Comment on There's no money for education and health care but they'll always find some for war.
hdnsmbt@lemmy.world 6 months agoIt’s not so much “how I see it” as it is “how it is” and you don’t seem to deny that.
I understood that you prefer not to work on the child-killing devices the first time. Nonetheless all the other “cool science markets” still help your employer make those child-killing devices.
While the sausage will keep being made, I can actively choose not to be the butcher and I’m having a hard time respecting people gushing about their work on the non-butchering side of the same company.
jasondj@ttrpg.network 6 months ago
No, you have it backwards, the child killing devices enable my employer to do the cool science markets.
Revenue from child killing devices and related patents pays for the science research. And as it turns out, a lot of those patents also work really well for the cool life-saving science stuff.
hdnsmbt@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Oh, now I get it, your employer has to facilitate killing children, so they can do cool science stuff! Wow, that’s instantly so much better! The kids will be so happy when they hear that!
Damn, if only somehow could figure out how to do cool science stuff without all the dead children, though. Maybe you could do some cool science stuff on that maybe? Like soonish?
jasondj@ttrpg.network 6 months ago
I put an ETA on as you were responding, so I’ll move it here for your convenience.
ETA, this is why I see it as more a necessary evil. War pays the bills. My company is probably pretty unique in that we are not a prime and we put most of our revenue towards private research. But I imagine Boeing or LM wouldn’t be able to keep their lights on with just their commercial businesses, either, or the cost of commercial aviation would be unattainable to most people. And without them I imagine FedEx and UPS would crumble, as would USPS. And then the entire economy after that. Just as one example.
World peace is a terrific goal. But getting there will have a lot of unintended consequences, just due do how ingrained the war machine is with the commercial sector. At least in America.
hdnsmbt@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You obviously struggle with the moral implications of your job and put a lot of thought in justifying it to yourself but I’m sorry, those justification just don’t work for me.
No doubt about that. That doesn’t make actively participating any better, though. Or that other companies do it too. You make it sound like a war machine is a necessary evil in order to get civil science funded which is just absolute delusion stemming from the things you were taught about war, violence and “defense”. Take a look outside the US for an abundance of examples of civil science funded by civil industries or even governments. If Boeing can’t survive without facilitating child murder maybe we should ask ourselves if we really need Boeing that much, no? Jobs disappear all the time for much worse reasons. You imagine the USPS crumbling if it weren’t for the war industry? How do you imagine countries with less than a $766b budget (the majority of countries) receive their mail? Don’t get me wrong but it sounds like the propaganda worked really well on you and you never thought to question it.
There’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and world peace.
And it’s a very convenient way to justify putting money above your morals, I imagine.
And maybe if you stop giving them reasons to want to kill you they would stop wanting to kill you. Maybe if the US stepped back to think about what they use their “defense” industry for they would actually use it for defense once and save one or two white children. Again, there’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and completely dismantling the war machine and proclaiming world peace, something I have in no way suggested or implied but which you keep bringing up on order to paint my disdain of working for a “defense” company as naïve.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time but please understand that I probably won’t be convinced by the justifications you made for yourself. In the end, I will keep believing that money matters more for you than the morality of your actions because all the justifications aside, this is what your actions lay bare.