7 ms·

This is quite possibly dumbest thing I have ever seen written on this site. You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time whe

by jm4 4y ago

This is quite possibly dumbest thing I have ever seen written on this site. You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time when it is more important than it has been in decades. Obviously, there is waste, failed projects, and pockets of dysfunction. That happens in all large organizations. Despite all its flaws, the DOD is putting on a clinic on superior training, logistics, discipline, technology and power projection. I shudder to think what the world would look like right now and in several years without the DOD. Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there.

woodruffw 4y ago
These things are not incompatible. And you'd be incorrect to think that I doubt the value delivered by the DoD. My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie. When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  You’re making a lot of interesting assumptions based on nothing I can see. It would be fascinating to hear more about where you get these ideas from.
  - s5300 4y ago
    Probably from growing up in one of said areas that obviously majorly benefit. What they’re saying is very much true, I’m curious of your upbringing & knowledge of the topic if you really think they’re wrong
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      You couldn’t be further off base.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I'm happy to try and walk through my assumptions (although maybe not at this very moment, since it's late here). If you list out the ones that you think I'm making, I'll try my best to substantiate them.
    - reissbaker 4y ago
      Your assumption is that " the DoD is really just a $800B jobs program," because people are too embarrassed to accept welfare. I'm similarly interested to see evidence backing that up. Another specific claim, for example: We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead FWIW, the DoD employs 1.3MM active duty service members, 750k civilians, and 800k National Guard and Reserve service members [1]. That's about 3MM people, generously rounding up. If you consider the surrounding defense industry, that's about another 800k jobs [3], so let's super-generously round up to 4MM. Considering that there are 207MM working age people in the U.S. [2], I'd be surprised if there was broad support for the DoD primarily on the basis of the number of jobs it provides or as a welfare alternative. That's $800k a year per job created! Seems fairly inefficient as a job creation scheme given the median salary in the U.S. is about $54k a year [4]. And compared to the 4MM jobs in defense, in 2019 roughly 59MM Americans were the recipients of some sort of direct welfare program [5]. 1: https://trumpadministration.archives.performance.gov/defense/ https://trumpadministration.archives.performance.gov/defense... 2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S 3: https://www.clearedconnections.com/security-clearance-news/security-clearance/defense-jobs-make-up-10-percent-of-u-s-manufacturing-demand.htm https://www.clearedconnections.com/security-clearance-news/s... 4: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Bureau%20of,higher%20than%20a%20year%20earlier https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-f.... 5: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99674/five_things_you_may_not_know_about_the_us_social_safety_net_1.pdf https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99674/...
      - Throw10987 4y ago
        Veterans Affairs is also a big Chunk of change that also goes on in perpetuity. 412k employees and 10+ million on benefits Depending on how you count, defense industry could be 3.5 mil employees. https://siteselection.com/issues/2012/sep/sas-military-economy.cfm#:~:text=The%20indirect%20and%20induced%20employment,minimum%20of%203.5%20million%20jobs https://siteselection.com/issues/2012/sep/sas-military-econo....
  - Throw10987 4y ago
    War is a racket - Smedley Butler Major General US Marine Corps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket#:~:text=War%20Is%20a%20Racket%20is,interests%20commercially%20benefit%20from%20warfare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket#:~:text=War%....
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      Awesome quote, but war being a money making scheme does not make it a jobs program.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    Reddit oozes with ideas like this
- Jarwain 4y ago
  I think this is a fascinating perspective, or at least one I haven't heard before. I can't say I have a lot of experience with the military though. Although now that I think about it, that's what ROTC is right? They pay for your education, and pay you to gain experience using that education on Defense, then when your obligation is met you can keep going or do your own thing with a patriotism-boosted resume. It's a win-win
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    This perspective is also brought up somewhat frequently when discussing NASA.
  - pcl 4y ago
    I assume woodruffw is referring more broadly to what used to be called the military-industrial complex, in addition to direct military staffing. The gist of the idea is that the Department of Defense is a (the?) major funder of all sorts of industry in the US, typically in the form of contracts for products and services. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    You're vastly overestimating the reach and impact of the ROTC program though
    - bluepizza 4y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. Nobody knows. Not even the military, as per the article.
      - QuarterReptile 4y ago
        The article doesn't mention ROTC, and none of its few links that I opened mentioned ROTC either. Your hand waving pessimism seems clearly unwarranted in this case. You think scholarships are just getting fired off with no one knowing who, where, or when? At a decent guess for upper bound size, I see an estimate of 56% overall AD officers coming from ROTC. 2018 DoD demographics report puts total AD O-1 population at 28000, which should be a two year rank, so cut it in half for your new officers per year of 14000. Add 10% for people failing out, and you get about 8600 officers per year in ROTC, or a total of 34000 since it's a four year program.
- joxel 4y ago
  The first parts make sense, your third paragraph is the tinfoil part. Assuming it’s failing an audit because it’s a jobs program is dumb as hell. There are more concrete reasons for the failure and I can tell you, as a DoD employee, it’s mostly incompetence and extremely overworked people.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. What do you base this idea on? Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we... puts per-capita and per-GDP welfare spending high into the list of developed countries, > We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, More than is already dumped in by the vast welfare programs? Isn't government welfare expenditure greater than the entire defense budget? > so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie. > When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market. How so? What kind of thing could an audit say that would cause the population to act in a way the ruling class or the DoD would consider undesirable? And what kind of action are you imagining?
