I love how a large swathe of butcoiners seem to believe that wars are completely about money. Both wars and money are another idea that's higher up on then hierarchy: Power. Money can buy you lots of power because you have a bargaining chip that's accepted pretty much everywhere, and you've got it to throw around to get people to do what you want, whether it be delivering a pizza or selling you a car or cutting your lawn or medically intervening to try to cure a cancer diagnosis. You can make other people do those things (and more) by offering them money. That's power, and the more money you have, the more power you have.

War is another means of getting power that's more direct; we're going to kill all of your doods until you give us what we want. It's weilding the power to do violence as a sword to get what you want. Where butcoiners get confused is that, often in today's world, money is tied into the system of bringing violence to bear. Soldiers get paid.

But that doesn't mean that you need money to fight a war. You need power, and money is a way of getting that, but that power can just come through more power. Do you think that the feudal lords who raised peasant leavies back in the Middle Ages paid their troops a bunch of money for their service? Of course they didn't; they simply told them that they were going to fight, and if they don't, then they will be punished, either through having their lands confiscated or worse.

And if the guys running the war win? They can dictate whatever terms they want; they don't need money to exert power anymore. If anything, money is the "poor man's" power; the power to do violence is the genuine article.

You don't need money to fight a war. I don't think the Russian army stayed in its ranks during WW2 because of all of the sweet fiat Stalin was giving out. They were some combination of scared that violence would be done to them if they left, and driven by patriotic fervor with respect to the position their nation would be in if they won. Nobody cared about money, except maybe for other countries seelling them weapons (to the extent that happened).