[HN Gopher] U.S. military-run slot machines earn $100M a year fr...
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U.S. military-run slot machines earn $100M a year from service
members
Author : geox
Score : 334 points
Date : 2023-01-18 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| glandium wrote:
| Tangentially, I recently learned that Sega (of games, consoles,
| Sonic fame), started as a slot/amusement machines selling
| business for the US military bases in Hawaii and later Japan, and
| that the name, Sega, is derived from its original name: "Service
| Games".
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I was surprised by this article for this very reason. Sega's
| predecessor started as an American company that had business in
| slot machines on military bases in Hawaii, and when slot
| machines were banned in the US, it bought them up and moved to
| Japan to American bases in Japan. "Moved" is really simplifying
| things, there were mergers and split-ups and re-mergers along
| the way. But in short it became a Japanese company run by
| Americans in the military sphere and in the 2000s was merged
| with Sammy, a pachinko machine company.[1]
|
| So Sega started with, and ended up back as a slot machine
| company.
|
| [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-
| his...
| mouse_ wrote:
| That's amazing, I never knew.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I can understand troops wanting to have something to do and the
| military providing it...but maybe just go with games that have
| odds that are more even and put the money collected into military
| pensions? I can see the argument that troops will maybe go stir-
| crazy or grow homesick without some activities, and you can't
| have games that remove all possibility to lose (that's not fun)
| so there has to be a happy medium. Even if they invest in video
| games, or table games that have less house favoritism. Then
| putting the money into a pension fund or similar so, even though
| you -can- lose, you will benefit everyone when you do.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| From reading WW II and earlier books: service members' time-
| honored custom is playing poker. Richard Nixon was reputedly an
| excellent poker player.
|
| I think I read that the Roman legions played dice games, using
| knuckle bones from animals.
| [deleted]
| green-salt wrote:
| At least in ancient times back in 2004, while I was on Nellis AFB
| (North Las Vegas, NV) a large part of people stationed there
| would just go down to the strip or downtown. I remember a number
| of orientation briefings about addiction counseling but they took
| on a different tone being in Las Vegas.
| pessimizer wrote:
| _Congress barely dents scourge of hunger in military_
|
| > Fully 24 percent of active-duty servicemembers recently
| experienced "low food security," meaning they sometimes lacked
| quality meals, according to the latest Pentagon survey of troops
| in late 2020 and early 2021 -- before the recent inflation surge.
| Of those, 10 percent periodically experienced "very low food
| security," meaning they sometimes ate less at mealtime, missed
| meals entirely or lost weight due to inadequate food intake in
| the previous year.
|
| > Those percentages suggest that 286,800 active-duty
| servicemembers have had some level of food insecurity of late,
| and nearly 120,000 of them have sometimes gone hungry recently
| due to a lack of food, according to senators on the Armed
| Services Committee. The figures do not count family members of
| those active-duty personnel. Nor are reservists and their family
| members included in the tally.
|
| https://rollcall.com/2023/01/13/congress-barely-dents-scourg...
| [deleted]
| benlower wrote:
| that's enough money to give everyone in the USA a million
| dollars!
| Uninen wrote:
| Here in Finland slot machines (and most types of legalized
| gambling) are controller by a government-owned nonprofit that
| distributes the revenue to various charities. I think that's the
| best way to run these kind of things if they need to exist.
| umvi wrote:
| > Here in Finland slot machines (and most types of legalized
| gambling) are controller by a government-owned nonprofit that
| distributes the revenue to various charities. I think that's
| the best way to run these kind of things if they need to exist.
|
| US state governments use the "it's for a good cause"
| justification all the time as well. But... it's still addictive
| and exploitive of vulnerable populations (especially lotto)
| vintermann wrote:
| For a short while, Norway had extremely liberal slot machine
| laws. They were in every supermarket, post office, anywhere.
| There was (and is) a state-run gambling monopoly, but slot
| machines weren't covered by it - they were considered a
| continuation of Payazzo games, a form of very-low stakes skill-
| based gambling machines that charities had long been allowed to
| operate. So charities got to operate slot machines.
|
| Some may say the charities got just as addicted as the
| gamblers. I remember in particular in a TV debate, where
| Thorvald Stoltenberg, respected former minister and president
| of the Norwegian Red Cross, declared that although he realized
| the harm they caused, he had decided to defend slot machines
| "no matter what" because they were such an important income
| source for his organization. He said it as if it was some
| selfless commitment.
|
| Eventually, though, gambling addiction became a too big and
| obvious problem to ignore, and the gambling monopoly took over,
| sharply reducing the numbers of machines and (supposedly)
| making them less aggressive. There were some concessions to the
| charities that lost income as a result of it (which, as I
| recall, screwed over the few charities that had taken a
| principled stand against slot machines).
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| What's the thought process as to why they exist? What would
| actually happen if the government mandated that they were
| illegal to operate?
|
| In australia, slot machines are controlled by organisations
| which are effectively white collar gangsters. The NSW
| organisation is currently suing an ex-employee who worked in
| anti-corruption and subsequently whistle-blew on unactioned
| corruption reports, while he's on his deathbed with terminal
| cancer.
| muti wrote:
| In New Zealand you will find slot machines in many pubs and
| hotels, they are very accessible to the public. They are also
| operated by charitable foundations and claim they do a net good
| by donating the profits to the community.
|
| I despise the model just like lotteries, it's a regressive tax
| and the lions share of profit comes from those with addictions.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| In a lot of US states, lottery proceeds go to education. The
| problem, of course, is that dollars and euros are fungible, and
| governments can and do reduce the tax contributions to
| education commensurately.
| kube-system wrote:
| Sort of. It really depends. Education funding in the US often
| comes from several entirely independent sources, with
| differing constituents, differing motivations, and various
| rules on allocations. It's not like it's one big bucket with
| one entity that has the ultimate ability to reallocate.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yeah, it is pretty complex and differs heavily by state. I
| know that in GA, for example, lottery proceeds go towards
| HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship fund for college students
| (which I am immensely grateful for, as it funded most of my
| own college education). Though, sadly, I've been reading
| over the past few years that it is on its way to drying out
| :(
| abadger9 wrote:
| I've been to finland a few times, it's crazy to see people play
| slots at the front/back of the grocery story at 1 pm.
| bena wrote:
| This is a complicated problem. I'm sure there are plenty of
| service members who occasion the slot rooms and fully understand
| what they're getting into.
|
| And why shouldn't our service members enjoy some of the things
| they'd be able to at home when possible?
|
| But yeah, it's very bad optics to essentially take their paycheck
| back. But one of the reasons they are playing the slots are to
| win money. So if you make it cash neutral, it's really pointless.
