support your claim, however. The wives in question are by definition producing above subsistence if they have extra to provide the husband. It also doesn't solve the efficiency problem, as if the husband had to take by force the resources by which he becomes rich, how long do you think it would be before there was a fish bone in his soup? (Or a sharp stick in his sleeping form, whatever their preferred method.)
At best one can claim that stealing is only a more efficient option for a minority of the population, one that is either very non-productive in other avenues or exceptionally skilled in theft. That certainly does describe a certain percent of the population.
From another angle it also is obvious that stealing cannot be more efficient for a majority, as you need people producing to have something to steal. Theft is at best zero sum, usually negative sum, so theft only makes a lot of sense if there are far more people producing than stealing. In your terminology, there is by necessity a vastly larger biomass of herbivores than predators.
>>how long do you think it would be before there was a fish bone in his soup? (Or a sharp stick in his sleeping form, whatever their preferred method.)
It is an interesting question why women subjected to forced marriages so seldom kill their husbands. But they seemingly do that so seldom that men all over the world have found marrying unwilling women a viable strategy.
As practiced by the advanced nations at the frontier of civilization, capitalism encourages extreme specialization, making the cost of war, as you rightly say, prohibitive. But the US is investing in autarky with billions in tax incentives encouraging companies to build it in the USA. Other advanced countries are doing the same. Do these autarkic investments presage more wars involving advanced nations?
I don't get it. What are companies building in the USA?
Capacity to make in the USA things they import from China.
The thumbnail version of this column is the quip I once wrote down, but now cannot find the reference, that we've replaced war with market competition and electoral politics.
Interestingly, we don't really let the farmers run things directly, but rather they periodically get to choose the elite that will run things.
>>Interestingly, we don't really let the farmers run things directly, but rather they periodically get to choose the elite that will run things.
I was into direct democracy before. Or more accurately, liquid democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
Anders introduced me to it and gave up on it much later than me too. But now I think we both have accepted that people don't want to be that rational. They simply want leaders to represent them.
I am no expert, but there has been a lot of fretting in the US since Trump was elected that political parties are needed as a way to screen out populist impulses. I've accumulated a number of quotes along these lines:
Well-functioning parties are political gatekeepers, necessary to representative democracy but antithetical to the utopian alternative, direct democracy. -- Charles Lane, "If the GOP had superdelegates, we might not be in this Trump mess"
As Lupu notes, the death of a major party can lead to substantial instability in a political system. Venezuela was able to resist a coup attempt by Hugo Chavez when it had a functional party system, but in its absence, he was able to assemble a winning political coalition. Democracies, it seems, are surprisingly fragile in the absence of functional parties. And it's no coincidence that the last time a major American political party died, a civil war shortly followed. Parties provide a way for a democracy to process issues politically, rather than violently. -- "Yes, political parties can die" by Seth Masket in "Mischiefs of Faction"
Thus, populism has become synonymous with voting based on emotions, almost exclusively negative emotions. Both parties have been harnessing this power source for some time now, but with the continued rise of the influence of the internet, one party lost control of its populist movement and the other party had a fairly close call. -- PostmanSays analyzes the elections of 2016
This assumes that populists are not giving any information that the political process can use to get better outcomes, which is a big assumption.
I will take something simple on this topic. Trump was the only Republican who called the Iraq war a mistake and ran on an anti-war platform in 2016. This was clearly a message the career politicians needed (still need) to hear.
Yes. Assuming that people are rational is not very rational.
Before I read, I can'resist making a comment.
I don't think it is capitalism as such that has discouraged war. War happens when we fail to negotiate an agreed settlement between the parties.
Negotiated agreements between buyer and seller are at the heart of the capitalist process. Ronald Coase, a 20th century Englishman wrote very insightfully about this (Coase Theorem). However, when 'transaction costs' are 'high' the parties can find it very difficult to reach agreement. When countries are involved those transaction costs are often ideological ie they have beliefs which they are just not prepared to change on any terms. For example, Ukraine wants to be free to trade with who it likes (namely western countries) as an equal. Whereas Russia regards Ukraine as a province of its empire that needs to take direction from Moscow.
So far the costs of the the war in Ukraine are still cheaper than the costs of compromising on those ideals. Both capitalist and noncapitalist countries undertake wars when they are not prepared to compromise. Which is what we are also seeing with Israel's war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza (but I don't intend to discuss the morality of that here).
