Ask HN: How do we bring about world peace? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do we bring about world peace?

2 pointsquizbiz5 comments

Recent events got me thinking about how when I was little everything year, this is going to sound so cliche, I wished for World Peace. For all the amazing things human kind is capable of, it's amazing we can't just get along. I mean is it really that hard to observe the golden rule?

Recent developments on top of everything else that has fallen a part this year got me thinking. I know there is no solution, no answer. The real problems are never that simple. But debate and discussion is important. And this is a great platform and a great community for it.

Can we all promise not to kill each other and try to be nice? To try to develop business in ways that encourage the best of humanity and not the contrary?

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The bumper sticker answer is, "If you want peace, work for justice." And that's not too bad as a first approximation. It's very rare for two countries with genuine democracy and protection of civil liberties for all inhabitants and free enterprise economies to go to war with each other. It's rare for such countries even to have much internal strife that leads to bloodshed. Promoting freedom promotes peace.

Of course, I haven't answered the question here that instantly arises: how does one promote freedom? (And, especially, how does one do that through peaceful means?) That's an interesting topic to discuss. I have lived through one country's (Taiwan's) transformation from one-party dictatorship with political assassinations at home and abroad to multiparty democracy with a vigorous free press and largely independent judiciary. I'd like to see some other countries make the same transition, as that would make the world a safer and more peaceful place.

^ exactly right. Of all the border problems Pakistan and India have had, for two countries that culturally have every reason to hate each other, it's a good sign they haven't sent nuclear bombs across the border. But we shouldn't be amazed at this. It should be the norm.

Freedom is exactly right, but it seems to me that resource constraints can curtail freedom sufficiently to cause aggression.

I think George Orwell said something along the lines that blocking access to resources is also an act of aggression.

As long as we rely on highly centralized resources, such as oil, it's hard to see how the world can indefinitely avoid politics that will anger those who rely on the resources.

Perhaps I am a bit naive, but I think that fairly equal increases in energy can do a lot to reduce the causes of such aggression. Cheap energy makes it easy to start a business and cheap to produce food. Economic prosperity is a good antidote to belligerence and a strong economic class is a good counter-balance to the political establishment of a country.

If you will permit me more naive idealism, this is one of the reasons why I have such high hopes for nuclear fusion.

> Can we all promise not to kill each other and try to be nice?

Sure we can. However, if you don't do/think/say {whatever} the correct way, you're not being nice and "good people" will be forced to kill you.....

The phrase "not justice, no peace" expresses this concept. Some of the things that are considered "justice" are "interesting".

Coming to agree with each other that it is not a cliche to ask terribly important questions is probably a very good start.

Maybe there is hope for the geek of the earth after all!

A modest contribution to chew on:

  * Peace is not only the absence of overt violence.

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