Reply #59: I don't necessarily think of my POV as depending on enlightenment. [View All]

[Skinner]

I suppose that is one way to put it. I think of it more as a sort of cost-benefit analysis. While this is obviously a good/bad or moral/immoral thing, I don't think that the morality is the deciding factor. Ultimately, war will be less common as long as the costs of war outweigh the benefits.

In that sense, your point about the efficiency of war is extremely important. I suspect there may be a threshhold of "efficiency" where the benefits of war start to once again outweigh the costs. For example, going entirely to a system of unmanned warmaking robots would remove some of the human cost for the aggressor, and make it easier to go to war.

But keep in mind that no matter how efficient we make war, there will always be huge costs -- as long as we are locked into relationships of mutual benefit. For example, even if we could reduce the *military* cost of attacking, say, Canada, to effectively zero, we would still have the huge economic cost of severing most of our economic and social ties.

So, I think if we want the trend to keep going in the same direction, we need to do what we can to 1) keep the cost of war high, and 2) encourage greater economic and social integration.