In 2014 the elected government of Ukraine was overthrown violently because it favored one trade deal over another. In a functional society the side that didn't get the trade deal it wanted would simply have waited till the next election, tried their luck again, and signed a different deal if the people chose to back that in democratic elections.
Compounding this the overthrow was backed by hostile foreign powers who then proceeded to arm and train the Ukranian army for the next eight years.
What would have been better for everyone involved is if they participated in the democratic process rather than sponsoring color revolutions.
If they could not be satisfied with the democratic process then perhaps they should have separated the way the Czechs and Slovaks did.
"So far the costs of the the war in Ukraine are still cheaper than the costs of compromising on those ideals."
I don't know if they are cheaper, but at the outset of the conflict they seemed cheaper to the participants. Putin clearly thought there was a decent change the government would just fall immediately. Also Ukrainian leadership overestimated how effective western support would be, in part because the west made a lot of promises it either could not and/or would not keep. Probably a prescient person could have seen that, but the future was sufficiently obscure that one can see how people could get it wrong.
A lot depends on what you think a "western" Ukraine would look like. I think it looks like a failed state no better then what they had to begin with, so I don't think its worth fighting for. Ukranian's seem to agree (they are an entirely slave conscript army at this point that has to be dragged off the street to fight).
Yours is a familiar line. I can have no impact on the outcome of Russia's war against Ukraine so there is no value in recruiting me to your viewpoint. Perhaps you have been recruited yourself and feel the need to proselytize for your new cause?
As to what effect I can have its the same with any public issue. No one individual can affect it, and yet public opinion is made up of individuals and does affect policy eventually.
I don't feel very good about my country wasting lives and treasure. I'm against the war the same way I was against the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War or many of our various covert, bombing, and proxy campaigns around the world.
Public opinion took a long time to end many of those conflicts, but it eventually did. Without it perhaps many would still be going on.
I meant to say, I think Liberalism, that of Adam Smith, JS Mill and lets say President Eisenhower as a rep for the post WWII USA dominated global order, is the primary reason we have had somewhat fewer wars in the recent past than we might have otherwise expected. Perhaps we are having more wars just now because many countries are seeing the USA, as the dominant global power, turning away from liberalism and towards a more selfish and self-righteous (partisan/tribal/exclusive/judgemental etc) stance by both its political parties.
Eisenhower made it clear that he was going to defend countries from communist aggression, but he wasn't going to try to overthrow existing communist regimes. This was the correct stance.
That's all entirely true. The question I'm trying to answer is why compromise became so much more fashionable after 1945.
Nukes.
Take a simple example. If Russia didn't have nukes, don't you think we would already be at war with them?
If Ukraine had nukes, the war never would have started.
I don't know if nukes made Russia confident enough to try their luck in Ukraine, but its certainly why we don't have a wider war yet.
Yes. Nukes form the crown of modern destructive power.
I have read your piece now. I agree with you. As the destructiveness of our technology for making war has increased the consequent costs of such destruction have discouraged politicians from initiating large scale (near peer) wars. Still there have been plenty of wars where the initiating side believes the costs to themselves will be tolerable.
As I suggest in my reply to myself I suspect a lot of the reduction in large scale wars since 1945 has come about through the imposition of the institutions of a 'liberal' world 'order' by the USA (and the UK) in the years immediately following 1945, which may be breaking down now (for about 30 years through American hubris (political elite infighting). I consider GW Bush senior the last Liberal President of the USA. While Clinton was economically liberal, I suspect his administration was too much of the 'American patriot' in orientation to think clearly about how to respond to the collapse of the USSR, though a Republican might see things differently.
>>Still there have been plenty of wars where the initiating side believes the costs to themselves will be tolerable.
Yes, exactly! The risk of retaliation is the key. The cost of bombing Third World countries that can't retaliate in any efficient manner is not very high. So that has been done rather liberally.
May I be curious and ask what train of thinking lead to your post 'On war'?
I wonder why Putin was not detered and why would Hamas gleefully induce Israel to destroy a substantial part of Gaza (given that in the past Israel has repeatedly destroyed parts of Gaza which have been rebuilt with international aid and remittances from Gazans working abroad).
It is a thought I have had for many years. I'm habitually a bit off the news and don't think much more about things because they are happening right now (a bad property for a blogger, I know). My guess is that Putin went mad/selfish extreme and got away with it and that Hamas' whole existence builds on making war with Israel, which makes them undeterred by the cost (much of which is paid by someone else, international aid, as you said). But, as I just admitted, I'm off.
