Hacker News Reader

> about something real vs die over bullshit

While the military-industrial complex is a thing, most armed conflict can be abstracted as resource exploitation or contention expressed as territorialism. Religion and ideology is just a convenient cassus belli.

As the Lesser Bonapartes podcast puts it, "The in-group always has a problem with... those people."

View on HN

> cassus belli

Should just be one "s": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casus_belli

...most armed conflict can be abstracted as resource exploitation...

This might be true, but invariably it is massive excessive exploitation by the ruling class, rather than e.g. "we'd like to hunt in that creek bottom so we can eat some meat."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com