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A missile has a better chance of saving that soldiers life than a smidgen of morale. Speaking as former military, these perks are things that you get used to (a

A missile has a better chance of saving that soldiers life than a smidgen of morale. Speaking as former military, these perks are things that you get used to (and thus dont really value much, especially food) and dont really do much for you when your life is on the line.

jacques_chester 13y ago
That's the problem with morale. It's tough to build, easy to destroy. People quickly factor changes in conditions into their baseline (the hedonic treadmill); from that point removing a positive thing will only cost you. In many ways, it's better to be stingy in the first place (I think Machiavelli pointed this out).
- rdl 13y ago
  What works well is progressively improving conditions, which is what you get by applying constant effort in productive ways. I remember how happy people in Iraq on bases were to -1) have some kind of frame to hold the bag to shit into instead of squatting beside their truck 0) have someone else burn their shit for them 1) get porta-potties 2) get porcelain toilets in trailers 3) get porcelain toilets in trailers which didn't electrocute them 4) toilets less than 500m from their homes 5) get bathrooms in their trailers 6) get hardstand buildings. What doesn't work is when you're downsizing and taking away things.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    You're right that progressive improvements are good. But they still get quickly baselined. Today the poo-bag-stand is a gift from the logistics gods. Tomorrow it's just how you crap. And if they take it away, blam, shitty moods all round. The example often cited in tech circles is when the free soft drinks fridge disappears or is replaced with paid drinks. Free soft drinks are quickly baselined; taking them away is destructive of morale. I guess by "stingy" I meant that improvements should be chosen carefully. Where possible they should be sustainable indefinitely and be improvements that take longer to baseline.
    - rdl 13y ago
      The difference with startups is you have competitors your staff can jump ship to, so you need to maintain parity (or have other counterbalancing advantages to outweigh not offering market-standard perks). That doesn't happen so much in the military. No one is going to switch to the losing side for relaxed grooming standards. :)
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        Yeah, I left that out of my remarks -- that there's an industry-wide baseline established by competition. That said, it's not as though historical soldiery has always followed the current citizen-volunteer-soldier pattern we see today.
lifeformed 13y ago
But there are tons of those missiles. Are they in danger of running out? There's gotta be a surplus of some ordnance that could be better spent as food. I know the budget doesn't really work that way, but it's pretty surreal how much money is consumed in a war. One bomb could put pay for a scholarship for a lot of those soldiers.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Military logistics is a hard problem. There's no market telling you what to produce and in what quantities. How do you know in advance that it would be better to have 30,000 mortar heads in your local base stockpile vs access to a loitering B-52 two days in the week? Answer: you don't. You can't. You basically have to make elaborate guesses and accept that you will be wrong a lot of the time, with all the concomittant waste that comes along with it. Especially since some such tradeoffs take decades to fully play out (eg. the JSF would be great in a war against an advanced industrial enemy ... which ... who?).
vacri 13y ago
There's a psychological state called the Holiday Effect, where the mere novelty of a (positive) experience creates better mood and performance. It's analagous to the Placebo Effect - where you get a change because you know something different, even if you don't know what, so it needs to be controlled for. One example was a criticism of an Australian Institute of Sport study, where they took athletes away from their regular AIS places to do their training on top of a mountain, to examine if their perfomance improved on return. What they didn't do was send a control group to the same altitude as regular training - so there was no control for the spiritually rejuvenating effect of travelling somewhere nice and out-of-the-ordinary.

jacques_chester 13y ago

That's the problem with morale. It's tough to build, easy to destroy. People quickly factor changes in conditions into their baseline (the hedonic treadmill); from that point removing a positive thing will only cost you. In many ways, it's better to be stingy in the first place (I think Machiavelli pointed this out).

rdl 13y ago
What works well is progressively improving conditions, which is what you get by applying constant effort in productive ways. I remember how happy people in Iraq on bases were to -1) have some kind of frame to hold the bag to shit into instead of squatting beside their truck 0) have someone else burn their shit for them 1) get porta-potties 2) get porcelain toilets in trailers 3) get porcelain toilets in trailers which didn't electrocute them 4) toilets less than 500m from their homes 5) get bathrooms in their trailers 6) get hardstand buildings. What doesn't work is when you're downsizing and taking away things.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  You're right that progressive improvements are good. But they still get quickly baselined. Today the poo-bag-stand is a gift from the logistics gods. Tomorrow it's just how you crap. And if they take it away, blam, shitty moods all round. The example often cited in tech circles is when the free soft drinks fridge disappears or is replaced with paid drinks. Free soft drinks are quickly baselined; taking them away is destructive of morale. I guess by "stingy" I meant that improvements should be chosen carefully. Where possible they should be sustainable indefinitely and be improvements that take longer to baseline.
  - rdl 13y ago
    The difference with startups is you have competitors your staff can jump ship to, so you need to maintain parity (or have other counterbalancing advantages to outweigh not offering market-standard perks). That doesn't happen so much in the military. No one is going to switch to the losing side for relaxed grooming standards. :)
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Yeah, I left that out of my remarks -- that there's an industry-wide baseline established by competition. That said, it's not as though historical soldiery has always followed the current citizen-volunteer-soldier pattern we see today.

lifeformed 13y ago

But there are tons of those missiles. Are they in danger of running out? There's gotta be a surplus of some ordnance that could be better spent as food. I know the budget doesn't really work that way, but it's pretty surreal how much money is consumed in a war. One bomb could put pay for a scholarship for a lot of those soldiers.

jacques_chester 13y ago
Military logistics is a hard problem. There's no market telling you what to produce and in what quantities. How do you know in advance that it would be better to have 30,000 mortar heads in your local base stockpile vs access to a loitering B-52 two days in the week? Answer: you don't. You can't. You basically have to make elaborate guesses and accept that you will be wrong a lot of the time, with all the concomittant waste that comes along with it. Especially since some such tradeoffs take decades to fully play out (eg. the JSF would be great in a war against an advanced industrial enemy ... which ... who?).

vacri 13y ago

There's a psychological state called the Holiday Effect, where the mere novelty of a (positive) experience creates better mood and performance. It's analagous to the Placebo Effect - where you get a change because you know something different, even if you don't know what, so it needs to be controlled for. One example was a criticism of an Australian Institute of Sport study, where they took athletes away from their regular AIS places to do their training on top of a mountain, to examine if their perfomance improved on return. What they didn't do was send a control group to the same altitude as regular training - so there was no control for the spiritually rejuvenating effect of travelling somewhere nice and out-of-the-ordinary.