Being richer, we are able to afford more of the things that we like—and people like violence.
People like defense. If defense is cheaper than offense, we shouldn’t expect more wealth to lead to more violence.
Intra-nationally, wealthier states find it easier to shoulder formidable criminal justice systems.
The potential gains from co-operation (trade) have gone up much more than the potential gains from defection (violence) so we see more co-operation and less defection.
To be more concrete, one dynamic is a relative decrease in the economic returns to military conquest, because conquest tends to destroy everything that is more complicated than resource extraction.
If war isn’t going to impoverish, why not invade the neighbouring country in search of honour, glory, religious orthodoxy, etc?
There seem to be contemporary counterexamples: You can easily find national pairings where one country could conquer the other at zero cost to the dominant country (as in, it can use outdated missiles and replace normal military training with the invasion, and still expect to win effortlessly). The largest cost would be disdain from other wealthy countries, but this disdain is exactly what we’re interested in explaining: You don’t see wealthy nations cooperating to use more than a negligible amount of their potential conquering ability over weaker states.
People like defense. If defense is cheaper than offense, we shouldn’t expect more wealth to lead to more violence.
Intra-nationally, wealthier states find it easier to shoulder formidable criminal justice systems.
To be more concrete, one dynamic is a relative decrease in the economic returns to military conquest, because conquest tends to destroy everything that is more complicated than resource extraction.
There seem to be contemporary counterexamples: You can easily find national pairings where one country could conquer the other at zero cost to the dominant country (as in, it can use outdated missiles and replace normal military training with the invasion, and still expect to win effortlessly). The largest cost would be disdain from other wealthy countries, but this disdain is exactly what we’re interested in explaining: You don’t see wealthy nations cooperating to use more than a negligible amount of their potential conquering ability over weaker states.