5 ms·

Simply as an observation, it’s interesting that serving in the military is usually treated as honorable, but working at a defense contractor is viewed as unethi

Simply as an observation, it’s interesting that serving in the military is usually treated as honorable, but working at a defense contractor is viewed as unethical. I wonder why that is?

hinkley 6y ago
When defense contractors make too much money on contracts, it's called profiteering. If the difference between criminal and lawful is just a matter of profit margins, I suspect it's hard for people think of you as being dirty, and the only question is how dirty.
hnracer 6y ago
My guess is that some people view defense contractors as being responsible for lobbying/corruption that encourages more wars in order to earn profit (they're the corrupting part of the military-industrial complex). I don't know to what extent this actually occurs though. The military is mostly reacting to the executive branch and doesn't have the same perceived corrupting influence.
trynumber9 6y ago
Presumably because soldiers are at putting themselves at risk while defense contractors are generally not.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  If you haven’t seen the precautions around building munitions, you might think that :)
serjester 6y ago
Skin in the game. A defense contractor shifts the risks of his job, excessive wars, to the public. A soldier does the exact opposite.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  Shifts the risk onto the public in other countries? Edit: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/06/middleeast/us-collateral-damage-history/ https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/06/middleeast/us-collateral-... has some more info.
robin_reala 6y ago
That’s not exactly a US-centric viewpoint, but glorification of the military definitely isn’t as prevalent in the EU for example.
- krick 6y ago
  Yep. In fact, it feels to me as if you are softening things up quite a bit: sure, glorifying the military is something that every country (read as "government") tries to do, but I don't really know any modern example other than USA, where people actually buy this bullshit. Which is kinda surreal, because, let's be honest: there is absolutely nothing honourable about [strike]serving[/strike] working in the military. It's not even about being a murderer (which everyone working in the military definitely is), it's about signing up (explicitly giving the oath) to follow the orders of other murderers. So it's literally just selling any your moral principles for a quite handsome compensation (in the case of USA, anyway). No, I'm not judging, maybe I would do it myself. I'm just refusing to pretend there's is anything honourable about that.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    I was going to be a bit more strident, but then I remembered countries like North Korea, so toned it down a touch.
cycomanic 6y ago
I think the serving in the military seen as honourable is largely due to propaganda. There are different levels to it, but it is very obvious when coming from Europe to the US, where you see "support our troops" signs very regularly.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  100% this. As a Canadian it's absolutely flabbergasting everytime I go there, the sheer level of martial obsession in the US. It bleeds over into Canada to some degree, but not dramatically. I suspect in part it comes from the country having its genesis in a war, its first president being a general, and its republic built around a president whose title is "commander in chief." That and its economic supremacy / dominance is supported in part by its military dominance.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Also possibly due to the fact that due to being so far away from the conflict and having a huge industrial economy with hundreds of millions of people, the US came out of WWII a lot stronger and more influential than they entered it. I think that was the moment the modern US was born. The head of this new force and later the whole country, Eisenhower, even warned us that the military-industrial complex he leveraged was starting to become too powerful: https://youtu.be/uGd-rkPoGa4 https://youtu.be/uGd-rkPoGa4
  - thetechimist 6y ago
    Another Canadian who knows next to nothing of how or why its country exists. Also the spoils of war. Only difference is... in the end it wasn’t worth continuing to fight for. What resources? Canadians like to act like morally superior peaceful “nice guys” but we will see what happens when Toronto gets invaded. Meanwhile, much like Switzerland, they enjoy a certain degree of immunity from world affairs and, much like England, like to talk a lot. But at least the UK has earned its stripes and protects it’s island and sticks its nose into things here and there. After all, they do have two aircraft carrier groups and those aren’t for self-defense but forward assault. Canada meanwhile makes syrup. It’s delicious and it’s a nice place to live. But it would be so much nicer if it weren’t full of self-righteous Canadians. Imagine a Canada that wasn’t a neighbor to the USA but instead was still a territory of European countries and a neighbor to Mexico. Things would be very different indeed. P.S. Don’t give me standard rhetoric about Canada being an ally and helping a bit in the Gulf Wars. Every contribution is important. Too bad that Canadians don’t thank the Patriots who fought in the French & Indian War and who later rebuked the greatest military force in the world back to London - twice. Else there would be no Canada as it presently exists. And no luxury to spin yarns about spending less on the military. Easy for you to say when you have the USA as your neighbor. Or as Han said to Leia, “Perhaps you’d like it back in your cell, your highness?”