|
| And you could instead just set up a free-play arcade. Or even a
| quarter to help with maintenance costs. But people look at video
| games and gambling differently. One is for children and one is
| for adults.
|
| But then again, these people signed up to be told what to do,
| what to eat, etc. I would say it's fair that the military could
| say that gambling while enlisted is not allowed and shut down the
| slot rooms.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >I would say it's fair that the military could say that
| gambling while enlisted is not allowed and shut down the slot
| rooms.
|
| Then you'd have the right wing whining about how "woke" the
| military is with their cancel culture, shutting down gambling
| the same way they shut down homophobia and sexism and racism by
| integrating and ordering enlisted people to suck it up and
| follow the military orders and regulations they signed up to
| follow.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Right wing typically doesn't support gambling, so getting rid
| of it would be a good thing to them.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Of course they do. They are as much proponents of state
| funded lotteries as anyone else.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Ok.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Well that's a change. When I served the military would actively
| fight addiction problems, sometimes to an extreme. As an example
| one of the people I served with had a drinking problem. He was
| put in the brig and had to crawl on all fours pushing a beer can
| around the complex with his nose all day, every day. This was
| extreme but so was his BAC. The alternate option I heard a couple
| colonels arguing for was a court-martial and dishonorable
| discharge.
|
| I can see the benefit to keeping the gambling addiction losses
| in-house but encouraging money problems and then punishing people
| for said money problems seems a bit like an artificially created
| circular problem.
|
| MWR programs are supposed to be beneficial, not detrimental. Get
| them some video game consoles. Buy them all VR setups and require
| {n} hours of physically demanding games and game scores. It's
| probably less cost than the fallout from gambling addiction. VR
| combat training rigs, like ARMA on steroids but actually causes
| pain when you get hit. Surely someone here in the HN world could
| fund such a thing. Provide time-off and money to the top tier
| contestants of the VR simulators.
|
| Oh and don't limit this to combat simulation. Implement medical
| training, surgical training, electrical training, construction,
| military vehicle repair, flight training like X-plane on
| steroids, space flight training like Avorion on steroids, recce
| training, weapon repair training, etc... Let them explore skill-
| sets they and the military were unaware they had.
| ericmay wrote:
| My favorite was if you got put in the drunk tank our 1SG would
| go pick you up and make you run back to the barracks (assuming
| you didn't do anything besides just be drunk).
|
| It would be cool to see makerspaces or something similar on
| bases. I recall there were mechanic shops (I could be
| misremembering) where you could bring your car to work on it
| and borrow tools. With tools now you could create some hiking
| clubs and stuff too.
|
| Doing this stuff isn't easy though and I know when I was
| finished with duty and finished working out for the second time
| that day I really didn't have energy to do much except play
| video games and knock back a few beers. Creating new programs,
| clubs, initiatives are hard. And in the military often times
| you have turnover on the bases so it's hard to maintain
| continuity even when someone creates something. If it were up
| to me I'd have a cadre of 3-10 individuals who ran, funded,
| maintained clubs and programs for soldiers. I'll not be
| surprised if I find out that this already exists either lol.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Bases are getting makerspaces; I discovered that Miramar has
| one in the base library a couple of months ago! They are
| rolling them out as they get funding.
| ericmay wrote:
| That's really cool and good to hear. Thank you
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _He was put in the brig and had to crawl on all fours pushing a
| beer can around the complex with his nose all day, every day._
|
| Damn if only I could have done that to my parents.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's about 7 cents out of every $1000 of payroll, if I did the
| math right.
|
| (seems that wages are about $140 billion a year)
|
| Of course the average being tiny doesn't mean it isn't causing
| problems for people that gamble way more than the average.
| gowld wrote:
| Did you remember to only count payroll from the the non-
| domestic bases that have slot machines?
| zyang wrote:
| Maybe the military doesn't really care about the wellbeing of
| the troops as long as it doesn't affect their effectiveness...?
| ericmay wrote:
| Like any large organization, the organization does care but
| sometimes some of the managers don't care as much or don't do
| a good job. The military brass definitely cares about and
| understands this based on my experience. It's just hard to
| pull off.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| If so, that's a big change from my time. Perhaps some
| generals need to be reallocated to Antarctica for an extended
| tour of duty. Congress ultimately controls purse strings, but
| Generals can make a phone call and put a stop to anything.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Anyone with a clearance will specifically be looked at for
| gambling. Gamblers can eventually be leveraged. Considering
| that the military is one of the fattest pipelines for
| clearance workers, it'd be a good idea to tamp down on this.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Not just gambling. Any debt.
|
| I worked at a place that sold expensive things. Sold a
| thing to a guy. Had two guys show up a couple days latter
| to talk about exactly how he financed thing and etc. Turns
| out he was an just a middling engineer on the F-35 program,
| but they confirmed everything he told them using us.
| shanebellone wrote:
| I wanted to confirm that significant debt can preclude
| someone from acquiring a security clearance. Significant
| new debt can be reason to rescind an active clearance
| too.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Bankruptcy & poor finances is the #1 reason for a
| clearance application to be rejected.
|
| Shows a pattern of poor judgement, and makes the
| applicant way, way more likely to be bribed or
| blackmailed.
|
| Bankruptcy also has a court angle, which means you can,
| with an amount of effort that's trivial for large,
| nation-state intelligence orgs, find a list of all recent
| bankruptcy cases in, say, Southern Maryland or Northern
| Virginia. The CI types lose a lot of sleep over this
| stuff.
| watwut wrote:
| Ok, but isn't there a rather large amount of personel who
| do basic jobs and won't do anything special nor won't move
| up the ranks? 18-23 years old young men that enter and
| leave and that is it. As in, there is huge amount of other
| people too.
| lordfrito wrote:
| So what? Can someone explain what this article is trying to get
| me outraged at?
|
| State lotteries collect ~$30 billion in revenue a year. If we're
| supposed to be outraged that the government profits from
| gambling, shouldn't we talk about that first?
|
| Or is this just another driveby article taking potshots at the US
| military?
|
| Someone please explain how a right-thinking person is supposed to
| read this. There's an axe being ground here, not sure what it is.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| Some people believe that gambling is immoral, and that hosting
| slot machines or other gambling games is exploitative.
|
| Some people are not necessarily opposed to gambling, but
| strongly believe the government should take care of military
| personnel. To them, this may be an example of the government
| failing to provide more wholesome (or at the very least, less
| expensive) activities.
|
| Some people are outraged by the amount of money the government
| spends on the military. To them, this may be an example of the
| government collecting yet more money from enlisted personnel
| rather than using their extensive budget to properly fund the
| "morale, welfare, and recreation" programs.
|
| I suspect the article's intent is to highlight the latter two
| points. Personally I'm not sure how to feel about it. While I
| am not opposed to gambling, I do think we need support for
| managing addictions (including gambling addictions).