dumpsterlid 4y ago
"Despite all its flaws, the DOD is putting on a clinic on superior training, logistics, discipline, technology and power projection. I shudder to think what the world would look like right now and in several years without the DOD. Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there." For every bit of good the DOD does it kills, destroys and spreads enough suffering to AT LEAST nullify it if not vastly put it in the negative. That is without considering how all the money the DOD wastes on killing people and overthrowing other governments could be used to massively reduce suffering if it was put towards something more useful like infrastructure or healthcare.
- l33t233372 4y ago
  The suffering is generally not in America. For American tax payers, that is a factor.
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    And a disgusting convenience, that as long as it is "otherworldly" humans at the other end of the barrel, it suffices
    - l33t233372 4y ago
      Most countries tend to look out for their people first. I can’t really see a realistic alternative.
riffraff 4y ago
> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there. You don't need the current level of US DoD spending for NATO to be effective. There are 8 European NATO in the top 20 list of military expenditures, 5 more countries who are allies while not being NATO. But yes, Ukraine would likely be screwed.
causi 4y ago
You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time when it is more important than it has been in decades. Right. It's a $200B essential service plus a $500B jobs program.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Exactly this! And the part I want to impress: jobs programs are good! Essential national defense is good! I'm not against these things; I'd just like it if we could (1) be a little more honest with ourselves, as Americans, and (2) maybe cut out the middleman and just admit that we'd like a healthy middle class.
  - pstuart 4y ago
    Yes, but butter is better than guns (most of the time). Take our escapades in Afghanistan: a lot of jobs but what do we have to show for it? If instead we had a modern day CCC or such where we'd actually invest in our communities, etc., we could have far more healthy and prosperous society. But no, that would be socialism if we spent it on something nice.
    - eloisius 4y ago
      At the risk of sounding cynical, what we have to show for it is a military with actual fighting experience. It’s a big part of why we and the UK are able to outfit and train soldiers in Ukraine, and why we have nothing to fear from rivals like China or Russia for decades to come.
      - pstuart 4y ago
        Believe it or not, I get that, and I respect the capabilities and dedication involved as well (despite not supporting their missions). That said, we don't need such a huge MIC to derive that (effectively a blank check). 2 Wars with nothing to show and a cost of over $6T. We can do better than that.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> Obviously, there is waste, failed projects, and pockets of dysfunction. That happens in all large organizations. Is there a commonly accepted like... loss of producitivty/efficency number in % that is accepted at large organization scale? Like is it just assumed "a large corporation is 20% inefficient compared to... a startup/quicker moving company" and there's nothing that can be done/it'll always be that way?
- xiphias2 4y ago
  When you have the solution for inefficiency / corruption at large scale, 8 billion people can finally stop starting wars againt itself, reverse climate change and feed the hungry people. In my opinion sound money is the best thing we have to coordinate better at scale, but we are already far above what any animal species can do.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
akira2501 4y ago
Is it really not the case that without the DOD, Europe would simply just have to spend more collectively on it's on defense than it does now? We're outspending them 3:1, and as excellent as our logistics and force projection are, I think another $250 billion Euro would help close that gap pretty quickly. And DOD has more than just technical flaws.. the history of it's conflicts over the past 20 years leaves _much_ to be desired and the development of the world in that time has not significantly been towards peace. I'm starting to wonder if continuously projecting force for 70 years after the last major war was a wise strategy at all. The audits are frankly the least of it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dmichulke 4y ago
> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there. How? Can you please elaborate a bit?
- 7thaccount 4y ago
  America spends more on defense than probably most of Europe. Look at the amount of aircraft carriers, aircraft, tanks, helicopters, ICMBs, submarines, and soldiers we have. It's a lot and I have a feeling Europe leans on America heavily and as a result under funds their own military greatly. As members of NATO, they may figure that they don't have to worry about a blitzkrieg from Putin. A lot of the power projected by America is from massive DOD spending in developing new technology like our carriers, tanks, missiles, cyber warfare/security, subs, various planes (JSF, F-22, stealth bomber, SR-71...etc). However, this assumes no game theory. If America hadn't invested as much as it did in DOD, I think it would be weaker and Europe would have to compensate and would then produce more of it's own needs.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    The issue is that without the US there wouldn't be NATO, and Europe wouldn't have replaced it with anything effective. The closest attempt at an equivalent is the EU army which has never got off the ground, and if it did would be structured in ways optimal for the EU's political goals rather than what makes sense militarily. Think dozens of smaller forces that don't speak each other's languages very well. US DoD has similar issues with congressional pork but it's still one organization and one military under one government.
xwolfi 4y ago
Or we would be best bud with an appeased Russia, who knows in political fiction... But your point stands: it does something, it serves a purpose, it produces output, a far cry from what the guy you responded to claimed. It's not a job program, far from it.
dang 4y ago
Please omit swipes and name-calling from your comments here, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by jm4 4y ago

