Comment on There's no money for education and health care but they'll always find some for war.
jasondj@ttrpg.network 9 months agoI 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 9 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.
jasondj@ttrpg.network 9 months ago
I don’t think you quite understand where I’m coming from.
The worker bees don’t matter. I l, as a cog in this machine, am nothing. I can be replaced by another cog of equal skill and nothing will change. My company will survive without me. I stopped trying to justify my position in the war machine a long time ago.
The war machine will exist without my company.
I don’t think my county would exist without my war machine, but not for the immediately apparent reasons of defense, but for the collapse of all the industry that it sustains.
The reason why I think USPS would crumble without Boeing, LM, Raytheon, and all the other aviation primes, is because domestic mail and package logistics are highly reliant on air freight. And all of the major airline manufacturers, and the big component manufacturers of those planes, like the engines, are made by said war machine. Not just for American jets, but also for foreign manufactures like Airbus and Dassault and Embraer.
None of their commercial business could self-sustain at their scale without the war machine. The two are far too entwined.
In fact, I think the only prime that is diversified enough and in aerospace to survive such a shakedown would be GE. The only aviation brand that would survive for sure would probably be Airbus.
This isn’t an accident, but it’s not really an evil conspiracy, either. There has just never in the history of human society has “war drives innovation” rung true than in aviation. To the point now that I don’t think you can have a career in aviation (aside from commercial, and then excluding pilots and mechanics) without selling your soul to the war machine in one way or another.
This table gives a clear example of just how entwined the two are, namely the “% of Total Revenue from Defense” column: en.m.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_defense_contractors
We came close to a better example with nuclear, but chickened out when we started getting electricity that threatened oil and coal. You want a war machine conspiracy, that’s a much better place to look (and also responsible for even more death and suffering, albeit indirectly, but now we are getting far off topic).
And that’s just the example of aviation. There’s other industries that are heavily subsidized by war…aviation is just the best example.
And also discounting that in the US, the military is about the best path for social mobility out of the lowest rungs.
These are systemic issues that aren’t a cause of the war machine, but need to be fixed and addressed before any attempt at dismantling it can occur, because the machine is the only damn thing holding it all together.
It’s not a matter of me justifying it. It’s a matter of comprehending the massive size, impact, and reliance of its existence. It’s Stockholm syndrome, on a national, if not global, scale. It’s far, far deeper than justifying the death of killing kids. We don’t want the child killers. Nobody wants the child killers. But the child killers are essentially responsible for all of the accomplishments and scientific progress from about 1910 until the present.
hdnsmbt@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I feel like you’re ignoring what I’m saying when you just repeat the same arguments I already addressed. I’m not trying to dismantle the war industry, I don’t want to participate in it. I have no illusions about how intertwined almost everything in the US is with the military and “defense”. None of this makes working in and for that machinery any more palatable for me.
It boils down to a very personal choice I’m sure didn’t actually involve all those thoughts. It’s the choice between making more money in a job in the war industry or making less money outside of it.
jasondj@ttrpg.network 9 months ago
I really love your black and white dichotomy of either in it or out of it. Really, the world must be very simple in black and white.
Unfortunately in the real world, where I work does not matter. The company will survive without me. The lowest-level cogs are completely disposable.
The reality of that means that if I don’t work here, somebody else will. My morals and ethics now put myself and my family at a disadvantage.
The American dream was mistold. It’s not work hard and live a great life. The truth is, it’s swallow your pride to survive, or watch other people do it instead. The more of your pride you’re willing to swallow, the better you survive. Thats all there is to it.
And where else should I go to support my family? Let’s look at the biggest employers in my region. Essentially it comes down to four pillars…”kill children”, “encourage addiction”, “boil the oceans”, or “sell slave-manufactured goods for insane profits”.
Absolutely, shit needs to change. But your bottom-up approach, attacking me personally, viewing me as your enemy because of the way I provide for my family, is not the way to do it. I know how far I’ve sold my soul. I know it’s far enough to realize that it doesn’t make one lick of difference in the way the world works. Either I sell that fraction of my soul, or someone else will. And in the end, I only get to choose to sell it to some other equally vile demon.