| [deleted]
| risingsubmarine wrote:
| Reminds me of that line in Band of Brothers "Never put yourself
| in a position where you can take from these men".
| bastard_op wrote:
| Talk about government recycling programs, that's almost like
| money laundering when what they pay servicemen just comes right
| back in the form of captive gambling addicts.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, and they mark up exchange prices for MWR (in the name of not
| competing with off-base businesses).
| josh_fyi wrote:
| They are military. They signed up to live under military
| discipline. So how about imposing on them the discipline of not
| gambling, at least on base? The Navy has strict rules banning
| alcohol on ship: strict rules are not impossible
| metaphor wrote:
| > _So how about imposing on them the discipline of not
| gambling, at least on base?_
|
| When I wore the uniform, it was handled indirectly with
| constant reminders that failing to satisfy debt obligations is
| punishable by Article 134 of the UCMJ.
|
| Some places need extra reminders and discipline though, e.g.
| Nellis AFB (Las Vegas, NV) and Keesler AFB (Biloxi, MS) are two
| bases I'm familiar with that come to mind.
| mhardcastle wrote:
| If the goal is providing entertainment, why not just adjust the
| payout to be 0 profit?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Why should we be surprised that the United States military takes
| advantage of the foolishness of people who gamble? Many of the
| various states likewise profit from their least wise citizens by
| running lotteries. It wouldn't be a stretch to argue that
| government as a whole is just that: gaining power and money at
| the expense of everyone you can fool into going along with it.
|
| And "services that contribute to resiliency, retention, readiness
| and quality of life," indeed!
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The proceeds go right back into paying for other recreational
| facilities: sounds ok to me. Maybe have a cap of how much you can
| spend at the casino per period of time?
| peishang wrote:
| _" Slots are often found on bases where there is precious little
| to do, like Diego Garcia - a 12-sq.-mile island in the Indian
| Ocean with a population of just over 4,000 people - where the
| Navy runs 52 slot machines"_
|
| Talk about a captive audience rife for exploitation.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I've been to DG for about a month when I was in the USAF. It
| was the end of 1995 and the Internet had just reached it, which
| meant I at least had early Internet web access in such a remote
| location, _for free_ , which was _amazing_.
|
| But most of that month was admittedly spent waiting for work,
| reading Memnoch the Devil (RIP Anne Rice), drinking really
| cheap beer, playing pool and surfing the early Internet (there
| was possibly some Scorched Earth in there, too!)
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| The officers need a new golf course!
| jxramos wrote:
| > studies show these slot machines save $250M a year against
| alternative more expensive forms of entertainment.
|
| lol
| undersuit wrote:
| Why are you laughing. That's $250M in entertainment that
| doesn't need to be shipped to a military base. Assuming it
| isn't all downloadable media that's a lot of physical goods
| that doesn't need to be inspected, shipped, and inspected to
| remote Military bases.
|
| And if you're running the gambling halls it's going to be a
| lot harder for a soldier to get into a compromising amount of
| debt.
|
| Besides the $100M a year in "profit" I'd wager these machines
| generate even more in cost savings.
| jxramos wrote:
| I mostly posited it as a joke for winking at the fictitious
| studies, but yah the comparative cost to alternatives may
| be not too shabby after all. "Compared to what" is often a
| question left as an afterthought. I try to think of
| alternatives right off the bat. But once you start diluting
| a story against reasonable alternatives and see where a
| decision landed in the valley of options the story loses
| some of its outrage edge.
| glitchc wrote:
| Less funny if you think about gambling beating drugs as a go-
| to form of entertainment.
| sixothree wrote:
| And they use that money to pay for golf courses somewhere
| nicer? I'm getting a bit grossed out by that thought.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| It sounds like heaven. I would read, go for runs and hang out
| with my buds.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Sounds like Heaven, indeed: from the _Forever War_.
| kart23 wrote:
| I mean, its also an atoll in paradise. Theres definitely plenty
| to do there, the navy for some reason has decided to ban
| surfing and instead put in slot machines.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| sounds like someone that's never taken that tropical
| sabbatical
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Huh, I had no idea. https://wavelengthmag.com/curious-case-
| diego-garcia/
|
| I'm guessing surfing risks injuring US military... assets.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Military bases, especially in the austere / remote
| environments where some of them are, have a few differences
| from most civilian areas.
|
| - Specialized personnel, who are required to fulfill the
| base's mission
|
| - Substantial logistical costs for additional personnel or
| materiel
|
| - Limited medical facilities, often lacking in higher
| standards of care, supplies, and with substantial
| evacuation distances
|
| Since Diego Garcia is a major airbase, some of these are
| lessened, but they still all apply.
|
| If someone is injured, they have to be rotated out and
| someone with the same specialized training rotated in. If
| something is needed (say, medical supplies), they have to
| be flown or shipped thousands of miles.
|
| Each doctor/nurse/piece of medical equipment thus has a
| logistics footprint several times what a mainland one
| would. Which means a bare minimum medical presence.
|
| Which means if something _really_ bad happens (major trauma
| from a shark attack), someone is probably dying.
|
| Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for recreational
| purposes seems fair.
|
| At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote
| environment with the military, you're there to serve the
| mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :(
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Which means if something really bad happens (major
| trauma from a shark attack), someone is probably dying.
|
| > Weighed against that... a ban on surfing for
| recreational purposes seems fair.
|
| > At the end of the day, when you're deployed in a remote
| environment with the military, you're there to serve the
| mission. Fun comes secondary, or not at all. :(
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the risk of shark attack to
| surfers there is lower than the risk of death due to
| basically every other activity on the base. There are
| maybe a dozen deaths (not just including surfers) due to
| sharks each year in the whole world. Banning surfing due
| to the risk of shark attack is totally illogical. Surfers
| are so much more likely to injure themselves or die in
| any number of other ways surfing. The risk of shark
| attacks just doesn't even enter the conversation.
|
| I'd be interested to hear the reasoning on the ban. If it
| really is due to shark attacks, the military might
| consider getting someone more rational to make those
| decisions at the base.
| jjulius wrote:
| I mean, even the article suggests that if the military
| reversed course and allowed surfing, there may not be as
| many people jumping at the opportunity as OP suggests. It
| says that military personnel have smuggled surfboards and
| failed to get many other folk interested in joining them
| over the course of a whole year:
|
| >Somehow, he'd managed to smuggle his 8'6 pintail out there
| (we'd find this tricky to believe were it not for the
| images featured in the original article above) and he spent
| his year finding fun down the line tubes to jam it into.
| _Unfortunately for Tom, he wasn't able to coax many mates
| out into the lineup to join him, largely due to the
| abundance of hazards that lurk between the fast-breaking
| waves and the shallow coral reefs, including an array of
| hungry sharks, sting-rays, and stonefish. And of course,
| the the limited medical facilities on land should you come
| to blows with any of them._
|
| And just because something's "in paradise" doesn't mean
| there's plenty to do, and simply suggesting a sport that
| not everyone's into doesn't really support that assertion.
| Paradise can be quite uneventful, even if it's still
| paradise.
| hgsgm wrote:
| That quote smells like BS. There are a lot of people who
| don't surf, and those reasons aren't why.
