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Is this the new "no countries with McDonald's go to war"?

Yhippa 4y ago
It is! I went down the rabbit hole on this one. It was a follow up to Thomas Friedman's "Golden Arches" theory which you just described.
LarryMullins 4y ago
It's the new "The Great Illusion", this idea has been repeatedly recycled and debunked for more than a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The thing is, The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one, because the capitalism singularity is not powerful enough to overthrow the nationalism singularity[0]. Cultural ties can provide another deterrent: for example, you wouldn't imagine, say, New York and New Jersey going to war[1]. But even then, Russia and Ukraine were rather close and still are despite the former trying to genocide the latter. The most effective deterrent to war is to put the fear of death in the people who decide whether or not to start wars. MAD theory, while technically wrong, was a good enough story that it averted several catastrophic nuclear attacks. If only because the people with their fingers on the buttons second-guessed themselves long enough for reports to come in that it was actually just the light reflecting off the ocean and not an incoming American ICBM. [0] Yes, I mean this in the same context that one might refer to a technological singularity. Social existence today is a nested hierarchy of supra-individual social structures, of which superhuman AGI will merely be one of its subagents. [1] Though they did come close in the 1800s over Staten Island. They call it the Empire State for a reason.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one, The premise of The Great Illusion is that international trade is a very good deterrent to war. The book doesn't argue that it's an 'okay-ish' deterrent to war, it claimed that WW1 was extremely unlikely to occur and that if it did, it would be over quickly. Not only did WW1 happen, so did WW2 a few years later. Neither war was short, and even more and bloodier wars after WW2 would have been a damn good bet if not for the invention of nuclear bombs.

It is! I went down the rabbit hole on this one. It was a follow up to Thomas Friedman's "Golden Arches" theory which you just described.

LarryMullins 4y ago

It's the new "The Great Illusion", this idea has been repeatedly recycled and debunked for more than a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

kmeisthax 4y ago
The thing is, The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one, because the capitalism singularity is not powerful enough to overthrow the nationalism singularity[0]. Cultural ties can provide another deterrent: for example, you wouldn't imagine, say, New York and New Jersey going to war[1]. But even then, Russia and Ukraine were rather close and still are despite the former trying to genocide the latter. The most effective deterrent to war is to put the fear of death in the people who decide whether or not to start wars. MAD theory, while technically wrong, was a good enough story that it averted several catastrophic nuclear attacks. If only because the people with their fingers on the buttons second-guessed themselves long enough for reports to come in that it was actually just the light reflecting off the ocean and not an incoming American ICBM. [0] Yes, I mean this in the same context that one might refer to a technological singularity. Social existence today is a nested hierarchy of supra-individual social structures, of which superhuman AGI will merely be one of its subagents. [1] Though they did come close in the 1800s over Staten Island. They call it the Empire State for a reason.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > The Great Illusion isn't wrong. Economic interdependency is a deterrent to war. It's just that its not a very good one, The premise of The Great Illusion is that international trade is a very good deterrent to war. The book doesn't argue that it's an 'okay-ish' deterrent to war, it claimed that WW1 was extremely unlikely to occur and that if it did, it would be over quickly. Not only did WW1 happen, so did WW2 a few years later. Neither war was short, and even more and bloodier wars after WW2 would have been a damn good bet if not for the invention of nuclear bombs.