Henry Hazlitt famously (Well, it’s famous in some circles) wrote that: “The art of economics consists of looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
This is not as easy as it might seem. The consistent popularity of erroneous economic beliefs and narrow, short-term perspectives seems to indicate an incongruity between a global economy and brains designed for a world of competing hunter-gatherer tribes. If Tribe A lived in a grove of apple trees and Tribe B killed them, the quantity of wealth (apples) remained about the same. But this method doesn’t work with a software design firm.
I’ve previously posted a paragraph by Francis Fukuyama describing the economics behind the decline of colonialism since the industrial revolution: as the percentage of wealth consisting of raw materials decreases, so decreases the benefits of military conquest. (Fukuyama’s final sentences refer to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but they may remind us of another situation: “of course, control over certain natural resources like oil confers potentially great economic benefits. The consequences of this invasion, however, are not likely to make this method of securing resources seem attractive in the future. Given the fact that access to those same resources can be obtained peacefully through a global system of free trade, war makes much less economic sense than it did two or three hundred years ago.”)
This post–Industrial Revolution phenomenon might be part of an ongoing process. From Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond:
…Wars, or threats of war, have played a key role in most, if not all, amalgamations of societies. But wars, even between mere bands, have been a constant fact of human history. Why is it, then, that they evidently began causing amalgamations of societies only within the past 13,000 years? We had already concluded that the formation of complex societies is somehow linked to population pressure, so we should now seek a link between population pressure and the outcome of war. Why should wars tend to cause amalgamations of societies when populations are dense but not when they are sparse? The answer is that the fate of defeated peoples depends on population density, with three possible outcomes:
Where population densities are very low, as is usual in regions occupied by hunter-gatherer bands, survivors of a defeated group need only move farther away from their enemies. That tends to be the result of wars between nomadic bands in New Guinea and the Amazon.
Where population densities are moderate, as in regions occupied by food-producing tribes, no large vacant areas remain to which survivors of a defeated band can flee. But tribal societies without intensive food production have no employment for slaves and do not produce large enough food surpluses to be able to yield much tribute. Hence the victors have no use for survivors of a defeated tribe, unless to take the women in marriage. The defeated men are killed, and their territory may be occupied by the victors.
Where population densities are high, as in regions occupied by states or chiefdoms, the defeated still have nowhere to flee, but the victors now have two options for exploiting them while leaving them alive. Because chiefdoms and state societies have economic specialization, the defeated can be used as slaves, as commonly happened in biblical times. Alternatively, because many such societies have intensive food production systems capable of yielding large surpluses, the victors can leave the defeated in place but deprive them of political autonomy, make them pay regular tribute in food or goods, and amalgamate their society into the victorious state or chiefdom. This has been the usual outcome of battles associated with the founding of states or empires throughout recorded history.