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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

We have found a way to not kill each other!

Rich free market democracies don't fight wars against each other.

We unfortunately have not found a way to turn our kleptokratic dictatorship neighbor into one.

The greatest failure of the past 20 years was the belief that if we open up trade and grow rich together, rational self-interest will lead to liberalization and peace. Instead, it just gave our enemies more resources to spend on self-destructive imperialist ambitions.

Same story as always: the goal sounded nice, but no one wanted to do the actual work.

Plenty of people wanted to do the work. Lot of European politicians were desperate to do the work.

But it turns out that when a fascist has nukes, there's not much you can do to convince them to not be fascist.

The "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" has been broken 4 times:

- NATO v Yugoslavia 1999 - India v Pakistan 1999 - Russia v Georgia 2008 - Russia v Ukraine 2014, 2022

NATO v Yugoslavia 1999 is not like the others

What is the denominator? I.e. how many times did it prevent war?

There is no way no know. Any number is an acceptable answer. For a good answer you can find lots of reasoning/logic/history to justify your guess, but it is still a guess.

Without it the parent post is irrelevant.

Only with rational actors. But do not underestimate the stupidity of leaders who thought it would be easy.

So is the US not democratic enough, not rich enough or not free market enough?

Also a very Christian nation that follows the teachings of Jesus.

In case of war privilieges, your president can act as a dictator. At least the first 90 days, unless he finds a way to reset those days.

I can't think of any rich free market democracies the US has fought wars against.

The trick is to destabilize their democracies first.

They do it to themselves after people forget what made them rich in the first place.

Which country?

Well, as long as they’re poor free market democracies, it’s a mulligan, right? Bonus points if you use special ops or intelligence agencies to kick it off so it doesn’t count as a war.

This might have to be put into the context that they do in fact move the conflict over resources to economic wars. They also actively engage in wars over ressources when they think they can win outside of MAD, see U. S. vs Iran.

Economic warfare also does in fact kill people. Denying a population, e. g., Cuba, the ability to access medicine/food kills humans just as well as a bullet in the long term.

There are various other ways this causes suffering. Different forms of warfare are still warfare, even if you don't to hold a gun for all of them.

Being "rich" also requires someone else to be "poor".

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Market democracy is not perfect but it solves 90% of the problems we'd have otherwise.

>Economic warfare also does in fact kill people. Denying a population, e. g., Cuba, the ability to access medicine/food kills humans just as well as a bullet in the long term.

Deny them jobs, investment that could create jobs and paths to prosperity.

Give them drugs.

Shocked Pikachu when they don't like you.

Edit: Revised language to be more broadly applicable.

Now we just need to figure out how to stop rich free market democracies from invading and bombing poorer countries

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