Is peace unattainable because it doesn't generate enough profits?

[devilgrrl]

I've often wondered that myself. What do you think?

[ThomCat]

1. Yes. There is money and power to be extracted from war.

Nobody gets rich or powerful from peace.

[bryant69]

2. No.

War is common because there are natural resources all over the place, and everybody needs them. Also people have ideologies which inevitably lead to conflict and then to bloodshed. .

But there is plenty of profit in peace. You can't trade with people you are at war with.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[JHH]

3. No look at the Clinton years Peace and strong profits

just not for Halliburton

[whosinpower]

4. Peace is unattainable

Because the powerbrokers profit from war.

They would never allow peace to break out. I'm reminded of Kissinger.....

[AX10]

5. Well, Clinton gave us relative and peace and much prosperity...

although, the Bush gang didn't make much of profit during those years, but most Americans did do well.

[mark414]

6. there was plenty of war before the corporation was born...

[pitohui]

7. peace is unattainable because of the 5 percent who make all the trouble

most people want to live their own lives and have no interest in war, fighting, one-up-manship of their fellow human, but 5 or 10 percent of people are for whatever reason testosterone-challenged, sociopaths, i dunno, whatever you want to call it when the ONLY way they can be happy is to put their feet on the throats of other people

because of that 5 percent, we need jails, police, armies, war, otherwise they would run roughshod over the rest of us

there will never be permanent peace until we find a way to change human nature

profits is a side issue, being insanely wealthy is just another way for the sociopath to measure himself as better than everyone else -- and, mind you, it isn't enough that he be rich, you must be poor -- otherwise he would seek a technological solution which raises quality of life (wealth) for ALL -- the sociopath doesn't want that, profits thru war are better because he can be up high looking down on the rest of us


there is an argument that has been made that the profits caused by war are LESS (by a lot) than the profits caused by innovation through other means, but the profits of war go much more lopsidedly toward the power-mad and so they might have $5 billion in pocket instead of $6 billion but their relative wealth is greater because they have simultaneously impoverished others -- and i guess that's all that matters to them

[davekriss]

8. War is a Racket

Capitalism requires change, whether it be of the sort Joseph Shumpeter means by "creative destruction" or the kind of wanton destruction caused by war.

Both clear the way for the capitalist to exploit comparative advantage and extract profit. Capitalism without change results in profit-entropy: New entrants arrive trying to duplicate the profit the first capitalist was able to make, driving the costs of labor and resources up, and undercuting price, thereby squeezing profit.

Other ways to protect profit is to partner with the State to craft laws that create barriers to new entrants (protectionism), capture of cheap natural resources (imperialism), prevent labor from negotiating from a position of political parity (instead individuals negotiate contracts from a position of relative powerlessness), pass laws that socialize the costs while directing the benefits to the pockets of the few -- all this resulting in, not capitalism, but fascism, the corpo-fascist State Business we see today.

To the capitalist, the nice thing about war is every time a bomb explodes, they get to build a new one and get paid for it; every time the bomb takes out a building, they get to build a new one and get paid for it; every time a nation is overwhelmed or surrenders, they get to privitize the commons and carve up the loot amongst themselves. War is a racket, General Smedly Butler once said; I see nothing these last fifty years that disputes that.

[madrchsod]

9. economics 101

there`s four generators of wealth. war isn`t one of them. if we spent 30% of what we do now our country would be in fine shape and we would still be able to defend our country

[davekriss]

11. Wealth for the few

What war does is redirect cash flows of the State into the hands of the few (into the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about). The net wealth for society may actually decline; the net wealth of the executives and major shareholders of companies like our current crop of "racketeers" (Halliburton, Bechtel, and Carlyle) increase dramatically.

Further, since the birth of capitalism our history has been marked by imperial wars -- wars to open markets, wars to capture and maintain streams of cheap natural resources, wars to destroy examples of alternate (non-imperial) arrangements, wars everywhere. War has been the preserver of profit for capitalist elites everywhere. The exception, and it rarely occurs, is the hyper-destructive war between capitalist factions themselves (e.g. WWII), which is exceedingly expensive and therefore steadfastly avoided.

[Lerkfish]

10. actually, I've given this much thought in the past, here goes:

We are a warmongering tribe because in the past, our warmongers killed efficiently. Then, they wanted to kill more efficiently, so they researched how to make better and stronger weapons. As they did so, they realized they needed to be in the decision making positions to pay for the research to make better and stronger weapons. It became a race, so that a large percentage of everything made had to be invested in better and stronger weapons, or else the other guys would beat us and make even better and even stronger weapons.
Generation after generation, the better warmongers were rewarded with governance, garnering larger and larger pieces of the overall pie for their own endeavors, to benefit the state.
Rulers wanted better weapons, so weapons makers were given large sums of money, and jealously protected. Peacemakers had no voice, and were usually starved or killed out. Warmongers thrived.

As time passed, our tribe became extremely narrowly specialized. War became the FIRST thought, instead of the last resort.

Eventually, the warmongers became a larger power than the states they served. Ultimately, whether one state or another survived was irrelevant, as long as weapons were continuing to be made, which generated larger and larger sums of money for the weapons makers. Soon, weapons makers realized there weren't ENOUGH wars to continue to feed their appetite for bigger and better weaponry, and money. So, the weaponsmakers started to create wars to create a market for their wares.


We could change this, but it would take a lot of time, and the overall problem is that the warmongers are stubborn, and at present weild all the power, all the money and even have states cowering in fear of them. Anything the warmongers perceived as a threat to that powerbase would be eliminated with extreme prejudice. After all, they have bred themselves for bloodlust and entitlement. No way are they going to step aside or allow themselves to be overrun.

the solution has to be simple, subtle, non-threatening and long term. What needs to be done is that for every dollar spent on weaponry, one cent must be spent on diplomacy. One cent must be spent on bringing together great minds to come up with peaceful solutions. One cent must be spent to forestall war as long as possible through diplomacy.

you see, our war muscles are overdeveloped, and our diplomatic muscles have atrophied. We need to slowly stretch and excercise our diplomatic muscles, but it must be done in a way that our warmongers consider it neglible or irrelevant.

Eventually, if we keep finding peaceful solutions, one small treaty here, one avoided conflict there.....slowly but surely we will starve the beast of war.

We cannot fight war, as that is what it wants. We have to keep feeding it small bites of peace until it weakens.

IMHO

[davekriss]

12. Good post, lerkfish

Sounds right to me! :)

[Lerkfish]

13. thanks.

:)