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| What's the punishment for ignoring the ban? Fear of that
| may dominate the reasoning of those who declined to join
| him.
| packetslave wrote:
| Ignoring orders in the military is a good way to end up
| in prison.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Best case? Non-judicial punishment of some sort, e.g.
| "captain's mast" or the like. Forfeiture of pay,
| additional duty, minor imprisonment, changes to your
| rations, etc.
|
| In a highly secured, remote base it's totally possible
| you get court-martialed, busted down in rank (aka losing
| out in monthly pay and bennies), or even catch a bad
| conduct discharge or something.
| watwut wrote:
| I never tried surfing, so I would 100% not risked
| punishment to surf. That just seems dumb.
|
| My point here is that if something is not allowed, you
| need a lot more to be willing to try it.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| What percentage of Navy enlisted in the lower E-numbers
| have _ever_ surfed, at all, in their whole lives? Reads
| like this would be a pretty shitty place to learn, so I
| can see why people 'd balk at the notion, even without
| the risk of punishment.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You can play slot machines for more hours than you can surf -
| and not only that, but you can do it in more types of weather
| with a lower risk of injury.
|
| Plenty to do there if you are there for a week. 6 months in,
| those things aren't nearly as neat and you will probably need
| some other entertainment. Slots wouldn't have been my first
| (or 10th) choice to offer folks, though.
| passwordoops wrote:
| After getting a dream job on a paradise island, I can tell
| you how fast it takes to do everything there is to do on that
| island before the isolation sets in.
|
| I was told the week I landed "there's two type of people:
| those who immediately fall in love and never leave. Then
| there's the ones who get island fever after 6 months and
| never come back... You won't find too many mainlanders who
| have lived here for very long"
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I know a guy whose dream was to retire to Maui. He would go
| on & on about how he just didn't want to come home when he
| was vacationing there.
|
| A few years after moving there, he's back in the States.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| [dead]
| hgsgm wrote:
| Sure, but why don't slot machines get boring?
| paulcole wrote:
| That's like asking "Why doesn't it hurt when a tick
| latches onto your leg and starts sucking blood?"
|
| They've been designed (evolved) for a purpose.
|
| Pulling a lever/pushing a button should get boring. Slots
| are designed to not be boring while they bleed you dry.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because the human brain is bad at probability and
| susceptible to hacking.
|
| And on the other like-a-fox hand, the military does have
| a _strong_ incentive to identify individuals susceptible
| to developing gambling addictions.
|
| It's cold, but putting them in close proximity to
| available gambling isn't the worst test...
| nekoashide wrote:
| It's the government, you may as well have another set of
| people observing the test givers as well.
| Adraghast wrote:
| "Addiction By Design" by Natasha Dow Schull is a good
| book to answer this question.
| mickdeek86 wrote:
| I'm reminded of an anecdote I once heard, which I can't
| readily find atm, that in the days of yore when Chicago
| dominated the pinball industry, the same complex also
| dominated the slot machine industry. This business was
| later purchased by Bally's and moved to Las Vegas, where
| it appears the book picks up. Along with the business
| came the statistician whose job it was to make slot
| machines addictive. He later came out of retirement to
| work for Tinder. Don't really know if that last part is
| true, maybe someone here does.
| jxf wrote:
| Because slot machines are synthetic dopamine generators
| and humans have thousands of years of evolution tweaking
| us to favor dopamine-generating activities.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Because they're designed to be addictive.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I was told the week I landed "there's two type of
| people_
|
| Same when you live somewhere remote like the Yukon or
| smaller places in Alaska. People won't even really
| associate with you until you've been there a full 12 months
| because they don't want to invest time in someone that is
| likely to just leave anyway.
|
| -48C (-55F) is a hell of a thing, but the lack of sunlight
| I personally found much, much harder.
|
| The wonderful part though is that virtually nobody lives
| there that doesn't love it, because if you don't love it,
| you leave. That means the people that stay are passionate
| about it, and do every possible activity all the time -
| more so in the dead of winter!
|
| (I stayed 4 years, miss the place intensely)
| mickdeek86 wrote:
| I'm right now sat on a comparably remote island in the
| Alaska fishery, relatively new here. I've always
| romanticized the sea, landlubber as I am, and after a few
| months here, I went to Waikiki for vacation and - hated
| it. I couldn't leave soon enough. Too much happiness. The
| people here have mostly been here for many years, and
| will remember someone they worked on a boat with for a
| few weeks in the 80s or what-have-you. I have time to
| read, be left alone when I want to be, grab a beer off-
| site. I can see why healthy people would go insane, and
| why insane people would go healthy.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Islands are expensive. It's hard to get stuff, and hard to
| get places. If I want to jump in a car and go 2 hours in
| any direction I can, and there is probably something for me
| to do there. Ain't so in the island. Ditto for job options.
|
| You hit the beaches. Hang out. Get sunburned. Hit a few of
| the in-town stuff; they're played out after 3 months and
| you're bored. More folks rotate through so there is the
| novelty of banging the tourists and new-bloods, but either
| they (or you) are probably departing soon so it's hard to
| make any real connections, romantic or otherwise.
| devin wrote:
| "Island fever" is a very real thing. I once strongly
| considering moving to a tiny island and after talking to a
| number of friendly locals I got the sense that _many_
| people love the idea of moving there, but it's definitely a
| life that does not work for everyone. The number of stories
| they had about people moving there and being gone within a
| year was way more than I suspected.
| jeltz wrote:
| I love swimming so I am sure I will have some fun but atoll
| in paradise sounds like a place with not much to do, at least
| not compared to a major city like where I live. And I can
| swim here too during the summers.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It may have just been his own spin on it but I used to read
| a lot of this world-traveller Russian blogger's low-
| commentary (mostly just strings of photos with short
| captions) posts, and was surprised at how seemingly _every_
| truly-remote, small, island "paradise" he visited came off
| as hellishly dull and absolutely covered in trash (every
| single one of them seemed to have a severe problem with
| trash disposal, to the point that there were small de-facto
| open landfills evidently around every corner and in every
| cranny when out in the wilder areas... which actually made
| a lot of sense when I started to think about it, but was
| just something I'd never considered before)
|
| Dude completely broke me of my childhood desire to go to
| see every little middle-of-nowhere island I could find on
| the globe. But did make me way more interested in visiting
| Ethiopia, so, there's that.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Had a co-worker who was stationed there back in his Air Force
| days. He said one day there was a fire. It was nothing major,
| but as a safety precaution until it was put out (in case it
| reached the fuel tanks) they had to evacuate a safe distance
| from the base, and the only safe distance meant standing out in
| the shallows on the beach.
