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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

It kind of feels similar to how monarchs tried to form lasting peace further back: inter-marry so that everyone is someone’s cousin they grew up with. Of course that didn’t exactly work perfectly.

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That was the thesis of "The Great Illusion", published in 1911. Basically, nation states would rationally avoid war, as it is pure downside, economically. Obviously it's at least insufficient.

I think it's a totally naive view. Even if we limit ourselves to only thinking about rational actors, we must always ask about economic costs for whom. Nation states do not operate as a unit as a rational economic actor -- we must look at the competing actors within. One group could somewhat win, and another substantially lose, and that may net out to a negative -- it happens regularly. Many are clamoring for it right now -- a new Cold War against China.

Intertwined economies are part of it but I think people underestimate the importance of norms. EU leaders and ministers are regularly in meetings together. When there is a crisis now the reaction of all EU leaders is to hold a conference for them to hash out how to deal with the situation. This establishment of the norm of talking whenever there's an issue is very powerful.

This. A billion times this!

The principle that member nations have alignment and act (mostly) in unison.

> Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

On one hand, I read experts say that. On the other, I read experts point out that it failed to prevent WWI.

I wonder what the consensus is, if there is one, and what the evidence is.

Yeah my thoughts too. My feeling is that there won’t be some perfect solution that stops all wars. But that it was a very rational idea that may have stopped some.

Indeed it would be interesting to see experts attempt to enumerate situations that were avoided through this approach. Though I’m not sure if that’s even possible given it requires a form of alternate reality synthesis which is all but pure bias.

A statistical approach may find there’s still too little data?

> My feeling is that there won’t be some perfect solution that stops all wars. But that it was a very rational idea that may have stopped some.

Yes, absolutely. Also, it generally makes us wealthier.

To say nothing about living longer and not being blown up. It's definitely a plus.

But the economies were not so intertwined. The British, French, etc. were massively profiting from exploiting their colonial holdings while the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were being left in the dust, slave labour abolished some decades or centuries ago.

no mention of the gold hoards of Spain ? it rocked the continent at the time

>Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

Did not work terribly well for the former Soviet republics :(

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