> xeno syndicated wrote:
> No, Zarf, I can answer you, I just don't. Your most recent argument is that cutting trade necessarily leads to war. But I'm saying it doesn't have to be that way. Our society is structured in such a way that makes war an inevitability; that ties trade to the occurrence of war.
1: If trade is a preventative measure against war, as I have said, it empirically denies that our society makes war inevitable. The fact that trading nations will resort to methods outside warfare to resolve their differences means that I'm right, i.e. the UN. The fact that nations are more cautious at going to war today further helps this.
2: I actually thought of a new argument against you. You know those invisible dollars, fiat currencies, and all those flimsy bullshit investments that rise and fall constantly? Guess what they serve to prevent against? That's right. War.
Think about it. The US is built on a huge financial system, a huge banking and credit infrastructure, tons of investments, and fiat currency. All these are subject to speculation as a primary controlling force. The instability means that the US must do a balancing act to make sure that these institutions remain confident in the United States as an institution. That means the US can NEVER get into a large scale war, i.e. a war against Russia, China, or the EU. But since those nations have the same types of systems, they have the same restriction.
Think of it like a house of cards. Yes, the house of cards can come tumbling down. The threat of it falling means the builders will do whatever is in their power to keep it from falling. The very threat of financial collapse prevents drastic actions that would cause those collapses.
3: There's no analysis on your part here. I hardly know what you're arguing because you only gave a blip.
4: I have external harms outside of just war. Loss of the reason to live. Dictatorships everywhere, caused by the resource curse, which is caused by the lack of trade. These were unaddressed. They're the tiebreakers.
5: Even if you win that you prevent more wars than you cause... the wars you do cause are motivated by the need for essential resources, which means they're matters of survival. That means any war caused would become a World War 1-esque total war, with the entire society mobilized to become part of a war machine, which makes one war bigger and worse than the smaller wars that may be prevented. In short, ten Iraq wars are better than a single World War 2.
If our society were structured differently, with no centralized political or financial authority, with domestic production in every country geared towards producing enough goods to ensure their nation's population had their basic needs met, then there would be no need for trade other than or specialty or luxury goods, the cessation of which would NOT lead to war.
1: Not all small regions CAN live in a decentralized society. That was my first post. That causes another instance of imperialism and resource wars, leading to all my harms outlined in post 1. I only have to show one example of one nation lacking one key resource, and I win the argument because it only takes one aggressor to start a global war. I'll give you more than that:
Japan can't mine steel.
Luxembourg can't produce food.
Regions and nations in the Middle East can't produce significant food and water.
California can't produce enough water on its own to fulfill its own population.
Africa can't access medical treatment.
Europe can't become self-sufficient on oil.
2: Bam! You fell into another trap.
You concede that your society collapses trade. If trade is collapsed, it means there is no global market, which means there is no "global market price" for commodities. No resource-based economy.
3: Even if you show that all regions can produce what they need, producing goods which nations aren't built to produce becomes inefficient and leads to tons of harms in itself. Here's multiple examples:
A: Nations will have to construct huge amounts of inefficient infrastructure to produce certain goods that they were previously unaccustomed to producing.
B: Farmland not used for the correct crop ends up being used inefficiently, forcing farmers to use pesticides and industrial fertilizers where farmland once was nurtured naturally. This utterly destroys the farmland, permanently reducing the possible farmland for human consumption. That makes resource warfare inevitable because it makes domestic farmland a temporary resource.
C: Brazil would be encouraged to destroy the Amazon to expand its farmland because it couldn't import food anymore.
D: Cities would have to be abandoned to move to farmland. The purpose of a city is to let more humans live in less space. Can we say overpopulation and land crisis?
E: Remote locations would need to be abandoned. Examples: Offshore drilling plants, nuclear energy facilities, Arctic Research facilities...
F: Who's funding NASA now?
What politician would be able to convince their population of the need to sign up for their nation's military because the Germans aren't trading their Mercedes anymore?
Britain got in a war with China because China wouldn't buy opium from them. 
On an Earth upon which human society provides all of its citizens with the items a - f in the first post of this thread, there would be no need for trade or war.
Conceded. But though the above, I'm arguing that the status quo, or better yet, a society of expanded global free trade, would be uniquely better at providing a - f than what you propose. I don't think the resource-based economy actually provides its citizens with items a-f, for the reasons above.
Don't you see, Zarf? I don't respond, because your arguments aren't relevant.