| [deleted]
| runnerup wrote:
| It would be somewhat less objectionable if the "house" didn't
| take a cut. There's no good reason for the military to profit
| off this when they could offer the "entertainment" for free.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| The way I read it the military isn't taking that money to buy
| guns or tanks or whatever - it's the relatively piddly MWR
| (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) groups that are profiting,
| and then using the profits for other MWR activities. From the
| article:
|
| > A Pentagon report in the early 2000s claimed that without
| the slot machines, the MWR groups would not be able to afford
| other amenities for military members such as golf courses and
| family activity centers. DOD spokeswoman Cmdr. Nicole
| Schwegman echoed that argument, telling NPR the machines
| "contribute significantly to the non-appropriated fund and
| many other recreation and entertainment overseas programs."
|
| The military base I've lived near had plenty of such
| activities - adult sports leagues, an auto skills center,
| bowling alley, etc. I guess it might not be as ideal as every
| such activity being self-sustaining in terms of costs, but it
| doesn't really seem like a scandal for all of the MWR income
| to go into a big MWR pot to be spent on various activities.
| runnerup wrote:
| It's the least objectionable place for the money to go but
| that's actually rather shrewd. I assume that if the
| military did not pay for those creature comforts that
| morale would suffer and operational readiness /
| effectiveness would be reduced.
|
| If foreign bases don't have fun things to do then maybe
| younger siblings won't enlist without more expensive
| bonuses. Or maybe the unmotivated soldiers won't go the
| extra mile while maintaining vehicles. Or the infantry will
| leave the boring-ass base and fraternize at popular
| military "companion" bars and come back with STDs and get
| into fights with locals, losing some of the military's
| license to operate bases as freely in that nation.
|
| The military would have to spend some of this money anyways
| if it wasn't coming out of the soldiers own pockets.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> they could offer the "entertainment" for free_
|
| But free slot machines aren't "entertaining" though. People
| get addicted to slot machines, and other forms of gambling,
| because they make you put skin in the game and so your
| brain's chemistry goes all over the place when you win or
| loose giving you various highs. You don't get such highs when
| everything is free and you have no skin in the game. It gets
| boring instantly. But once you put your hard earned cash in,
| then it gets interesting.
| jameshart wrote:
| If the payout rate of the machines could be set to pay out
| 100% of the take in prize money, the military would not be
| taking a profit, but the gambling would still be real.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Why not 105%? Keeps people of of trouble. I bet the
| military would rather you sat a Skinner Box than broke
| your leg surfing or leaked military secrets on TikTok.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Wouldn't that make gambling addiction more likely and
| cause problems when they return to civilian life, and try
| to recapture the high?
| runnerup wrote:
| I'm aware. I hope most other HN'ers are aware.
|
| When I said "free" I meant that every dollar taken in
| should be paid out to the gamblers. Not that gamblers would
| use the machines without depositing some money/bet/ante. If
| the government chooses to offer gambling to the servicemen
| it shouldn't result in headlines with eye watering profits
| being skimmed off the top.
|
| At least the old-school rampant gambling in the barracks
| (poker games, scorpion races, etc) usually don't have a
| house cut. Every dollar taken in is paid out.
|
| That would be the minimum ethical requirement here for the
| government.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you know you're getting it all back, what's the point?
| At least the way you word it, it sounds like an equal
| distribution, which means no payout. Even if it's not an
| equal distribution like your example, you're still going
| to have people loose.
|
| The money does go back to the gamblers... and other
| service members and dependents. It's in the form of MWR
| programs. That's why you can get a tennis lesson with a
| pro who has played in the Open for $10, have free access
| to the rec hall, cheap bowling, cheap pool access, hobby
| shop access, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes to
| towards lodging like the Hale Koa, or other services like
| space-a flights.
| runnerup wrote:
| > If you know you're getting it all back, what's the
| point?
|
| I meant to word it like "They could make it so that
| 99.9999% of gamblers lose all their bets, but one gambler
| per year wins $100 million". Just as long as the military
| isn't taking that a % of that money to use lieu of money
| they should have budgeted properly for creature comforts.
| [deleted]
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Can I read books and access computers? Can I break open slot
| machines to learn how to repair them?
|
| If both are yes then that's a pretty interesting place.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| You can bring your own computer but if you want internet
| you'll have to pay obscene amounts of money for dialup
| speeds. I've heard that the UK customs officers also take
| great joy in limiting what kinds of literature and files the
| soldiers are allowed to import. They confiscate anything they
| deem obscene (eg Playboy magazines or a hard drive with porn
| on it) or antisocial (apparently "motorcycle gangs" were a
| hot topic at one point, so be prepared to say goodbye to your
| copy of Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Lack of Internet is even better! it's like a prison without
| the hassle of it. A dream. Well the customs officers are a
| bit of annoying but it's OK.
|
| Oh well, only for soldiers anyway.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Or an audience desperate for some diversion, especially a risk-
| seeking audience.
|
| But no reason the machines can't just pay out 100% and so offer
| risk to people who want to buy it in small doses without making
| money off the troops in aggregate.
|
| Anyways, much better than state run lotteries (which have way
| worse payout odds than slots).
| Justsignedup wrote:
| People really desperately need table top rpgs! If they
| introduce some pathfinder or Warhammer in there oh man the fun
| these members can have. But then it is an _expense_ not a
| _income_.
| oogali wrote:
| Like this? I guess it depends on the base and someone
| stepping up to organize the game.
|
| https://jblm.armymwr.com/calendar/event/75270
|
| https://www.jbmdl.jb.mil/Quick-Links/Get-Connected-Clubs/
| reef84_ wrote:
| Cheaper to go to slot machines!
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| I've been to Diego Garcia. It is boring as hell; about all
| there is to say. We got in trouble for trying to organize an
| expedition to secretly catch and eat some of the coconut
| crabs (which is verboten).
|
| Also played D&D in the service. Most active tabletop gaming
| group I've ever been in too.
|
| Didn't D&D in DG tho.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| > secretly catch and eat some of the coconut crabs (which
| is verboten).
|
| Was this out of environmental concerns / the crabs going
| extinct or was there something more to it?