bigbubba 6y ago
'Defense contractor' is a euphemism used because mercenaries have been considered a disreputable lot for centuries, if not longer.
- meowface 6y ago
  "Mercenary" is ambiguous, though. A mercenary is often defined as an entity who does any job for any buyer in the world, if the price is right. A defense contractor generally only engages in deals with certain entities. Mercenaries are more like NSO Group and HackingTeam.
  - asdff 6y ago
    A mercenary is simply a soldier for hire. They can still be choosy who they do business with. I'd say a group like Blackwater is a proper mercenary organization rather than Northrup Grumman, however.
    - meowface 6y ago
      They can be choosy, but I'd say they're definitionally considered less choosy than contractors. You'll probably never see Northrop Grumman building missiles on contract for Assad, but you may very well see NSO Group writing surveillance software for him, for example.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Countries have long had laws about what sort of business mercenaries in or from that country are allowed to accept. That doesn't make mercenaries in or from that country 'not mercenaries.'
    - meowface 6y ago
      I think there are still too many other differences to consider Northrop/Raytheon/Lockheed mercenaries. They're the core of the US military-industrial complex, but I still think they're effectively an arm of the US military and are much closer to contractors than mercenaries. A company like Blackwater is much closer to actual mercenaries - they're trying to build their own private, independent military-industrial complex, in a sense, by selling their services to existing complexes.
rightbyte 6y ago
Soldiers (infantry riflemen, the typical soldier) can chose who they kill, weapon engineers can not.
geofft 6y ago
One ethical complication in the US is that the military is effectively a jobs program for people from lower economic classes - it offers you both pay and experience straight out of high school as well as funding for a college decree, and you can turn that into a promising career. (As long as you're not physically or mentally broken by the whole experience, that is.) For many teenagers from poorer parts of the country who aren't getting into good colleges and don't see many other prospects, the military is one of their best options. And, at least in the last few decades, there was a pretty decent chance you wouldn't see combat at all. (A side effect here: the military finds it harder to recruit in places which have good job markets and higher minimum wages, because their value proposition isn't as strong in comparison, and the risk of moral injury and regular old injury weighs against that choice. Here's an article about it, from a right-leaning news site no less: https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-problems/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-proble...) While "just following orders" isn't a defense for war crimes, I think there's a lot of sympathy for people who enlist and follow the rules of war, and we don't see them as morally culpable for making the wars happen (or giving the military the ability to engage in war). Most of them would prefer to finish their agreed term of service and go back home. Meanwhile, defense contractors profit specifically from military engagements ("Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired...") and have more of an incentive to see wars happen, and they generally employ people who can find equivalent jobs and careers outside of defense, so if you're the sort of person who finds the military-industrial complex unethical, it makes a lot more sense to pin it on the industrial part of that complex.
ModernMech 6y ago
It's easier to convince families to send their young sons and daughters to the military when you tell them they are "heroes" and "patriots" for doing so. It's the same reason we called nurses and grocery store clerks "heroes" during the pandemic lock downs.
Balgair 6y ago
One is where you get paid, the other is where you volunteer to not get paid (well, not nearly as much). Hence, the use of the word 'service'. It does differ by region and time, though. Still, great observation.
anotherevan 6y ago
I wonder if some of it is a response to how horribly returning Vietnam veterans were treated in the past.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  That "horrible treatment" is an invention on the part of those who would like to stifle dissent and paint anti-war activism as unpatriotic.
asdff 6y ago
Soldiers of fortune were historically frowned upon to peer pressure people to fight for 'honor' rather than pay. The same is true today. You can read ancient greek texts griping about dishonorable mercenaries.
bumby 6y ago
As another post stated, there's some baggage associated with the idea of uniformed "service". There are many people who forego more lucrative careers (in a monetary sense) as a private contractor because of the idea of service. In other words, they feel they are serving a higher purpose in the military and would be selling out to go to a defense contractor. Ironically, these careers in the military are the ones with the largest retention incentives due to this very reason.