woodruffw 4y ago

These things are not incompatible. And you'd be incorrect to think that I doubt the value delivered by the DoD. My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie. When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market.

imwillofficial 4y ago
You’re making a lot of interesting assumptions based on nothing I can see. It would be fascinating to hear more about where you get these ideas from.
- s5300 4y ago
  Probably from growing up in one of said areas that obviously majorly benefit. What they’re saying is very much true, I’m curious of your upbringing & knowledge of the topic if you really think they’re wrong
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    You couldn’t be further off base.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I'm happy to try and walk through my assumptions (although maybe not at this very moment, since it's late here). If you list out the ones that you think I'm making, I'll try my best to substantiate them.
  - reissbaker 4y ago
    Your assumption is that " the DoD is really just a $800B jobs program," because people are too embarrassed to accept welfare. I'm similarly interested to see evidence backing that up. Another specific claim, for example: We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead FWIW, the DoD employs 1.3MM active duty service members, 750k civilians, and 800k National Guard and Reserve service members [1]. That's about 3MM people, generously rounding up. If you consider the surrounding defense industry, that's about another 800k jobs [3], so let's super-generously round up to 4MM. Considering that there are 207MM working age people in the U.S. [2], I'd be surprised if there was broad support for the DoD primarily on the basis of the number of jobs it provides or as a welfare alternative. That's $800k a year per job created! Seems fairly inefficient as a job creation scheme given the median salary in the U.S. is about $54k a year [4]. And compared to the 4MM jobs in defense, in 2019 roughly 59MM Americans were the recipients of some sort of direct welfare program [5]. 1: https://trumpadministration.archives.performance.gov/defense/ https://trumpadministration.archives.performance.gov/defense... 2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S 3: https://www.clearedconnections.com/security-clearance-news/security-clearance/defense-jobs-make-up-10-percent-of-u-s-manufacturing-demand.htm https://www.clearedconnections.com/security-clearance-news/s... 4: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Bureau%20of,higher%20than%20a%20year%20earlier https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-f.... 5: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99674/five_things_you_may_not_know_about_the_us_social_safety_net_1.pdf https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99674/...
    - Throw10987 4y ago
      Veterans Affairs is also a big Chunk of change that also goes on in perpetuity. 412k employees and 10+ million on benefits Depending on how you count, defense industry could be 3.5 mil employees. https://siteselection.com/issues/2012/sep/sas-military-economy.cfm#:~:text=The%20indirect%20and%20induced%20employment,minimum%20of%203.5%20million%20jobs https://siteselection.com/issues/2012/sep/sas-military-econo....
- Throw10987 4y ago
  War is a racket - Smedley Butler Major General US Marine Corps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket#:~:text=War%20Is%20a%20Racket%20is,interests%20commercially%20benefit%20from%20warfare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket#:~:text=War%....
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    Awesome quote, but war being a money making scheme does not make it a jobs program.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Reddit oozes with ideas like this
Jarwain 4y ago
I think this is a fascinating perspective, or at least one I haven't heard before. I can't say I have a lot of experience with the military though. Although now that I think about it, that's what ROTC is right? They pay for your education, and pay you to gain experience using that education on Defense, then when your obligation is met you can keep going or do your own thing with a patriotism-boosted resume. It's a win-win
