I have never really thought this question out before. But ‘war’ was one of the major factors in my going completely anarcho-capitalist, so it is surprising to me that I had never thought this through.
The other day somebody said to me, “War is inevitable. It is in human nature.” And I said to them, “If war is inevitable, and in human nature, then are you implying that human beings are corrupt? If so, why would we give a small group of individuals the monopoly on this use of aggression?” he tried to dance around it, so I said, “Explain to me why the magic humans should be able to do violence and why they are magic.” I also threw out, “States were born from a belief in gods. Only with a belief in gods do states make sense. If your ruler is not a god, statism makes no sense at all.”
Well, I guess the point of all this is.. he eventually asked me this question, “Why does war happen, then?” And I had no answer for him. IS war done for resources? Is it done to exert power and influence over other people? Is there even one blanket response for this or are there many answers to this?
War is fought over disagreement over ownership of resources. During the middle ages, wars were typically fought when one cousin disagreed with another cousin’s inheritance of a state. He had to take it back by force.
In world of clear property rights, such disagreements do not arise and wars aren’t fought.
Because the costs of war can be dispersed and externalized to others, so the few who benefit from it can have others pay for it. In other words, collectivism.
I think all wars come down to this. Even before government, there were tribes. The tribal mentality is basically collectivism. I don’t see how an individualistic society can ever engage or at least initiate war.
This is true but I don’t think it answers the OPs question which seems to me to really be asking “how do wars come about?” more than “what is the goal of war?” The goal is always some sort of property but that doesn’t explain how wars come about.
This simply isn’t true. Property rights are a kind of heuristic which helps avoid most conflicts but no system of rules will ever be able to predict all the possible ways in which people can come into conflict. Hence, property rights can reduce but never eliminate conflicts. This is why we have law, to hopefully resolve property rights disputes in a non-violent fashion (without resort to war).
There’s a great book called War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat that asks this question and then tries to explain it by looking at history and trying to find a pattern and explain what it is.
I’ll admit that I didn’t read the whole book but my father did and he assured me that I missed out on quite a lot by only skimming a few chapters.
Based on what I read, I think it’s safe to say that the answer is complicated but is often exactly what Stranger pointed out: people want stuff and sometimes fighting over it is the simplest solution. Still, the book is worth reading.
Tax and regulation creates an incentive for producers to evade. One can evade by either moving one’s productive activities to the black market or by changing one’s jurisdiction. It is the latter that brings the interests of different states into conflict. One way for states to solve this is through trade agreements which harmonize the tax and regulation structure between the two states. The other option is war.
Now, well a state may go to war to crack down on evasion, which reduces it’s tax base and range of control, it may also go to war to expand it’s tax base and range of control, vis a vis the conquest of new territories.
It seems to me that as long as one can coerce another there will always be war. But, a war between a large body of individuals all coerced to go towar with each other seems more destructive than a war between individuals in a stateless society.
A state is defined in relationship with a government that claims jurisdiction over a territory; a tribe is not merely a “mini-state”.
Furthermore, anarcho-capitalists often claim that tribal systems of law (e.g. Somalia’s Xeer law) as examples of polycentric law that show the viability of anarcho-capitalism, yet endorsing this opinion would simply nullify those opinions.
There will always be war, whether it will be between tribes, between states, or between anarcho-capitalist PDAs.
War happens because some people choose to engage in war. Why do people choose to engage in war? There are many reasons for this, many of which have already been pointed out in this thread.
I think this makes more sense based on what we’ve seen just recently in the “war against terror.” It’s rather difficult to fight a decentralized regime.
There will be desputes but how cant they run deficits, mess with the currency, justify thier invasion when there are other means, use nationalism, tax, subjegate mass population, or hold a monopoly on power within a certian area.
Private firms cannot effectivly hire invasionary soldiers and troops.
Because the tribal mentality is collectivism on a small scale. It’s where collectivism was born. And it is only collectivism that allows a small minority to externalize the costs of war on the majority.
It’s a devastating economic explanation that most intellectuals have overlooked because they are all too busy condemning Economics in general.