Simply as an observation, it’s interesting that serving in the military is usually treated as honorable, but working at a defense contractor is viewed as unethical. I wonder why that is?

hinkley 6y ago

When defense contractors make too much money on contracts, it's called profiteering. If the difference between criminal and lawful is just a matter of profit margins, I suspect it's hard for people think of you as being dirty, and the only question is how dirty.

hnracer 6y ago

My guess is that some people view defense contractors as being responsible for lobbying/corruption that encourages more wars in order to earn profit (they're the corrupting part of the military-industrial complex). I don't know to what extent this actually occurs though. The military is mostly reacting to the executive branch and doesn't have the same perceived corrupting influence.

trynumber9 6y ago

Presumably because soldiers are at putting themselves at risk while defense contractors are generally not.

mensetmanusman 6y ago
If you haven’t seen the precautions around building munitions, you might think that :)

serjester 6y ago

Skin in the game. A defense contractor shifts the risks of his job, excessive wars, to the public. A soldier does the exact opposite.

robin_reala 6y ago
Shifts the risk onto the public in other countries? Edit: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/06/middleeast/us-collateral-damage-history/ https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/06/middleeast/us-collateral-... has some more info.

robin_reala 6y ago

That’s not exactly a US-centric viewpoint, but glorification of the military definitely isn’t as prevalent in the EU for example.

krick 6y ago
Yep. In fact, it feels to me as if you are softening things up quite a bit: sure, glorifying the military is something that every country (read as "government") tries to do, but I don't really know any modern example other than USA, where people actually buy this bullshit. Which is kinda surreal, because, let's be honest: there is absolutely nothing honourable about [strike]serving[/strike] working in the military. It's not even about being a murderer (which everyone working in the military definitely is), it's about signing up (explicitly giving the oath) to follow the orders of other murderers. So it's literally just selling any your moral principles for a quite handsome compensation (in the case of USA, anyway). No, I'm not judging, maybe I would do it myself. I'm just refusing to pretend there's is anything honourable about that.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  I was going to be a bit more strident, but then I remembered countries like North Korea, so toned it down a touch.

cycomanic 6y ago

I think the serving in the military seen as honourable is largely due to propaganda. There are different levels to it, but it is very obvious when coming from Europe to the US, where you see "support our troops" signs very regularly.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
100% this. As a Canadian it's absolutely flabbergasting everytime I go there, the sheer level of martial obsession in the US. It bleeds over into Canada to some degree, but not dramatically. I suspect in part it comes from the country having its genesis in a war, its first president being a general, and its republic built around a president whose title is "commander in chief." That and its economic supremacy / dominance is supported in part by its military dominance.
- meowface 6y ago
  Also possibly due to the fact that due to being so far away from the conflict and having a huge industrial economy with hundreds of millions of people, the US came out of WWII a lot stronger and more influential than they entered it. I think that was the moment the modern US was born. The head of this new force and later the whole country, Eisenhower, even warned us that the military-industrial complex he leveraged was starting to become too powerful: https://youtu.be/uGd-rkPoGa4 https://youtu.be/uGd-rkPoGa4
- thetechimist 6y ago
  Another Canadian who knows next to nothing of how or why its country exists. Also the spoils of war. Only difference is... in the end it wasn’t worth continuing to fight for. What resources? Canadians like to act like morally superior peaceful “nice guys” but we will see what happens when Toronto gets invaded. Meanwhile, much like Switzerland, they enjoy a certain degree of immunity from world affairs and, much like England, like to talk a lot. But at least the UK has earned its stripes and protects it’s island and sticks its nose into things here and there. After all, they do have two aircraft carrier groups and those aren’t for self-defense but forward assault. Canada meanwhile makes syrup. It’s delicious and it’s a nice place to live. But it would be so much nicer if it weren’t full of self-righteous Canadians. Imagine a Canada that wasn’t a neighbor to the USA but instead was still a territory of European countries and a neighbor to Mexico. Things would be very different indeed. P.S. Don’t give me standard rhetoric about Canada being an ally and helping a bit in the Gulf Wars. Every contribution is important. Too bad that Canadians don’t thank the Patriots who fought in the French & Indian War and who later rebuked the greatest military force in the world back to London - twice. Else there would be no Canada as it presently exists. And no luxury to spin yarns about spending less on the military. Easy for you to say when you have the USA as your neighbor. Or as Han said to Leia, “Perhaps you’d like it back in your cell, your highness?”