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| There's no way organizing a secret group to capture and eat
| some sacred monsters doesn't count as D&D.
| isk517 wrote:
| According to my buddy the Canadian Navy is absolutely
| crawling with Warhammer players, apparently being a player
| has been pretty good for their career.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yikes, probably cheaper just to bribe superior officers for
| promotions :-)
| isk517 wrote:
| True, but if you've already spent the money might as well
| choose a career that will at least allow you to tell your
| parents 'See, I told you these plastic models will pay
| off one day.'
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Fair point. That would indeed be priceless.
| runjake wrote:
| These games, along with D&D, were alive and well when I was
| in the military.
| LegitShady wrote:
| or you can get them into 40k and take the rest of their money
| pmarreck wrote:
| this man Warhammers
| orwin wrote:
| In my country, barracks have "open days" (basically a
| weekend, once a year i think) where they would present all
| their clubs and invite external personnel to check out and
| participate (long-term, not only on those two days). I wanted
| to try fencing, so i went, and i finished joining the
| tabletop club (and fencing too). This is what brought me back
| to tabletops.
|
| Then covid, moved to a city without any barracks close by, so
| i couldn't continue, but military definitely have tabletop
| rpgs (and they are very partial with those where battlemaps
| are easy to set up)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That sounds awesome! Which country?
| nacho_weekend wrote:
| Anecdotally, my brother in the Air Force had a pretty regular
| and frequent D&D group in the past 3 years. But I don't know
| how widespread that is.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Very common in all branches, it just differs based on what
| the job is. Mechanics? Probably less likely. Intel? Way
| more likely.
| Wohlf wrote:
| Can confirm it was fairly common in the Marine Corps,
| even some of the grunts and motor transport guys would
| get interested on ship duty. When you're bored as hell
| you'll take anything you can get.
| wyldberry wrote:
| Boredom and creativity go hand in hand. Not necessarily
| good creativity. On my first deployment i chugged a
| bottle of syrup for $50 bucks and gave the corpsman heart
| attacks. It is not fun throwing up syrup for an hour
| after.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >Mechanics? Probably less likely.
|
| Coincidentally, my partner's father was an airplane
| mechanic stationed in Okinawa in the 1980s... and
| apparently played _a lot_ of D &D.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Didn't the Prussian general staff basically invent the idea
| of table top gaming/simulations?
| radicalbyte wrote:
| The Chinese were doing it >2000 years ago - I expect that
| such games were a common tool.
| shanebellone wrote:
| It's almost literally death, jail, or slots.
| realo wrote:
| Presented that way, jail does not look so bad ...
| shmde wrote:
| US has a naval base so near to Indian peninsula?? Damn never
| knew about it. Guess big brother likes to be everywhere.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| So near? Might want to double-check that. Indian ocean's big,
| this isn't terribly close to India.
| treis wrote:
| It's not really near anything. It's in the middle of the
| Indian Ocean ~1,000 miles from any other significant land
| mass.
| pphysch wrote:
| Don't stop there. Diego Garcia and the surrounding Chagos
| islands were ethnically-cleansed by a joint American-British
| operation just 50 years ago [1], to make living-space for
| this military base.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing_a_Nation
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do you mean ethnically cleansed?
|
| Ethical ethnic cleansing is hopefully not a thing.
| pphysch wrote:
| Yes, fixed.
| Y_Y wrote:
| To be fair the just scooped the Chagossians out, whereas
| ethnic cleansing usually refers to extermination. Those who
| ended up in the UK have been fighting a legal battle since
| and seem to be making slow progress. From the British point
| of view it was a slam dunk, since they didn't care about
| the "man Fridays" and they got trident missiles in return.
| pphysch wrote:
| You may want to check your definitions. This is a clear
| example of ethnic cleansing and should not be minimized
| just because it isn't literal genocide.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ethnic_cleansing
| Y_Y wrote:
| Oh shit you caught me
| pseudolus wrote:
| The issue of the Chagos Islands was the subject of an
| International Court of Justice advisory opinion which
| concluded that 'the United Kingdom's continued
| administration of the Chagos Archipelago "constitutes a
| wrongful act entailing the international responsibility of
| that State", that the United Kingdom "has an obligation to
| bring to an end its administration of the Chagos
| Archipelago as rapidly as possible, and that all Member
| States must co-operate with the United Nations to complete
| the decolonization of Mauritius' [0].
|
| [0] https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/169
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Don't forget that people are supporting part of this
| whenever they buy an .io tld.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io#History
| Y_Y wrote:
| You mean github.io isn't for projects relating to the
| Indian Ocean!?
| aosmith wrote:
| Ever heard of the .io TLD? Dig deeper...
| kornhole wrote:
| 800 to a 1000 bases around the world
| IncRnd wrote:
| The proximity to India is why there is a US base on a British
| owned Island.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| This one probably had more to do with protecting shipping
| lanes from French interdiction, given the location and
| which other countries had colonies and other operations
| semi-nearby (spoiler alert: France). As far as why the
| British cared to hold it in the last century, I mean, not
| for why it's still a base now. Leave all the islands in
| that area to France and it'd have been a dagger pointed at
| shipping crossing the Indian ocean via the canal. Seize a
| couple of the islands yourself, and at least you can keep
| an eye on things and mount a plausible threat if a hot war
| breaks out, to keep France from getting too bold with their
| use of the nearby islands.
|
| Britain had a bunch of other islands much closer to India.
| Not even counting Sri Lanka.
|
| Though, yes, protecting shipping lanes _to and from India_
| would have been part of the purpose, but not just to India.
| British Malaysia, various Pacific territories, and the
| commonwealth states of Australia and New Zealand, would
| have shared those same shipping routes, largely.
|
| I'd guess that as a US base it's more likely to support US
| or NATO operations, real or hypothetical, in or around the
| Horn of Africa than it is to have much to do with the
| subcontinent.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is so little money that one can only assume that this is
| done for morale reasons. The whole damn U.S. military makes only
| $100 M off this? It isn't worth the revenue at all.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| They'll feel right at home once they're done with active duty
| since they're basically 2 slot machine shops at every
| neighborhood intersection.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I don't think my English vocabulary extends enough to properly
| describe the surreal mix of stupefaction and disgust this very
| concept creates on me.
