Tough issue. In the real world you cannot have zero defense.
But US does seem to have too much, and often the wrong stuff, and very frequently uses it inappropriately.
A binary response seems inappropriate.
If [insert company name here] doesn't provide their services to military, somebody else will.
If no one in private sector will provide those services, then the Department of Defense gets a bigger budget and a new division.
After uni I stayed out of the defence sector because of moral objections, which most of my friends went into and made lots more money than me.
I think there are two sides to the argument though. Not having defence capability leads to your being easy pickings of the bad guys. Tibet is the classic example of that. The Dalai Lama is absolutely against any kind of violence, but the consequence of that has been about two million of his people slaughtered. Successfully fighting the Red Army invasion would arguably have cost a lot less lives than allowing the invaders in. That raises the moral question, is nonviolence necessarily an altruistic approach if it ultimately leads to more deaths than a justifiable act of self-defence?
The opposite side of the coin is the situation which led to WW1, with European countries placing a kind of machismo value on an armed forces career, and all of them just raring to test out their oversized armies in a real scrap. When the opportunity arose.. all hell broke loose.
Another kind of scenario, the Cold War arms race between the USSR and USA was a situation created largely by the weapons manufacturers in both countries, who put scare stories at their respective governments to the effect that they were likely to be invaded (or wiped out) if more money was not spent on arms. They may even have been in cahoots with each other over this, since every escalation benefited both armaments industries. The end result was Russia going bankrupt, which caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering.
So, a question with no single answer.
I agree with your sentiments but the USSR went bankrupt because of years of poor economic policy. The government isolated themselves from most of the world, took over all industry and fixed the prices of everything, completely eliminating competition and 'solved' unemployment by giving people jobs to do which were nothing. I've been told that at one point bread was cheaper than grain, so farmers fed it to their livestock! No wonder the whole thing toppled.
I agree with your sentiments but the USSR went bankrupt because of years of poor economic policy. The government isolated themselves from most of the world, took over all industry and fixed the prices of everything, completely eliminating competition and 'solved' unemployment by giving people jobs to do which were nothing. I've been told that at one point bread was cheaper than grain, so farmers fed it to their livestock! No wonder the whole thing toppled.After years working in western companies with a large number of completely unnecessary people employed, its quite hard to imagine another society that could bloat the employment numbers even more.
I remember travelling to Ukraine and many of the older people loved the old days when they could play cards and drink vodka whilst getting paid for it.
The end result was Russia going bankrupt, which caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering.
]I agree with your sentiments but the USSR went bankrupt because of years of poor economic policy.
I think there are two sides to the argument though. Not having defence capability leads to your being easy pickings of the bad guys. Tibet is the classic example of that. The Dalai Lama is absolutely against any kind of violence, but the consequence of that has been about two million of his people slaughtered. Successfully fighting the Red Army invasion would arguably have cost a lot less lives than allowing the invaders in. That raises the moral question, is nonviolence necessarily an altruistic approach if it ultimately leads to more deaths than a justifiable act of self-defence?
The drug dealer's defense: " If I don't supply heroin to my users, someone else will..."
The drug dealer's defense: " If I don't supply heroin to my users, someone else will..."
You seem to imply that that statement isn't true.
You can wish for everyone to be fluffy bunnies all you want, but there will always be foxes, and it only takes one.
The drug dealer's defense: " If I don't supply heroin to my users, someone else will..."
You seem to imply that that statement isn't true.
Antiwar Movement Spreads among Tech Workers
They are conflating War vs Defense activities/spending. War is bad, but defense projects are not necessarily bad.
Perhaps some what selfishly as a technology loving person, I think defense dollar is a plus. The defense dollar increase will drive technology development and particularly significant would be for fields such as EE, computer science, AI, and computer programming.
Case and point, EMALS - linear electric motor technology used to launch aircraft off carriers. (I am ignoring electric rail guns since I read somewhere that USA defense is looking more towards lasers). Per Wikipedia, EMALS cost US Navy over $13 billion. The linear motor advancement that came out of EMALS development will benefit many many other industries.
For technology-creating nations, I can imagine that they would not want their defense to rely on imported technologies. So, more of those nations would prefer/need their own EE/AI industries. Associating with that would be computer science and programming. You would not want your defense-assets to be running firmware written by a nation you may end up elbowing with, so developing a domestic supply of programming skill would be necessary.
So, defense spending is all in all very positive for manufacturers and workers in the tech industries. So much so that I believe we (USA) would likely have a resurgence in domestic EE, telecom equipment, AI, manufacturing and development. Same, or even more so for computer/MCU/programming as I am sure USA defense would not like the idea of any tele-com infrastructure running off a chip with firmware written by a non-USA firm.
Tough issue. In the real world you cannot have zero defense. But US does seem to have too much, and often the wrong stuff, and very frequently uses it inappropriately.
A binary response seems inappropriate.