Q&A: “SHOULD WAR BE CONDUCTED MORALLY?”
Simon asks two questions, and offers his analysis. I offer mine, with a very different answer. Cooperation is only valuable if it advances ones line, kin, and people.
—“1) Should warfare be conducted morally or is that an oxymoron?
In my opinion, the answer is yes, it should – and no, it is not an oxymoron. Because morality exists only in reciprocity, and warfare is in fact the ultimate instrument of reciprocity.
2) Should we follow internationally agreed upon regulations of warfare?
Yes, until we don’t, which is at a point when signaling adherence to convention in order to maintain a reputation for maximizing future cooperative exchange is more costly, or too great of a discount granted, than the infamy incurred from shoving the charter up the enemy’s rear entry while appropriating his wealth using any imaginable means.
A well calibrated algorithm of foreign policy will not abuse that course of action, but it will make prudent use of it, and without mercy.”— Simon
———-
Simon,
Violence is a resource that can be put to good (reciprocity) or ill (irreciprocity). From the entire spectrum of creation of reciprocity, restoration of reciprocity, or exhaustion of reciprocity, or conquest, or extermination.
Reciprocity purchases future cooperation which is, in general, the means of advancing your line, kin, and people.
However there are many conditions under which the purchase of cooperation is against the interests of your line, kin, and people.
a) When cooperation is impossible due to extreme differences in ability, intention, or interest.
b) Or when when the effects of long term cooperation are detrimental.
c) Or when the returns on conquest or extermination are higher than the returns on cooperation.
Now, the central issue is that once beyond the value of agrarian slavery, returns on conquest and extermination are ALWAYS higher than the returns on cooperation, it is just that given marginal differences its often unaffordable to do so. And that is our current situation.
If conquest and extermination are not possible, then cooperation is preferable. If cooperation is not possible, or too costly, then resistance and boycott, and threat are preferable.
But war, conquest, extermination are always more profitable than cooperation. As long as one does not build institutions that require continuous profiting from conquest and extermination. Or as long as one retains enough free capital from one’s expansion to organize a productive rather than predatory economy once efforts are completed. Because eventually one does run out of prey.
However, if one succeeds in predation, at sufficient scale, then the people have no need or interest in the predatory order of economy and polity.
As such there are two forces at work: either the underclass (abrahamic) warfare or the upper class (aristocratic) warfare that seeks genetic peerages.
We have seen what happens in the underclass models and seen what happens in the aristocratic models. And the underclass model is merely devolutionary, while the aristocratic model is evolutionary – in fact, that is precisely what defines feminine, underclass, communal, equalitarian, and masculine upperclass, kinship, egalitarian.
Christianity has been a cancer. The Romans were (as are we today) too greedy for consumption, and were the victims of dilution, and conquest by islam.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine