> - but you can certainly signal that you've pre-judged the situation

I'm happy to listen to arguments that occupied Palestine was, at the same time as it was being occupied, also genociding the Israelis, however the case for Israelis genociding the Palestinians today is well argued: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/10/Is... . This is separate from justification attempts. I believe there is no justification for genocide, others may disagree, however it would be very strange for someone to argue that Israel is not attempting to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians. That being the definition of genocide. I have looked at these arguments, listened to opposition to these arguments, and determined that Israel is indeed committing a genocide. I'm not sure how that's different from other things I've determined or why it specifically should be considered "pre-judging."

> States that are driven by free market allocation rather than central planning (because there's no _pure_ model of either/or) are much less likely to initiate major wars of conquest,

This doesn't make sense to me considering one of the largest drivers for global war and conflict has been the "free market" USA. When should we consider America having been a "free market" state? Is the 1800s too early? Do we count all the wars against native americans as one war of conquest, or each individual one as its own war? First Seminole, Black Hawk, Winnebago, etc. Then there's Mexican-American, the Opium wars (also participated in by Free Market Great Britain and France), the war against the Mormons, etc. Maybe America wasn't free market until the 20th century? Well, in that case, the Indian wars were still ongoing as late as the 1910s, there was the USA occupation of Veracruz, Haiti, Dominican Republic. There was American involvement in the Korean and Vietnam war though I can accept that those weren't necessarily "wars of conquest," though the USA framed it as a war of Free Market Capitalism vs Communism, in which case, the goal was to conquest communism. The USA also attempted to invade Cuba, did invade Grenada, bombed Libya, invaded Panama, then there's the Gulf war... which brings us to the 21st century. We have the 20 year war in Afghanistan, which was begun on a false premise of finding weapons of mass destruction, similar to the Iraq War, same time period.

Let's now go down the list of conquests and invasions by non-free market states.

Obviously, Nazi Germany, not having a free market, tops the list. Luckily it was defeated relatively quickly from a historical standpoint, so, very small time period to analyse, though I think you and I both agree that they wouldn't have stopped until total world domination.

We can look at the Soviets, and again, smaller time period, so we can be fair and compare their 20th century behavior to the Americans in the 20th century. They invaded Afghanistan (poor country can't catch a break from the commies or the capitalists!), was at least as involved in the Korean and the Vietnam war as the USA was, pressured the Polish border, the Finish border, and the Japanese border, which I would agree is a war of aggression. Invasion of Czechoslovakia, definitely a war of aggression. Further wars escape me - the Soviets never invaded Cuba nor American territory, so I think that's +1 war for America (ostensibly the Soviets were merely providing the means for Cubans to defend themselves from an apparently aggressive neighboring nation!). Am I missing any Soviet wars? Then the collapse into Russia, which, if we count them as the same country, I'm not sure - the notable difference between Russia and the Soviet Union was that Russia was seeking a more free market, globalist economy. Yes, it's certainly not as free market as the USA, but neither country are true free market economies, right? In any case, certainly late 20th century Russia had aggressive actions such as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Chechnya (ostensibly started by their own struggle for independence but Russia's refusal to acknowledge that could perhaps be compared to Native American struggles to maintain independence). Invasion of Georgia, and of course invasion of Ukraine. You really think Russia is a centrally planned economy? I don't think corruption counts as central planning.

Then, the PRC, free market or no? In the beginning absolutely not, and this coincided with their most aggressive period, but as they split into a more free market economy, their wars of aggression cooled, unlike America's. Cold War meddling like the USA and Soviets, and then attacks on Taiwan (sort of a continuation of their own civil war, but not necessary and therefore imo aggression). Border disputes with India, invasion of Cambodia / Vietnam, invasion of Tibet, genocide against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and that's about it. Imperialist threats against Taiwan on a weekly basis into the 21st century, economic imperialist activity in Africa, global cultural imperialist and han supremacist activity, not much more than that.

By my eye, I'm not seeing evidence that a State economy being free market or centrally planned has any bearing on its aggression. We have centrally planned countries that tried to take over the whole world (nazi germany), aggressively tried to spread communism (soviet union, PRC), and push on borders (soviet union, PRC), and we have market economies that wiped out indigenous people, aggressively spread capitalism / resisted spread of communism, invaded countries outright, overthrew local governments, and so on.

> That's just empirical fact at this point. There are counterexamples, but the propensity goes strongly in one direction.

What are you looking at that I'm not?