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| May I Suggest "cluster fuck".
| jslql wrote:
| Is this a reference to that one movie?
| rbanffy wrote:
| No. Doesn't begin to describe it. Need something much
| stronger.
| thedaly wrote:
| "Fucked" is another option. The US wastes so much money on
| the military, but that all gets funneled to contractors and
| the enlisted soldiers get fucked.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| or SNAFU? Situation normal - all f**ed up
| grecy wrote:
| Just off the Alaska Highway in BC there are two lakes right
| next to each other, officially named "SNAFU" and "TARFU" by
| the military back in the day when they built the road.
| They're great places to camp and canoe.
| loser777 wrote:
| "now ain't that some shit"
| dokem wrote:
| [flagged]
| sneak wrote:
| Consider the fact that the US military fleeces taxpayers to the
| tune of Elon Musk's entire net worth every 10 weeks; I'm fine
| with _consensually_ subsidizing that a bit from the incomes of
| those who explicitly opted in to participating in it.
|
| They've actually double opted in: first to join up, and second
| to put money in the slot machine. Let them pay for it.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Next up: U.S. Military cocaine dealers earn $100M a year from
| service members.
|
| I was gonna write more, but I fear I might be giving readers
| ideas and honestly no military needs any more ideas on how to
| monetize their soldiers.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The military has traditionally been kind enough to give
| stimulants to servicemen for free. Cocaine until between the
| World Wars, amphetamines got phased out in the past few
| decades, and now mostly modafinil.
| watwut wrote:
| A lot of alcohol before.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| As a serviceman I've never heard of this. Do Rip Its count?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| NO-Explode & Rip Fuel.
|
| Not provided by the service, though.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Stimulants are often given to pilots or people on Special
| Forces missions to prevent fatigue. It's not a hidden
| thing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychoacti
| ve_drugs_use... for some details. Historically, the use was
| far more common.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Traditional [?] special forces
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I don't have any idea what you're trying to say here. The
| US military still gives out stimulants to servicemen,
| though far fewer of them receive safer drugs than in the
| past.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm only at odds with the words "traditional" and
| "often". I'm a serviceman and I haven't heard of it. Were
| you a pilot?
|
| I'm also saying that special forces aren't exactly
| traditional. Would you say that the military
| traditionally sports beards and ballcaps because SF do?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The practice is traditional, and it's still done with
| pilots and special forces. I don't know why you haven't
| heard about it, the use is well documented.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I almost died from a RipIt overdose.
| shanebellone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...
| hooverd wrote:
| That's just Fort Bragg.
| pengaru wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't outcompeted into failure by domestic
| civilian competition base-adjacent where they can offer far more,
| ahem, "services", to complement the gambling.
| watwut wrote:
| I am sure prostitution does well too.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Outside of every base there is inevitably a row of pawn
| shops, tattoo parlors, asian "massage" joints, and one
| 24-hour pizza place.
|
| Every base has a standing order to avoid all of those under
| penalty, except the pizza place, where it is discouraged
| mostly because it's not great pizza.
|
| Diego Garcia, however, is an island in the middle of nowhere
| with nothing on it, so none of those exist.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Question: Would you rather than service members gamble on
| military facilities or at the local casino/bar?
|
| I'm not talking about harm reduction per se, ie reducing
| gambling. I mean would you rather have soldiers gambling/drinking
| in the controlled environment of a base or out on the town? I've
| been in situations/deployments where the CO has closed the base,
| restricted our movements off base to operational only. It really
| isn't much fun. So I am hesitant to criticize any on-base
| activity that at least some people enjoy responsibly.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I think they should gamble at the local casino (because there
| aren't a lot of those locally forcing service members to have
| intermittent gambling habits rather than continuous exposure).
| The ready availability of having it on base at the NEX or
| whatever creates an easily accessible temptation. For
| destructive isolating behaviors like gambling I believe there
| should be no accessibility to it on base and definitely not DoD
| sponsored.
| vkou wrote:
| > Question: Would you rather than service members gamble on
| military facilities or at the local casino/bar?
|
| 1. The argument that soldiers are going to do drugs anyways
| isn't a good reason to provide a weekly cocaine ration.
|
| 2. I don't think all of these bases have a nearby casino.
|
| 3. Lowering the activation energy for going to the slots will
| increase use of the slots. If I had a magic tap that soda and
| beer came out of at my house, I'd be drinking more soda and
| beer. Despite having a corner store on the other side of the
| street.
|
| The military should be lowering the activation energy for less
| destructive past-times, instead.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> 1. The argument that soldiers are going to do drugs
| anyways isn't a good reason to provide a weekly cocaine
| ration.
|
| That happened in Canada. When Canada made pot legal, their
| military went through a debate about whether it should be
| sold on bases. They already provide alcohol on bases, even on
| ships. Why not pot? But I have not heard of any slot machines
| on Canadian bases.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| "overseas", does it mean tax free? Usually there are very high
| taxes on such machines.
| cperciva wrote:
| Isn't the Federal government exempt from taxes imposed by the
| States anyway?
| twiddling wrote:
| They have been running them a long time. I remember playing them
| on post in the '80s in (West) Germany
| kneebonian wrote:
| Here's the thing, a military that isn't regularly exercised
| quickly falls prey to the iron law of bureaucracy, as Dr. Hugh
| Nibley once said "Leaders are those who surprise and discomfort
| the enemy in war time, and rock the boat and upset HQ in peace"
|
| If war isn't regularly and actively being prosecuted the military
| turns to infighting, the officers that are promoted are promoted
| because of their ability to suck up and kiss ass, meanwhile the
| people that get things done, that bruise egos, and deal with
| things directly end up phased out and pulled down.
|
| Part of the reason WW1 was so horrible wasn't just because of the
| technological advances, or the environments they fought in but
| because of how many worthless brass were involved and f**ing
| things up regularly. Hell France was only saved from falling
| within a month because their top general went on a spree of
| firing over half the commanders and replacing them with people
| that produced results.
|
| In the next substantial military conflict the US faces we will
| spend a long time losing until we fire most of the people
| currently in charge and the thinking changes.
|
| As evidence let me point to the continual massive investment into
| the fighter program. Those advocating the fighter program are the
| cavalry commanders of the 1910, thinking in an outdated and
| outmoded way of thinking that they are wedded to, and will
| continue to rely on and push for despite the fact it is a clearly
| outdated and obsolete way of thinking.
|
| EDIT:
|
| As noted below Dr. Hugh Nibley was Professor of Ancient Scripture
| at BYU if you feel that substantially impacts your opinion of
| this quote.
| wl wrote:
| For context, Hugh Nibley was a prolific apologist for the
| mainstream Mormon church.
| [deleted]
| PakG1 wrote:
| Attack the argument, not the person.
| wl wrote:
| I'm not attacking anything. If anything, I mostly agree
| with the argument being made. I just think Nibley's
| prolific work as an apologist is interesting context to his
| words.