"I'm off"
I'll call that a humble brag as clearly you're an astute thinker.
I regard Putin as eminently rational. Clearly he thought he would get away with it and clearly still thinks that (otherwise he would be presenting proposals for peace talks).
As for Hamas and Israel, there were bad incentives for both sides (international aid for Hamas, USA aid for Israel), but also neither side wants to implement the idea of a '2 state solution'. They remain intent on achieving a different reality.
Haven't people always traded with other cultures?
Yes, they have. I remember a claim from Napoleon Chagnon's books on the Yanomamö: Yanomamö villages seemed to invent needs in order to trade with other groups.
I don't think the special thing with capitalism is trade, but the vulnerability of its means of production combined with the difficulty of stealing those means of production. People in capitalistic states know that if they attack a neighbor, that neighbor will retaliate. And that is very costly in terms of lost production and destroyed capital.
Let's see. I think your idea that the risk of mutually loosing the increasingly sophisticated production systems we are developing during peace does deter major/peer wars. Though war also encourages innovation and selects for good management of resources.
What about Piketty's thesis that accumulated/inherited wealth grows faster than earned/produced wealth? That is, capitalism inevitably increases wealth inequality and the good thing about major/peer wars is that they destroy capital thus returning a more equitable society after the war.
Your argument that the producers have begun to out compete the warriors is the reverse of his thesis. I suspect many economists (and liberals) would like to agree with you.
Very interesting questions. Unfortunately I haven't read Piketty's brick-sized book, but I find his idea that inequality increases over time in the absence of war self-evident. Basically, there is a floor for how poor people can be. Below that floor people die. There is no ceiling for how rich people can be. So the richer can always grow richer, while poor people can, and do reproduce at subsistence level. As Thomas Piketty says, capital destruction is the only solution.
During Malthusian times when resources was a zero-sum game, that phenomenon was mediated through uneven reproduction. The poor reproduced less, the rich reproduced more. That made capital disperse somewhat among a growing number of rich families and thinned the ranks of the dispossesed. Now poor people reprproduce as much as rich people, because it is possible to stay alive with very little resources. If capital grows at any rate at all, that should mean that inequality is growing for every generation.
So basically I agree with Piketty (although I'm not sure that I agree that economic inequality is such a big deal). My thesis is not that society has become more equal in economic terms, but in military terms. Modern warriors need workers to supply them with advanced equipment, so they can't oppress the workers as they could before.
It is now morning here so I don't have much time.
Your comment about malthusian and post malthusian times is relevant. Post malthus in Britain, society rather than absorbing any surplus by expanding population (and vice versa) undertook to allocate some surplus to additional research and development to further increase production and thus a virtuous cycle of increasing production was initiated that became the industrial revolution that began in Britain. Interesting this occurred even as Britains population was increasing.
By contrast post malthus France allocated the surplus it acquired from restraining population growth to the material benefit of wider society (this is actually disputed but appears to have been so) ie more equal consumption across society. France didn't experience an industrial revolution while doing this because increased consumption didn't lead to more efficient production. Arguably because 'labour' was more powerful in France than in Britain, at least locally where the goods were being produced. France and its labour only accepted a move to industrial production in the later 19th century as an effort to catch up with Britain. It seems like the current western focus on consumption lead growth is somewhat like France's approach to redistribution, which seems fair but ultimately just exacerbates power conflicts between 'productive' labour and 'elite' consumption.
Now apply this process to military actions. Consider the role of liberal beliefs in initiating and perpetuating Britain's industrial revolution. Is this analogous to what happened after WWII and are events post 1970 or 1980 or 1990 and ultimately 2020 analogous to France's path?
Economic inequality decreased after WW2 and started to rise again in the 1970s. So I guess the current situation should be more like Britain then.
Thanks for the stimulating ideas.
I'm a bit confused about your "the current situation should be more like Britain then".
Current economists tend to argue for government redistribution of the proceeds from growth to over come the tendency towards inequality which is not what Britain did. Rather during the early industrial revolution they moved manufacturing to the 'regions' (Iron Bridge territory) because that was cheaper for them and which effectively enriched the locals. A bit like USA manufacturers enriching China over the past 20 years.
Of course, none of this relates to current (western proxy) wars which I consider as conflicts of ideologies (rather more than over resources). My impression too is that China's view of Taiwan is more ideological than resource (chip fabrication) based so the destruction of the chip fabrication industry and all associated institutions maybe won't be enough to deter it from invading Taiwan.