- nerdponx 4y ago
  This perspective is also brought up somewhat frequently when discussing NASA.
- pcl 4y ago
  I assume woodruffw is referring more broadly to what used to be called the military-industrial complex, in addition to direct military staffing. The gist of the idea is that the Department of Defense is a (the?) major funder of all sorts of industry in the US, typically in the form of contracts for products and services. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
- hackernewds 4y ago
  You're vastly overestimating the reach and impact of the ROTC program though
  - bluepizza 4y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. Nobody knows. Not even the military, as per the article.
    - QuarterReptile 4y ago
      The article doesn't mention ROTC, and none of its few links that I opened mentioned ROTC either. Your hand waving pessimism seems clearly unwarranted in this case. You think scholarships are just getting fired off with no one knowing who, where, or when? At a decent guess for upper bound size, I see an estimate of 56% overall AD officers coming from ROTC. 2018 DoD demographics report puts total AD O-1 population at 28000, which should be a two year rank, so cut it in half for your new officers per year of 14000. Add 10% for people failing out, and you get about 8600 officers per year in ROTC, or a total of 34000 since it's a four year program.
joxel 4y ago
The first parts make sense, your third paragraph is the tinfoil part. Assuming it’s failing an audit because it’s a jobs program is dumb as hell. There are more concrete reasons for the failure and I can tell you, as a DoD employee, it’s mostly incompetence and extremely overworked people.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> My point is a very simple one: the DoD is as large as it is because the US has a cultural aversion to accepting welfare. What do you base this idea on? Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we... puts per-capita and per-GDP welfare spending high into the list of developed countries, > We can't make it obvious that we want to build a large, well-educated, and financially stable middle class by dumping money onto it, More than is already dumped in by the vast welfare programs? Isn't government welfare expenditure greater than the entire defense budget? > so we build it up by dumping money into the DoD instead and ensuring that just about every (genuinely innovative!) facet of American industry gets a piece of the pie. > When the DoD is built into the lifeblood of your middle class like this, it is culturally impossible to audit it, because auditing it would reveal the truth so many Americans find embarrassing or politically repugnant: that their livelihoods come from government-driven funding intended to give them decent lives, not the invisible hand of the market. How so? What kind of thing could an audit say that would cause the population to act in a way the ruling class or the DoD would consider undesirable? And what kind of action are you imagining?

dumpsterlid 4y ago

"Despite all its flaws, the DOD is putting on a clinic on superior training, logistics, discipline, technology and power projection. I shudder to think what the world would look like right now and in several years without the DOD. Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there." For every bit of good the DOD does it kills, destroys and spreads enough suffering to AT LEAST nullify it if not vastly put it in the negative. That is without considering how all the money the DOD wastes on killing people and overthrowing other governments could be used to massively reduce suffering if it was put towards something more useful like infrastructure or healthcare.

l33t233372 4y ago
The suffering is generally not in America. For American tax payers, that is a factor.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  And a disgusting convenience, that as long as it is "otherworldly" humans at the other end of the barrel, it suffices
  - l33t233372 4y ago
    Most countries tend to look out for their people first. I can’t really see a realistic alternative.

