Worth mentioning that there are well paying, stable jobs in the MIC for the other 99%. I work for a sub (in IT, and spend most of my time on the commercial side of the business) in such a company. While I resent our biggest revenue maker, it does enable the company to fund scientific research and commercial space endeavors.
I wouldn’t call myself a bootlicker, per se, but I do enjoy my job, despite what I’ve started viewing as a necessary evil — the pay and benefits are highly competitive, I’m 98% WFH, layoffs and turnover are rare (there are regularly people retiring who had entered straight from college and worked directly on Apollo missions), the job is challenging and I’m given a long leash.
“I mean, I know my work contributes to some of the worst atrocities of mankind but they give me a lot of money and benefits for forgetting that I actively contribute in facilitating the slaughter of children which makes it easier to swallow. Also I get to work from home a lot! ❤️”
Personally I’ve been more directly involved in actually helping people and things go to the fricken moon than I have in all of my defense projects, combined. And space is just one of our cool science markets.
I can do defense stuff, I’m authorized to, in a pinch I can (and have), but I would really rather not. Work on that side of the house sucks.
Nobody likes how the sausage is made, but it’s going to get made as long as someone buying it. I’m not eating the sausage. I’m not buying the sausage. I’m having a satisfying job, managing operations at a small pig farm that also develops new cutting-edge cancer medications inside of pig pancreases. Different group of pigs, though.
It’s not so much “how I see it” as it is “how it is” and you don’t seem to deny that.
I understood that you prefer not to work on the child-killing devices the first time. Nonetheless all the other “cool science markets” still help your employer make those child-killing devices.
While the sausage will keep being made, I can actively choose not to be the butcher and I’m having a hard time respecting people gushing about their work on the non-butchering side of the same company.
No, you have it backwards, the child killing devices enable my employer to do the cool science markets.
Revenue from child killing devices and related patents pays for the science research. And as it turns out, a lot of those patents also work really well for the cool life-saving science stuff.
Oh, now I get it, your employer has to facilitate killing children, so they can do cool science stuff! Wow, that’s instantly so much better! The kids will be so happy when they hear that!
Damn, if only somehow could figure out how to do cool science stuff without all the dead children, though. Maybe you could do some cool science stuff on that maybe? Like soonish?
I put an ETA on as you were responding, so I’ll move it here for your convenience.
ETA, this is why I see it as more a necessary evil. War pays the bills. My company is probably pretty unique in that we are not a prime and we put most of our revenue towards private research. We are not unique in how our war revenue gets used to subsidize more humanitarian tech, and I imagine even Boeing or LM wouldn’t be able to keep their lights on with just their commercial businesses, either, or the cost of commercial aviation would be unattainable to most people. And without them I imagine FedEx and UPS would crumble, as would USPS. And then the entire economy after that. Just as one example.
World peace is a terrific goal. But getting there will have a lot of unintended consequences, just due do how ingrained the war machine is with the commercial sector and contemporary lifestyle. At least in America.
ETA, again, and that wouldn’t even account to the number of displaced workers inside the war machine, be it on commercial or defense sides. It’s one thing to selfishly think of this for myself, it’s another thing to think of the economic and societal impact of millions of simultaneously displaced, highly skilled workers.
Another edit: I wouldn’t be surprised if, incidentally, the economic and social impact of shutting down the war machine and declaring world peace would actually kill more children, just it’d be white kids instead, and indirectly through poverty and hunger instead of drone strikes. The system itself is intrinsically stacked against world peace, at multiple levels. The effects of several thousand families, and in some cases entire communities, being deprived of their primary source of income, simultaneously, would be absolutely devastating.
You obviously struggle with the moral implications of your job and put a lot of thought into justifying it to yourself but I’m sorry, those justification just don’t work for me.
