This Was Mises’s Main Case for Peace
War is absolutely devastating. There is no dancing around that fact. Not only is it responsible for the loss of countless human lives, it also leaves an immeasurable amount of physical and emotional destruction in its wake.
The market has taught us that incentives work.
Opponents of war may decry war until they are blue in the face, begging those in power to consider its human costs. But these cries almost always fall upon deaf ears, as history has tragically demonstrated.
When it comes to politicians and war, the ends always justify the means, even when those means are human lives. And while human life is sacred, this truth alone has never been enough to convince global leaders to seek an agenda of peace rather than one of destruction.
But the market has taught us that incentives work. So instead of relying on a method that has not done much to deter war over the centuries, why not try an argument that plays to the interests of those in power?
As Mises explains in Liberalism, the most impactful argument against war comes in the form of a basic economic principle from which we each benefit: the division of labor.
He writes:
How harmful war is to the development of human civilization becomes clearly apparent once one understands the advantages derived from the division of labor. The division of labor turns the self-sufficient individual into the ζῷον πολιτικόν (social animal) dependent on his fellow men, the social animal of which Aristotle spoke.”
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