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| The description is oddly context-free, as if a reader is
| supposed to know if this other work about a religion was
| related to the observation about garrison vs field
| soldiers. apologist noun
| SYNONYMS: defender, supporter, upholder, advocate,
| proponent, exponent, propagandist, apostle, champion,
| backer, promoter, campaigner, spokesman, spokeswoman,
| spokesperson, speaker, arguer, enthusiast.
| ANTONYMS critic
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The irony of criticizing the F-35 while complaining about
| armchair generals.
| [deleted]
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Whats a better alternative to the fighter program?
| kneebonian wrote:
| Drones. Sure you can buy a $22 mil next gen stealth fighter
| to secure air superiority but I can buy 200 drones that cost
| $2k for 1/100th of the price, launch them from much closer to
| the battlefield and good luck shooting all of them down to
| establish your air superiority. Or even better you send in
| your fancy fighter/bomber combo, I'm going to blanket the
| effected air with drones programed to move in an erratic and
| choatic manner and suddenly I just cost you $22 million for
| something that I paid $100 for.
|
| Remember the Panzer was a better tank than the Sherman, but
| it didn't matter because the Sherman was cheaper to build and
| faster to make.
| supergeek wrote:
| It's about a 1-2 ratio. F-35 costs around $80m and a single
| predator drone costs around $40m.
| pnpnp wrote:
| That's not even accounting for the fact that Predators
| aren't able to realistically be used with S-300/S-400
| SAMs sitting everywhere. There's a reason you aren't
| seeing aircraft near the front unless you're talking
| about helicopters at or below treetop level. Neither side
| in this conflict has stealth fighters capable of fighting
| on the front lines.
| pnpnp wrote:
| You should check out the NGAD program. It's exactly what
| you're talking about.
|
| The problem with drones is that they're easily jammed.
| Ukraine is lucky that Russia has been so incompetent, but I
| bet the next major conflict has large scale jamming on just
| about every frequency.
|
| NGAD strikes a balance between drones and manned aircraft.
|
| I don't really like the WWI cavalry analogy, either. The
| fighters being used in Ukraine are a far cry from what
| 5th/6th generation technology can achieve. The gulf war is
| a better example of what happens when you achieve air
| superiority. It turns out that's _really_ important in
| modern warfare.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If experience is exercise, name a more exercised force than the
| US military.
| kneebonian wrote:
| A fair point, and this is one thing we may have on any other
| country of similar size and standing, but as we've seen with
| Russia, that only counts if it's been what you've been
| working for.
|
| Our military is exercised to an extant, but it's also been
| exercising for fighting asymmetric warfare, and irregular
| combat, not conventional combat on a battlefield against a
| comparable enemy. It's like running 3 miles every day in
| preparation for a marathon, it's something and helps you work
| out some things, but its going to be very different once the
| gun fires to start the race.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| One of Russia's big issues I've heard is that they command
| down from above. They do not have a strong force of
| decision-making NCOs. This seems plausible given their poor
| and reactive performance in Ukraine.
| danans wrote:
| Any number of war-torn countries' militaries would meet that
| criterion, from Afghanistan to parts of Africa.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| How many of those experienced personnel stick around to pass
| on their knowledge? Not nearly enough to have an effective
| military. We'll find out our true readiness when we face a
| competent enemy.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And who should that be? Certainly not Russia, they're
| getting their asses handed to them in Ukraine and won't be
| a threat for decades to come - Germany post 1945 had an
| immense amount of industry and other production to help us
| getting back on our feet rather quickly, but Russia doesn't
| have _anything_ beyond exporting oil and gas.
|
| And not China either, because no matter how unexperienced
| the US Army is, the Chinese have virtually no experience
| other than trading shots and fist fights on the Indian
| border or acting like a school bully in their neighborhood
| - and most Chinese stuff is based on old Soviet shit (whose
| "quality" is currently being shown in Ukraine) or stolen
| Western tech.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| That's the point: there are no other competent enemies,
| either in the sense of funding, or in terms of wartime
| experience. No one else even comes close. It's possible
| that China will get there someday, but that's likely
| decades and multiple conflicts away.
| djmips wrote:
| I could see this happening in the Russia / Ukraine conflict.
| Perhaps Russia will improve over time because of this.
| Y_Y wrote:
| This is how Sega got their start.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Slot machines are basically a dopamine hit machine. This would be
| analogous to government supplied recreational drugs.
| [deleted]
| structure7 wrote:
| I won $25 in nickels from a slot machine in Giesen (1998). Turns
| out it's hard to find a German bank that wants to accept and
| exchange that. Spent two years feeding it into vending machines
| on post.
| klyrs wrote:
| Horrible idea: require a military id to log in to the slot
| machine; each person's jackpot is equal to the amount they've
| sunk into the machines, and they're guaranteed to pay out every
| 1000 pulls.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| At the Brainwash laundromat / cafe in San Francisco (RIP) they
| had a bill changer that took $20 bills and returned quarters,
| which was quite fun and entertaining to use, sounded
| spectacularly jingly, earned you lots of attention and
| accolades from everyone in the room, and gave reliable 1:1
| payouts every time. Plus you could have food and coffee and
| beer and play video games while waiting for your clothes to
| clean and dry. That should be implemented at every military
| base.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Reminds me of a probably-apocryphal story I read somewhere
| years ago.
|
| "I was in a casino, and saw a doddering old man sitting not
| at a slot machine but at the change machine. He fed in dollar
| after dollar, and would cheer and call out 'I won again!'
| every time it dispensed his quarters. It was harmless, and
| better he 'play' that than lose at a real slot machine, so I
| left him alone with his fantasy.
|
| I saw him again the next day. I pointed at the change machine
| and asked why he wasn't playing that one since it was his
| favorite yesterday. His reply: 'It was dispensing six
| quarters for every dollar until they fixed it.' "
| nerdponx wrote:
| Almost every laundromat bill changer I've used accepts 20s. I
| always felt very self-conscious getting so much change at
| once, but maybe it'd be more fun if it had lights and bells
| on it.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| That's like my fair slot machine idea, a slot machine that
| spreads the winnings out evenly. You put in a dollar and then
| win 95 cents, every time; fun!
| LanceH wrote:
| I'm offering lottery tickets for half off. They are used, but
| have a higher expected value than the new ones.
| klyrs wrote:
| I was kinda aiming for "the methadone of gambling" but I
| think your idea fits that better than mine.
| jacobolus wrote:
| For practical implementation (less change to manage), the
| machine should probably take $1.01 or $1.05 and return $1.
|
| The military base version could just take in $1 and return
| $1.
| moduspol wrote:
| Military base version already for sale here:
| https://www.gameroomguys.com/American-Changer-AC500-Bill-
| Cha...
| kube-system wrote:
| That's entirely unrealistic.
|
| No slot machine pays out 95%.
| jaywalk wrote:
| 95% every pull, no. But over long periods of time, that's
| about what most machines pay out.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm mostly joking, but it's closer to 90%
|
| https://www.americancasinoguidebook.com/slot-machine-
| payback...
| peishang wrote:
| Even more horrible idea: Adjust the payout probability in
| proportion to the number of enemy combatants that an
| infantryman has killed.
| [deleted]
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