Totally agree about the cost of lives, but I'm not following about the counterbalance of restoring wealth to the populace. If visa agreements and trade agreements with the US were disrupted, how would US citizens paying more for imported goods, US farms and manufacturers having tariffs placed on exported goods and US companies no longer able to hire the world's best and brightest transfer wealth from the politicians to the people?
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Why would not bombing people drive up the cost of trade? If it does, that seems to imply we have a bigger problem with state control of trade, which does not in any way violate my anarchist preconceptions.
Because military allies are more likely to trade with each other.
For example, USA and South Korea have a Mutual Defense treaty, they have a free trade agreement, they also have a tax treaty. There might be a bunch of stuff I don't know about. If the US threw away its Mutual Defense treaty with South Korea like you're suggesting, maybe the other treaties and agreements with Korea don't change... or maybe they do, I'm honestly not sure.
The free market loves Just In Time logistics, because it saves money on storage, but the downside is a lack of resiliency, so whenever there has been supply chain shipping disruptions, US companies, especially the auto manufacturers, struggle without micro processors from Taiwan. This is exactly why the CHIPS act was passed, to encourage microchips to be made in the US to decrease the corporate dependency on Taiwan... but it'll take a few years to really come into play.
Intelligence-sharing really helps US companies. Corporate cybersecurity teams interact with US intelligence agencies to both alert them and be alerted on cybersecurity threats and fixes. Some US companies are attacked 100s of millions of times every second. I don't know for sure, but I imagine the US intelligence agencies are also interacting with the intelligence agencies of its military allies to help all allied companies. I'm sure you know that the North Korean state and Russian private hacker groups attack outside companies relentlessly.
I think America has something defense treaties with something like 50 other countries. If it declared all those treaties null and void then I'd say that's likely to have unintended consequences regarding trade, etc.
Is the US the world's richest country that chooses to spend a huge budget on its military, or is the US so wealthy because it has the world's strongest military? No idea myself, but I'm sure valid arguments could be made for both sides.
Why do you believe military allies are more likely to trade with each other? Neutral countries are open to trade with everyone, and there is no direct link between trade and military alliances. Correlation of trade and defense agreements is not evidence of a causal relationship. However, military agreements do directly result in embargoes and blockades of nations, which is antithetical to free trade.
The free market does not "love" any particular business model or supply chain by default. It just means various individuals and voluntary associations are free to find what works and change as needed without political intervention.
Regional specialization and trade are beneficial to everyone. Imagine of Canada mandated only Canadian-grown citrus fruit could be sold in Canada for an extreme example of why economic nationalism is dumb. Yes, most of the world's chips are made in Taiwan, but you may want to look at the many anti-market factors which also pushed manufacturing overseas. Taxes and regulatory pressures played a major role in making domestic manufacturing untenable in the US, and new subsidy schemes or mandates do not restore sustainability, they add chaos.
The US became wealthy through freer markets and freer trade, and only this wealth created by market action made the Leviathan State parasite possible. It is now killing its host, and military expansion with pointless wars is one of the key indicators of a dying empire.
Military allies provide a sense of stability.
Trade Agreements usually have processes to resolve international company disputes and dealings with companies in countries without an agreement can be a costly legal exercise.
It's not just trade, this stability offers US companies opportunities to partner with international companies on specific ventures which obviously requires a lot of trust since billions of dollars are often at stake.
I don't know if the USA develops military alliances specifically for trade or if its developed alliances with major trading partners but a huge number of its top 30 trading partners are also military allies.
Again, I'm not saying that I agree or disagree whether this is all the right way or best way to operate. I'm just saying that I have no idea what the cost to US companies and citizens would be if the US were to drop all its military alliances.
Unsupported assertion. The past several decades of pointless war empirically suggest otherwise. Hell, WW1 exploded from a minor incident to continent-plus conflict because of alliances and treaties.
That's just an appeal to the status quo. Meanwhile, in the real world, merchants created solutions and processes to resolve such disputes centuries ago. Innumerable disputes are resolved globally even today by arbitration. There is nothing about dispute resolution which requires territorial monopolies in violence, a.k.a governments.
The US trades globally and meddles globally. Correlation is not causation either way. The US traded globally before NATO and even before WW1 when neutrality was at least nominally the usual policy, notwithstanding the anti-market and anti-human gunboat diplomacy or Banana Wars.
I don't think it's an unsupported assumption, there are a lot less wars between countries now than there was 250-100 years ago, and I think that's due to networks of military alliances and trading partner agreements... I do still think if the US dropped its military alliances there would be unintended consequences and negative effects on US citizens and you remain convinced it would be positive.
It's an interesting thought experiment and I appreciate the time you've taken to explain your position and thought processes. I hope you enjoy the remainder of your weekend.
Again, you are relying on a correlation/causation fallacy. Trade reduces the likelihood of conflict. One of the saving graces in the American saber-rattling against China preventing the hawks from doing something violent and stupid is the trade connections between their respective populations. They don't really care if war kills the people, but if war kills their tax revenue, they have a real problem. And again, WW1 blew up because of old military alliances and treaties. Military alliances increase the likelihood of conflict. Did you not see how the mere possibility of Ukraine cozying up to NATO helped spark open war again a year and a half ago? And all these "allies" are pumping weapons into the warzone while Ukranians die.