War pays the bill
No doubt about that. That doesn’t make actively participating any better, though. Or that other companies do it too. You know what would really pay the bill? Slavery. Let’s just sell all those unwanted babies as slaves and save a shit load of money for civil science, right? You make it sound like a war machine is a necessary evil in order to get civil science funded which is just absolute delusion stemming from the things you were taught about war, violence and “defense”. Take a look outside the US for an abundance of examples of civil science funded by civil industries or even governments. If Boeing can’t survive without facilitating child murder maybe we should ask ourselves if we really need Boeing that much, no? Jobs disappear all the time for much worse reasons. You imagine the USPS crumbling if it weren’t for the war industry? How do you imagine countries with less than a $766b budget (the majority of countries) receive their mail? Don’t get me wrong but it sounds like the propaganda worked really well on you and you never thought to question it.
World peace is a terrific goal
There’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and world peace.
It’s one thing to selfishly think of this for myself
And it’s a very convenient way to justify putting money above your morals, I imagine.
“But if we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us”
And maybe if you stop giving them reasons to want to kill you they would stop wanting to kill you. Maybe if the US stepped back to think about what they use their “defense” industry for they would actually use it for defense once and save one or two white children. Again, there’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and completely dismantling the war machine and proclaiming world peace, something I have in no way suggested or implied but which you keep bringing up in order to paint my disdain of working for a “defense” company as naïve.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time but please understand that I probably won’t be convinced by the justifications you made for yourself. In the end, I will keep believing that money matters more for you than the morality of your actions because all the justifications aside, this is what your actions lay bare.
I don’t think you quite understand where I’m coming from.
The worker bees don’t matter. I l, as a cog in this machine, am nothing. I can be replaced by another cog of equal skill and nothing will change. My company will survive without me. I stopped trying to justify my position in the war machine a long time ago.
The war machine will exist without my company.
I don’t think my county would exist without my war machine, but not for the immediately apparent reasons of defense, but for the collapse of all the industry that it sustains.
The reason why I think USPS would crumble without Boeing, LM, Raytheon, and all the other aviation primes, is because domestic mail and package logistics are highly reliant on air freight. And all of the major airline manufacturers, and the big component manufacturers of those planes, like the engines, are made by said war machine. Not just for American jets, but also for foreign manufactures like Airbus and Dassault and Embraer.
None of their commercial business could self-sustain at their scale without the war machine. The two are far too entwined.
In fact, I think the only prime that is diversified enough and in aerospace to survive such a shakedown would be GE. The only aviation brand that would survive for sure would probably be Airbus.
This isn’t an accident, but it’s not really an evil conspiracy, either. There has just never in the history of human society has “war drives innovation” rung true than in aviation. To the point now that I don’t think you can have a career in aviation (aside from commercial, and then excluding pilots and mechanics) without selling your soul to the war machine in one way or another.
We came close to a better example with nuclear, but chickened out when we started getting electricity that threatened oil and coal. You want a war machine conspiracy, that’s a much better place to look (and also responsible for even more death and suffering, albeit indirectly, but now we are getting far off topic).
And that’s just the example of aviation. There’s other industries that are heavily subsidized by war…aviation is just the best example.
And also discounting that in the US, the military is about the best path for social mobility out of the lowest rungs.
These are systemic issues that aren’t a cause of the war machine, but need to be fixed and addressed before any attempt at dismantling it can occur, because the machine is the only damn thing holding it all together.
It’s not a matter of me justifying it. It’s a matter of comprehending the massive size, impact, and reliance of its existence. It’s Stockholm syndrome, on a national, if not global, scale. It’s far, far deeper than justifying the death of killing kids. We don’t want the child killers. Nobody wants the child killers. But the child killers are essentially responsible for all of the accomplishments and scientific progress from about 1910 until the present.
Including the very internet upon which we are reading this. ARPAnet. Funded be DARPA, to interconnect research facilities and participating universities with the jntent of enabling communication, sharing access to resources, and being able to diversify the storage of data in a way that it can be retained and retransmitted in the event of war on a self-healing network.
This is not worth mentioning. Everyone knows that you can sell out your values for money and comfort. Most people just aren’t willing to do it for such relatively low benefits.
