[HN Gopher] War Is a Racket
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War Is a Racket
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 32 points
Date : 2023-08-01 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| focusedone wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36074845
| sharts wrote:
| Yes. And we all support it because life is easier that way.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war
| Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to
| the poor -- "War Pigs"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc5Nk1DXyEY
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex anime touches upon
| this theme, although from an angle more akin to the cyberpunk
| genre versus 20th century military industrial complex.
|
| SPOILER ALERT
|
| The extremely skilled and elusive hacker which they're
| investigating, the one that has been plaguing/blackmailing
| corporations for 5 years, turns out to be _mostly_ * an illusion.
| The corporations and ruling political party leadership worked
| together in a scheme to create fake cyber attacks, get them
| highly publicized, and then profit from government relief/bailout
| money. Regular people believe someone is terrorizing the
| country's multinational companies, when in reality, it's just a
| racket.
|
| *The legendary hacker is actually out there, but their actual
| role in the story is somewhat of a plot twist.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Hot take: there should be more VC-backed war startups. Call it
| "wartech". We spend an epic shitton of money per second on the
| military industrial complex, it would be nice to see a few
| startups actually try to make things less expensive somehow.
| coffeeshopgoth wrote:
| Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #34: War is good for business.
|
| Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #35: Peace is good for business.
| m463 wrote:
| Never heard of these before - they are fun :)
|
| https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisi...
|
| wonder if there's someone somewhere who is keeper of the rules.
| Or a council of franchise meta-rules.
| mrdobilina wrote:
| I like to think of it like "bloody construction work"
| simonh wrote:
| > The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and
| industry and labour before the nation's manhood can be
| conscripted..
|
| We do conscript capital to fund military spending, through
| taxation. It's levied across the whole society according to
| ability to pay. There are always arguments about who should pay
| what, but thats what democratic politics is there to mediate.
|
| Of course there is an argument that since individuals face
| conscription into the military, so why not conscript industry?
| But of course the US government had already laid down the legal
| basis for this by 1935 when this book was published. In fact they
| did so during WW2 in the form of commandeering, the power to
| compel any producer in the country to accept war orders, along
| with the imposition of price controls.
| landemva wrote:
| > It's levied across the whole society according to ability to
| pay.
|
| In US, sales tax is not based on ability to pay. The very rich
| often have minimal W-2 income, so they often opt out of
| progressive income taxes.
| simonh wrote:
| No idea, I'm a Brit so not familiar with the details of the
| US tax system. I'm mostly talking generally about free
| societies, as the sentiment in the book is broadly
| applicable. There are many forms of tax. If the system is
| unfair, sure, it should be fixed. Fundamentally though, my
| point is that the job of commandeering capital is taxation.
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(page generated 2023-08-01 23:02 UTC)