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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

Wars never really went away. It's just that we managed increase our productivity enough that the old limited resources no longer constrained us.

Farmland is only a limited resource if you are not using artificial fertilizer. The land no longer needs to remain fallow after harvest, you can just plant again.

Because we can now turn energy into food, wars are now centered around energy instead. Russia annexes Crimea, USA goes to war with Iran.

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Another way to say that is that farming is 1% of GDP in America now -- so the traditional war aim of capturing lots of farmland with peasants to tax is laughable.

Industry is down to 20%; in WWII capturing centers of heavy industry was a big deal, but again this seems dated.

Maybe energy's importance isn't quite captured by such figures, it's a concentrated tap of money which is easy for rulers to control. The US is no longer a net importer, but IIRC it's still Russia's main export.

>Farmland is only a limited resource if you are not using artificial fertilizer.

Until the supply of phosphorous mass agriculture relies on for fertilizer runs out.

http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/p...

Or as more and more arable land is lost to erosion

https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degra...

In this argument fusion energy would eliminate the need for wars, because all countries to safely generate huge amounts of energy, enough for desalination even.

Fusion energy would eliminate the need for wars.

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