The parent comment actually seems reasonable to me. It really wouldn’t take much escalation for a trade war to turn into a shooting war between, at least China and America.
I don't think any ruler would have been able to easily hop to another continent on a whim for an orgy with a wide selection of sex slaves and be back home by next dawn, before the advent of instantaneous communications and jet planes.
The point was that the people who command nations have access to a previously unprecedented level of luxury which would be ruined if the world wasn't largely at peace.
I don’t see how this poses much of a safeguard, in any event. If millions of Chinese wind up starving due to a trade war, for example, a shooting war is almost inevitable.
It doesn't.
A shooting war has already commenced by the CCP in Hong Kong because they refuse to acquiesce to the dominion of the PRC's illegal dictates, so what you should be worried more about creating a 'shooting war' is China's economic turmoil (much by the machinations of the CCP/PRC) having a spill-on effect outside of its borders than within. Moreover, a correction is long over-due, just to be clear, the US shouldn't be a super power anymore, either; nor should any nation if we've seen what they do with said power.
While I agree the World is under a kleptocractic-plutacracy, the emergence of the Nation-state was only ever just that; there was no 'Golden era' of the State, it was only forced down the serf/peasant class' collective throats and legitimized under a thinly-veil scam called an election process which promotes division and mob-justice. One in which can be altered/manipulated in masse and in certain cases outright removed as it sees fit.