riffraff 4y ago

> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there. You don't need the current level of US DoD spending for NATO to be effective. There are 8 European NATO in the top 20 list of military expenditures, 5 more countries who are allies while not being NATO. But yes, Ukraine would likely be screwed.

causi 4y ago

You are grossly underestimating the DOD, its purpose and its necessity at a time when it is more important than it has been in decades. Right. It's a $200B essential service plus a $500B jobs program.

woodruffw 4y ago
Exactly this! And the part I want to impress: jobs programs are good! Essential national defense is good! I'm not against these things; I'd just like it if we could (1) be a little more honest with ourselves, as Americans, and (2) maybe cut out the middleman and just admit that we'd like a healthy middle class.
- pstuart 4y ago
  Yes, but butter is better than guns (most of the time). Take our escapades in Afghanistan: a lot of jobs but what do we have to show for it? If instead we had a modern day CCC or such where we'd actually invest in our communities, etc., we could have far more healthy and prosperous society. But no, that would be socialism if we spent it on something nice.
  - eloisius 4y ago
    At the risk of sounding cynical, what we have to show for it is a military with actual fighting experience. It’s a big part of why we and the UK are able to outfit and train soldiers in Ukraine, and why we have nothing to fear from rivals like China or Russia for decades to come.
    - pstuart 4y ago
      Believe it or not, I get that, and I respect the capabilities and dedication involved as well (despite not supporting their missions). That said, we don't need such a huge MIC to derive that (effectively a blank check). 2 Wars with nothing to show and a cost of over $6T. We can do better than that.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> Obviously, there is waste, failed projects, and pockets of dysfunction. That happens in all large organizations. Is there a commonly accepted like... loss of producitivty/efficency number in % that is accepted at large organization scale? Like is it just assumed "a large corporation is 20% inefficient compared to... a startup/quicker moving company" and there's nothing that can be done/it'll always be that way?

xiphias2 4y ago
When you have the solution for inefficiency / corruption at large scale, 8 billion people can finally stop starting wars againt itself, reverse climate change and feed the hungry people. In my opinion sound money is the best thing we have to coordinate better at scale, but we are already far above what any animal species can do.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

akira2501 4y ago

Is it really not the case that without the DOD, Europe would simply just have to spend more collectively on it's on defense than it does now? We're outspending them 3:1, and as excellent as our logistics and force projection are, I think another $250 billion Euro would help close that gap pretty quickly. And DOD has more than just technical flaws.. the history of it's conflicts over the past 20 years leaves _much_ to be desired and the development of the world in that time has not significantly been towards peace. I'm starting to wonder if continuously projecting force for 70 years after the last major war was a wise strategy at all. The audits are frankly the least of it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dmichulke 4y ago

> Europe would be getting steamrolled if not for the DOD and NATO and it wouldn’t end there. How? Can you please elaborate a bit?

7thaccount 4y ago
America spends more on defense than probably most of Europe. Look at the amount of aircraft carriers, aircraft, tanks, helicopters, ICMBs, submarines, and soldiers we have. It's a lot and I have a feeling Europe leans on America heavily and as a result under funds their own military greatly. As members of NATO, they may figure that they don't have to worry about a blitzkrieg from Putin. A lot of the power projected by America is from massive DOD spending in developing new technology like our carriers, tanks, missiles, cyber warfare/security, subs, various planes (JSF, F-22, stealth bomber, SR-71...etc). However, this assumes no game theory. If America hadn't invested as much as it did in DOD, I think it would be weaker and Europe would have to compensate and would then produce more of it's own needs.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  The issue is that without the US there wouldn't be NATO, and Europe wouldn't have replaced it with anything effective. The closest attempt at an equivalent is the EU army which has never got off the ground, and if it did would be structured in ways optimal for the EU's political goals rather than what makes sense militarily. Think dozens of smaller forces that don't speak each other's languages very well. US DoD has similar issues with congressional pork but it's still one organization and one military under one government.

xwolfi 4y ago

Or we would be best bud with an appeased Russia, who knows in political fiction... But your point stands: it does something, it serves a purpose, it produces output, a far cry from what the guy you responded to claimed. It's not a job program, far from it.

dang 4y ago

Please omit swipes and name-calling from your comments here, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html