Cultures of war and inequality

In this work, we are studying a basic economic system of producer agents situated in a 2D world and how it is affected by decisions to initiate war. We are considering survival wars and wars initiated by culturally inherited stress, pugnacity, perception of wealth inequality and greed, which is perception of intangible status inequality. We show through agent-based modelling that cultural evolution by simple inheritance suppresses stress and pugnacity, but favours inequality and greed. Based on this finding, we formulate the hypothesis that war initiation using individualistic criteria is not promoted by evolution, whereas war initiation based on social and specifically inequality criteria is catalyzed by evolution. This hypothesis is supported by the study of additional individualistic and social models. We also show that different cultural evolution modes yield different results. Finally, we study diversity and inequality in the various war initiation models and conclude that, where equality is of highest ideological value, war persists.