"Countries don't go to war because of the differences of their people but out of the similiarities of their leaders"
And speaking of the causes of war:
"The carnage of conflict is only an effect of the core violence which supports war, which is
the military enslavement of domestic citizens through the draft – and even more
importantly, the direct theft of their money which pays for the war.
Without the money to fund a war – and pay the soldiers, whether they are drafted or not –
war is impossible. The actual violence of the battlefield is a mere effect of the threatened
violence at home. If citizens could not be forced to pay for the war – either in the present in
the form of taxes, or in the future through deficit financing – then the carnage of the
battlefield could never possibly occur.
I have read many books and articles on the root of war – whether it is nationalism,
economic forces, faulty philosophical premises, class conflict and so on – none of which
addressed the central issue, which is how war is paid for. This is like advancing merely
psychological explanations as to why people play the lottery, without ever once mentioning
their interest in the prize money. Why do people become doctors? Is it because they have a
psychological need to present themselves as godlike healers, or because they are pleasing
their mother and father, or because they are themselves secretly wounded, or because they
possess an altruistic desire to heal the sick? These may be all interesting theories to pursue,
but they are mere effects of the basic fact that doctors are highly paid for what they do.
Certainly psychological or sociological theories may explain why a particular person
chooses to become a doctor rather than pursue some other high-paying occupation – but
surely we should at least start with the fact that if doctors were not paid, almost no one
would become a doctor. For instance, if a magic pill were invented tomorrow that ensured
perfect health forever, there would be no more doctors – because no one would pay for the
unnecessary service. Thus the first cause of doctors is – payment.
In the same way, we can endlessly theorize about the psychological, sociological or
economic causes of war, but if we never talk about the simple fact that the first cause of war
is domestic theft and military enslavement, then everything that follows remains mere
abstract and airless intellectual quibbling, more designed to hide the truth than reveal it.
We can only point guns at foreign enemies because we first point guns at domestic citizens.
Without taxation, there can be no war.
Without governments, there can be no taxation.
Thus governments are the first cause of war.
The truth of the matter, I believe, is that deep down we know that if we pull out this one
single thread – that coercion against citizens is the root of war – we know that many other
threads will also come unraveled."--
Stefan Molyneux, Everyday Anarchy, page 31
