A Duel

Canada… America’s hat.

All that peace, love and happiness comes at a price Pila – taxation and a more equitable distribution of wealth = )

When the Hutus redistributed Rwanda’s land it sure pissed off the Tutsis. I don’t think that taxation and relative-levels of social democracy top the list of factors that produce peaceful societies. After all, socialist parties of all sorts produced an awful lot of war in the 20th century. I’d venture there are more important factors, such as the country’s prosperity, history, culture, and geographic proximity to dissimilar cultures, races, and religions.

True Ryan but great disparities of wealth and uneven land distribution (typically a colonial holdover) inevitably lead to social unrest and the rise of socialist and communist governments. Trouble in Cuba, Vietnam, Honduras, Venezuela and America’s flirtation with Communism in the early part of the 20th century to name only a few examples can all be traced to flagrant disregard of the needs of many in favor of the wants of a few.

The fact that there are numerous examples of war and unrest stemming from every part of the socio-political spectrum supports my point that other factors than redistribution and taxation determine whether societies produce war. Don’t forget, too, that pre-colonial, communal societies (papua new guinea comes to mind) fought as a matter of course. So did pre-colonial, non communal societies (like Hawai’i, which was a caste system).
That war characterizes human existence supports the view that the root of war is human nature, not the structure of separate states, or the interaction of individual states. As far as we know the only group that hasn’t warred is the Hadza of Tanzania, seehttp://tinyurl.com/yjxn8dq, an ancient tribe that leads a primitive lifestyle in an exceedingly difficult environment that historically no one has envied.
Getting back to your point about Canada, though, if you exported Canada’s precise governing structure (including its resolution of the Quebec issue) to Israel, I seriously doubt peace would ensue. Other factors dictate that region’s never ending strife.
For the last 60 years, however, it is true that prosperous societies have rarely quarreled. The best thing we can do to advance the cause of peace is to increase global prosperity. And before states can redistribute wealth, they must create it.

I think you’re shifting the argument away from internal political organization to war. You may be right that an uneven distribution of wealth may not be a very important factor in the cause of war (tho a reasonable contrary argument could probably be made). My argument stands that a major cause of internal political strife stems from a gross disparity of wealth. It could be argued the same disparity is one of the major causes of Israeli – Palestinian conflict.

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve digressed. For the record, I don’t mean anything sarcastically here and mean to be eminently reasonable. Now, maybe you’re right that Canada’s brand of social democracy will cure the internal strife that ails the rest of the UN’s member states – Israel included. On that note Steve Sailer made a good point the other day: “if you want to turn your country into Sweden, it’s best to get fairly rich first.”
But America already has a de facto tax rate of 40% – does that insure we have no internal strife.http://tinyurl.com/2ksgy5. What is strife, anyway?Armed revolt? Civil war? Balkanization? Protests? If so, protests of what? Is strife measured by a high suicide rate (does that mean Japan has internal strife)? Aggrieved citizens?
Depending on how you define internal strife I can think of any number of redistributive states with significant internal strife, with the USSR being the extreme example (democide, followed eventually by revolution). There’s been internal strife in Holland, France, and Denmark – social democracies all. The strife there is muslim immigrants’ (largely the recipients of those countries redistributive policies) values clashing with classical liberal values of freedom of speech and expression. Interestingly, much of the internal strife in redistributive states such as Cuba (http://tinyurl.com/yh9wwjt) is due to people revolting against the diminishment of liberty that too often goes hand in hand with redistributive economic policies.
So again I say other factors than disparities in wealth lead to internal strife, as well as to extra-state warfare.

You win this one by attrition Ryan. You indefatigable sob. Don’t you have school work or something? = )

Who knew Jack Handy would be such a conversational piece?

Lol. Just never know what’ spark is gonna start a flame.