70. War and Peace

Note: This post is the seventieth in a series about government and commercial ethics. Click here for the full listing of the series. The first post in the series has more detail on the book 'Systems of Survival' by Jane Jacobs which inspired this series.

Many years ago, I read 'Century Of War' by Gabriel Kolko. It's not actually about war itself, but rather about the impact of the war on the society that wages it. I don't remember any of the details of the book (it was many years ago), but I do remember coming away completely convinced of his argument that the wars led to a shift to more progressive policies. And I also remember not being nearly as clear about why war had that effect.

This post will look into that question, in a roundabout fashion, first returning to a story I related way back near the start of this series, "One of my childhood friends happened to have his birthday on the same day as Halloween. Naturally, a group trick or treat outing was incorporated as part of his birthday celebration. Afterwards, the group of us would pile into his bedroom and dump out our accumulated loot into a pile on the floor (one pile for each person - not one big pile). Note that at this point, the distribution of loot has been determined by the random allocations at each front door, and does not take into consideration each trick or treaters particular tastes. This raises the possibility of making trades that benefit all parties involved. For example, I always liked the Rockets and Mint Laura Secord bars the best, whereas others preferred items such as the Coffee Crisp that I had little interest in.

So the initial distribution was Pareto-inefficient in that changes could be made that would benefit people without making anyone else worse off.

So, naturally, we set about trying to achieve a Pareto optimal distribution of candy in a free wheeling round of candy exchange that would last until everyone was satisfied enough with their adjusted haul such that no further exchanges could be made that were agreeable to both parties."

Now, imagine if you were one of the trick or treaters, and you were about to embark on the candy exchange when your friend suggested that the two of you team up in order to trade more effectively. The immediate question that comes to my mind is, how would teaming up help? In fact, teaming up might well be harmful since if the two of us had to agree to trades together, that might mean that I have to compromise and trade for things we both like. If I love malted milk but my friend hates malted milk, then teaming up makes me less likely rather than more likely to get what I want. The more correlated our tastes are to one another, the less compromise and less sacrifice comes from teaming up, but why make any sacrifices at all, why not just have everyone remain as sole traders. And of course, that is what we did as kids.

Now, let's imagine that a couple of your friends haven't learned proper manners and they begin to violate commercial (trading) ethics by stealing candy and a fight breaks out, with everybody trying to grab candy from everybody else's pile. And further suppose that your best friend turns to you and offers to team up. In this situation, the benefits of teaming up are obvious. A two person force would be much more effective in a physical battle than two people fighting alone, especially if you and your friend are able to place your piles beside one another in order to form a more geographically contiguous territory to defend.

OK, another scenario. This time, you and your friends (let's say there are 5 of you in total) are getting along, but a couple of kids who are up to no good, start making trouble in your neighbourhood and come over and demand that you give them all your candy or they will beat you up. You figure that if all 5 of you stand together and fight, you can fight these older kids off, but if anyone gets scared and bails, you might well lose all your candy. In this situation, you need everyone to team together in an all or nothing battle.

So, let's say that you and your friends stick together and the older bullies are scared to attack you. So one of the bullies has an idea and makes the following offer, "The first one of you little punks to come over to our side gets an equal share of the candy after we beat up the rest of your friends." Now there is an extra incentive for one of your friends (or you) to betray the rest and side with the bullies. Strong bonds of loyalty will be required to keep the group together. A moral viewpoint that says this kind of trading, or selling out, is shameful behaviour wouldn't hurt either.

OK, final scenario, same as the last one, but this time, instead of the candy being divided relatively equally between you and your friends (as you might expect after a night of trick or treating together), let's say the candy is divided the same way that wealth is in the United States. So if you collected 100 candies in total, then one friend has 84 candies, another friend has 11, one friend has 4, the second last friend has 0.2 (one fifth of a pack of rockets, perhaps), and you have 0.1 candies (one measly rocket). Do you think the chances of someone selling out their friends to the bullies goes up in this scenario? I do. How much loyalty can the person with 0.1 candies really feel towards the 'friend' sitting across from them with 84?

In a situation where you need cooperation from everyone to succeed, then everyone has equal worth, since the withdrawal of any one person dooms the enterprise. And in a situation where people are tempted to defect, the more unequal the distribution of benefits, the greater the temptation to defect. The World Wars were just this sort of situation, and it's no surprise, looking at it this way, that they led to policies which tried to take care of everyone in society (more so than what came before, at any rate).

And now, 65 years since World War 2 ended and since any collective effort or sacrifice was needed in our society, we have settled into the mindset of candy traders, preferring private schools and health care to paying taxes for public services, driving our car exactly where we want to go, rather than compromising by riding transit, staying at home watching exactly what we want to watch rather than compromising by watching what others are watching as well, and bowling alone, rather than compromising by organizing our schedule around a time everyone can come.

47. The Art of War

In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs theorizes that most of the guardian virtues have origins in the military. With that in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at one of the most famous books of military thinking ever written, Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War.'

Sun Tzu starts by laying out 5 key factors that must be take into consideration in any war planning:

"The MORAL LAW causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.

HEAVEN signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.

EARTH comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.

The COMMANDER stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness.

By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the marshalling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure."

One of the things that I found surprising while reading 'The Art of War' was the strong emphasis that Sun Tzu put on not actually engaging in battle unless it was absolutely necessary. Sun Tzu seemed to have a strong sense of warfare as a largely zero or negative sum game unless it was carried out with superior strategy:

"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."

or

"In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

Another key theme that Sun Tzu comes back to again and again is the need for unity. The first key factor listed above stresses unity between the ruler and ruled and there are many quotes regarding keeping one's forces concentrated while trying to catch the enemy with his forces dispersed - e.g. "When an invading force crosses a river in its onward march, do not advance to meet it in mid-stream. It will be best to let half the army get across, and then deliver your attack."

This notion of concentrating your own forces and dividing the enemy in battle seems to me to be analogous to the economic notion of economies of scale. With economies of scale, doubling the amount of production requires less than a doubling of the inputs. so the bigger the company, the more efficient it is. In battle, doubling one's force has an effect on the outcome greater than a simple proportional increase, so that having 20,000 troops vs. the enemy's 10,000 is much more than twice as good as having 10,000 against 10,000.

With this in mind, Sun Tzu comments on the use of signals (such as drums and banners) to keep the army together, "The host thus forming a single united body, it is impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone."

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In line with Jacobs' thinking, most of the guardian syndrome gets a positive mention at one point or another, including:

- Be Obedient and Disciplined, "If a general shows confidence in his men but always
insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual."

- respect hierarchy, "If in training soldiers commands are habitually enforced, the army will be well-disciplined; if not, its discipline will be bad."

- dispense largesse, "When you plunder a countryside, let the spoil be divided amongst your men; when you capture new territory, cut it up into allotments for the benefit of the soldiery."

- deceive for the sake of the task, "All warfare is based on deception."

Sun Tzu also touches on the general notion of the guardian syndrome involving duty to something other than self-interest, "The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom."




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A couple of guardian virtues that weren't stressed by Sun Tzu were 'be fatalistic' and 'adhere to tradition'

Rather than adhering to tradition, Sun Tzu emphasized the need for generals to be flexible and to adapt to circumstances as necessary to take advantage of anything that might be to the advantage.

He also urged generals to combat any use of magic charms by the army as he felt that these would undermine morale.

"Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared."


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Of course, much of 'The Art of War' has to do with military tactics, the use of terrain, reading clouds of dust and the flight patterns of birds and so on, but for this post I focussed on those elements which had relevance to the issue of ethics.