I agree, but one oft neglected part of these things is the assumption that military and private companies are the same when we know they aren't. The pay is one

I agree, but one oft neglected part of these things is the assumption that military and private companies are the same when we know they aren't. The pay is one issue, but the social aspects are the much bigger issue. In bureaucracy where jobs are almost impossible to be fired from for lack of adequate performance there is always an entrenched notion that anyone performing better is making everyone else look bad, and this results in sideband bullying, silencing, and various other forms of coercion which meet a definition of torture. This is why Academia, and Government have such a hard time finding and keeping qualified people. Structurally, those in charge are the ones promoting negative production value, they may say otherwise but people lie all the time and its only rational to take people by their actions over what words they speak. There is no amount of money that someone will justify selling/losing their sanity in exchange for money. Money isn't worth anything if you can't spend it. If you sieve the entry with arbitrary requirements, while also making the job intolerable... of course you aren't going to attract talent. Its not mainly a matter of money, or for that a matter of culture. Its a matter of structure, and structural failures that incentivize these deficits, they are the same deficits found in central planning. If you can't relieve people for doing a bad job, you only ever attract parasites which crowd out your productive members, and eventually the reputation gets around and no one even bothers to apply or go down that path if they can avoid it. Couple that with systems which are designed to propagate evils without the individuals alerting to the fact, and who would risk their soul for a job? The wisest understand that the job you choose can warp and defines you. If you segment and compartmentalize information you'll never know when you commit attrocities, and you'll be equally responsible regardless of that knowing. Overall, Government job? Academic Job? nope moving on. Sanity, and religious beliefs are valued well above anything so base as money; but there are those types too.