bigbubba 6y ago

'Defense contractor' is a euphemism used because mercenaries have been considered a disreputable lot for centuries, if not longer.

meowface 6y ago
"Mercenary" is ambiguous, though. A mercenary is often defined as an entity who does any job for any buyer in the world, if the price is right. A defense contractor generally only engages in deals with certain entities. Mercenaries are more like NSO Group and HackingTeam.
- asdff 6y ago
  A mercenary is simply a soldier for hire. They can still be choosy who they do business with. I'd say a group like Blackwater is a proper mercenary organization rather than Northrup Grumman, however.
  - meowface 6y ago
    They can be choosy, but I'd say they're definitionally considered less choosy than contractors. You'll probably never see Northrop Grumman building missiles on contract for Assad, but you may very well see NSO Group writing surveillance software for him, for example.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Countries have long had laws about what sort of business mercenaries in or from that country are allowed to accept. That doesn't make mercenaries in or from that country 'not mercenaries.'
  - meowface 6y ago
    I think there are still too many other differences to consider Northrop/Raytheon/Lockheed mercenaries. They're the core of the US military-industrial complex, but I still think they're effectively an arm of the US military and are much closer to contractors than mercenaries. A company like Blackwater is much closer to actual mercenaries - they're trying to build their own private, independent military-industrial complex, in a sense, by selling their services to existing complexes.

rightbyte 6y ago

Soldiers (infantry riflemen, the typical soldier) can chose who they kill, weapon engineers can not.

geofft 6y ago

One ethical complication in the US is that the military is effectively a jobs program for people from lower economic classes - it offers you both pay and experience straight out of high school as well as funding for a college decree, and you can turn that into a promising career. (As long as you're not physically or mentally broken by the whole experience, that is.) For many teenagers from poorer parts of the country who aren't getting into good colleges and don't see many other prospects, the military is one of their best options. And, at least in the last few decades, there was a pretty decent chance you wouldn't see combat at all. (A side effect here: the military finds it harder to recruit in places which have good job markets and higher minimum wages, because their value proposition isn't as strong in comparison, and the risk of moral injury and regular old injury weighs against that choice. Here's an article about it, from a right-leaning news site no less: https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-problems/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/02/us-army-recruiting-proble...) While "just following orders" isn't a defense for war crimes, I think there's a lot of sympathy for people who enlist and follow the rules of war, and we don't see them as morally culpable for making the wars happen (or giving the military the ability to engage in war). Most of them would prefer to finish their agreed term of service and go back home. Meanwhile, defense contractors profit specifically from military engagements ("Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired...") and have more of an incentive to see wars happen, and they generally employ people who can find equivalent jobs and careers outside of defense, so if you're the sort of person who finds the military-industrial complex unethical, it makes a lot more sense to pin it on the industrial part of that complex.

ModernMech 6y ago

It's easier to convince families to send their young sons and daughters to the military when you tell them they are "heroes" and "patriots" for doing so. It's the same reason we called nurses and grocery store clerks "heroes" during the pandemic lock downs.

Balgair 6y ago

One is where you get paid, the other is where you volunteer to not get paid (well, not nearly as much). Hence, the use of the word 'service'. It does differ by region and time, though. Still, great observation.

anotherevan 6y ago

I wonder if some of it is a response to how horribly returning Vietnam veterans were treated in the past.

jgwil2 6y ago
That "horrible treatment" is an invention on the part of those who would like to stifle dissent and paint anti-war activism as unpatriotic.

asdff 6y ago

Soldiers of fortune were historically frowned upon to peer pressure people to fight for 'honor' rather than pay. The same is true today. You can read ancient greek texts griping about dishonorable mercenaries.

bumby 6y ago

As another post stated, there's some baggage associated with the idea of uniformed "service". There are many people who forego more lucrative careers (in a monetary sense) as a private contractor because of the idea of service. In other words, they feel they are serving a higher purpose in the military and would be selling out to go to a defense contractor. Ironically, these careers in the military are the ones with the largest retention incentives due to this very reason.