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Those things are also insurance against being killed. Are you supposed to just hope the bad people don't pick you? No, you invest in offense so you can have a b

Those things are also insurance against being killed. Are you supposed to just hope the bad people don't pick you? No, you invest in offense so you can have a better defense.

SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
I know man, I know. I'm not so naive as to say that if a country was enlightened enough to disband their military, then other countries would leave them be. They would be a seen as a ripe fruit, and they would be picked. I just wish it wasn't like this. I wish we didn't have people engaged in the business of enabling industrial scale murder. I wish it wasn't profitable. I wish the citizenry would see through the propaganda and hold their leaders to account. I wish it wasn't the nation's poorest who were sent to die for the benefit of the nation's richest. The war machine is a rotten, gruesome system, and I acknowledge it's not going away any time soon. But the least we can do is agree not to actively contribute towards it.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  Understand, there's a lot of distance between 'we don't need a military', 'we need a military to defend American soil', and what we have today. I am strongly in the 'we only need to defend American soil' camp. I'm not sure how much that costs, but considering we're a nuclear power, we have two relatively friendly neighbors and thousands of miles of ocean between us and our nearest peer enemies, it wouldn't surprise me if we could get away with spending a miniscule fraction of the 700B we do today.
- dash2 5y ago
  Modern warfare is much less likely to involve the nation’s poorest dying for the sake of the richest. There’s a recent article about how the average American soldier is now better educated than the average civilian. The specialist weapons we’re talking about shift the balance towards capital and away from labour in the killing production function. Is that a good thing? I’m not so sure. The age of mass armies was also the age of democratisation. If war is waged by defence firms and brilliant technocrats, then maybe defence firms and brilliant technocrats will run the country.

Those things are also insurance against being killed. Are you supposed to just hope the bad people don't pick you? No, you invest in offense so you can have a better defense.

SturgeonsLaw 5y ago

I know man, I know. I'm not so naive as to say that if a country was enlightened enough to disband their military, then other countries would leave them be. They would be a seen as a ripe fruit, and they would be picked. I just wish it wasn't like this. I wish we didn't have people engaged in the business of enabling industrial scale murder. I wish it wasn't profitable. I wish the citizenry would see through the propaganda and hold their leaders to account. I wish it wasn't the nation's poorest who were sent to die for the benefit of the nation's richest. The war machine is a rotten, gruesome system, and I acknowledge it's not going away any time soon. But the least we can do is agree not to actively contribute towards it.

wing-_-nuts 5y ago
Understand, there's a lot of distance between 'we don't need a military', 'we need a military to defend American soil', and what we have today. I am strongly in the 'we only need to defend American soil' camp. I'm not sure how much that costs, but considering we're a nuclear power, we have two relatively friendly neighbors and thousands of miles of ocean between us and our nearest peer enemies, it wouldn't surprise me if we could get away with spending a miniscule fraction of the 700B we do today.
dash2 5y ago
Modern warfare is much less likely to involve the nation’s poorest dying for the sake of the richest. There’s a recent article about how the average American soldier is now better educated than the average civilian. The specialist weapons we’re talking about shift the balance towards capital and away from labour in the killing production function. Is that a good thing? I’m not so sure. The age of mass armies was also the age of democratisation. If war is waged by defence firms and brilliant technocrats, then maybe defence firms and brilliant technocrats will run the country.