Worth mentioning that there are well paying, stable jobs in the MIC for the other 99%. I work for a sub (in IT, and spend most of my time on the commercial side of the business) in such a company. While I resent our biggest revenue maker, it does enable the company to fund scientific research and commercial space endeavors.
I wouldn’t call myself a bootlicker, per se, but I do enjoy my job, despite what I’ve started viewing as a necessary evil — the pay and benefits are highly competitive, I’m 98% WFH, layoffs and turnover are rare (there are regularly people retiring who had entered straight from college and worked directly on Apollo missions), the job is challenging and I’m given a long leash.
“I mean, I know my work contributes to some of the worst atrocities of mankind but they give me a lot of money and benefits for forgetting that I actively contribute in facilitating the slaughter of children which makes it easier to swallow. Also I get to work from home a lot! ❤️”
Eh, that may be how you see it.
Personally I’ve been more directly involved in actually helping people and things go to the fricken moon than I have in all of my defense projects, combined. And space is just one of our cool science markets.
I can do defense stuff, I’m authorized to, in a pinch I can (and have), but I would really rather not. Work on that side of the house sucks.
Nobody likes how the sausage is made, but it’s going to get made as long as someone buying it. I’m not eating the sausage. I’m not buying the sausage. I’m having a satisfying job, managing operations at a small pig farm that also develops new cutting-edge cancer medications inside of pig pancreases. Different group of pigs, though.
It’s not so much “how I see it” as it is “how it is” and you don’t seem to deny that.
I understood that you prefer not to work on the child-killing devices the first time. Nonetheless all the other “cool science markets” still help your employer make those child-killing devices.
While the sausage will keep being made, I can actively choose not to be the butcher and I’m having a hard time respecting people gushing about their work on the non-butchering side of the same company.
No, you have it backwards, the child killing devices enable my employer to do the cool science markets.
Revenue from child killing devices and related patents pays for the science research. And as it turns out, a lot of those patents also work really well for the cool life-saving science stuff.
Oh, now I get it, your employer has to facilitate killing children, so they can do cool science stuff! Wow, that’s instantly so much better! The kids will be so happy when they hear that!
Damn, if only somehow could figure out how to do cool science stuff without all the dead children, though. Maybe you could do some cool science stuff on that maybe? Like soonish?
I put an ETA on as you were responding, so I’ll move it here for your convenience.
ETA, this is why I see it as more a necessary evil. War pays the bills. My company is probably pretty unique in that we are not a prime and we put most of our revenue towards private research. We are not unique in how our war revenue gets used to subsidize more humanitarian tech, and I imagine even Boeing or LM wouldn’t be able to keep their lights on with just their commercial businesses, either, or the cost of commercial aviation would be unattainable to most people. And without them I imagine FedEx and UPS would crumble, as would USPS. And then the entire economy after that. Just as one example.
World peace is a terrific goal. But getting there will have a lot of unintended consequences, just due do how ingrained the war machine is with the commercial sector and contemporary lifestyle. At least in America.
ETA, again, and that wouldn’t even account to the number of displaced workers inside the war machine, be it on commercial or defense sides. It’s one thing to selfishly think of this for myself, it’s another thing to think of the economic and societal impact of millions of simultaneously displaced, highly skilled workers.
Another edit: I wouldn’t be surprised if, incidentally, the economic and social impact of shutting down the war machine and declaring world peace would actually kill more children, just it’d be white kids instead, and indirectly through poverty and hunger instead of drone strikes. The system itself is intrinsically stacked against world peace, at multiple levels. The effects of several thousand families, and in some cases entire communities, being deprived of their primary source of income, simultaneously, would be absolutely devastating.
You obviously struggle with the moral implications of your job and put a lot of thought into justifying it to yourself but I’m sorry, those justification just don’t work for me.
No doubt about that. That doesn’t make actively participating any better, though. Or that other companies do it too. You know what would really pay the bill? Slavery. Let’s just sell all those unwanted babies as slaves and save a shit load of money for civil science, right? You make it sound like a war machine is a necessary evil in order to get civil science funded which is just absolute delusion stemming from the things you were taught about war, violence and “defense”. Take a look outside the US for an abundance of examples of civil science funded by civil industries or even governments. If Boeing can’t survive without facilitating child murder maybe we should ask ourselves if we really need Boeing that much, no? Jobs disappear all the time for much worse reasons. You imagine the USPS crumbling if it weren’t for the war industry? How do you imagine countries with less than a $766b budget (the majority of countries) receive their mail? Don’t get me wrong but it sounds like the propaganda worked really well on you and you never thought to question it.
There’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and world peace.
And it’s a very convenient way to justify putting money above your morals, I imagine.
And maybe if you stop giving them reasons to want to kill you they would stop wanting to kill you. Maybe if the US stepped back to think about what they use their “defense” industry for they would actually use it for defense once and save one or two white children. Again, there’s a whole spectrum between actively participating in the war machine and completely dismantling the war machine and proclaiming world peace, something I have in no way suggested or implied but which you keep bringing up in order to paint my disdain of working for a “defense” company as naïve.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time but please understand that I probably won’t be convinced by the justifications you made for yourself. In the end, I will keep believing that money matters more for you than the morality of your actions because all the justifications aside, this is what your actions lay bare.
I don’t think you quite understand where I’m coming from.
The worker bees don’t matter. I l, as a cog in this machine, am nothing. I can be replaced by another cog of equal skill and nothing will change. My company will survive without me. I stopped trying to justify my position in the war machine a long time ago.
The war machine will exist without my company.
I don’t think my county would exist without my war machine, but not for the immediately apparent reasons of defense, but for the collapse of all the industry that it sustains.
The reason why I think USPS would crumble without Boeing, LM, Raytheon, and all the other aviation primes, is because domestic mail and package logistics are highly reliant on air freight. And all of the major airline manufacturers, and the big component manufacturers of those planes, like the engines, are made by said war machine. Not just for American jets, but also for foreign manufactures like Airbus and Dassault and Embraer.
None of their commercial business could self-sustain at their scale without the war machine. The two are far too entwined.
In fact, I think the only prime that is diversified enough and in aerospace to survive such a shakedown would be GE. The only aviation brand that would survive for sure would probably be Airbus.
This isn’t an accident, but it’s not really an evil conspiracy, either. There has just never in the history of human society has “war drives innovation” rung true than in aviation. To the point now that I don’t think you can have a career in aviation (aside from commercial, and then excluding pilots and mechanics) without selling your soul to the war machine in one way or another.
This table gives a clear example of just how entwined the two are, namely the “% of Total Revenue from Defense” column: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors
We came close to a better example with nuclear, but chickened out when we started getting electricity that threatened oil and coal. You want a war machine conspiracy, that’s a much better place to look (and also responsible for even more death and suffering, albeit indirectly, but now we are getting far off topic).
And that’s just the example of aviation. There’s other industries that are heavily subsidized by war…aviation is just the best example.
And also discounting that in the US, the military is about the best path for social mobility out of the lowest rungs.
These are systemic issues that aren’t a cause of the war machine, but need to be fixed and addressed before any attempt at dismantling it can occur, because the machine is the only damn thing holding it all together.
It’s not a matter of me justifying it. It’s a matter of comprehending the massive size, impact, and reliance of its existence. It’s Stockholm syndrome, on a national, if not global, scale. It’s far, far deeper than justifying the death of killing kids. We don’t want the child killers. Nobody wants the child killers. But the child killers are essentially responsible for all of the accomplishments and scientific progress from about 1910 until the present.
Including the very internet upon which we are reading this. ARPAnet. Funded be DARPA, to interconnect research facilities and participating universities with the jntent of enabling communication, sharing access to resources, and being able to diversify the storage of data in a way that it can be retained and retransmitted in the event of war on a self-healing network.
This is not worth mentioning. Everyone knows that you can sell out your values for money and comfort. Most people just aren’t willing to do it for such relatively low benefits.
Did they at least give you a nice dog collar for that leash?
Why not call yourself a bootlicker? I’m sure many would.