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Comment by qaq | Hacker News Reader

Hmm Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc. have being exporting weapons system to brutal dictatorships for decades

I remember a cartoon from 45 years ago Nixon and Brezhnev are sitting at lemonade stands, but selling bombs. With lines of petty dictators, strongmen and despots waiting to buy.

Why would strongmen need bombs?

They need weapons to oppress their own people. Which is why foreign arms sales are problematic.

Smaller ethnic groups, stronghold cities of political enemies...

Note that when exporting weapon systems they need approval from DoD and other federal agencies. But tear gas is not covered by those export laws. Just DoC which isn't a big deal.

People always bring the DoD thing up as if it's a valid excuse, or that it somehow transfers moral responsibility to the DoD. Like there being legal loopholes to get what they want makes it OK to flaunt their psychopathy.

> Like there being legal loopholes

It’s not a loophole. It’s the point of the law. We export weapons under the guidance of our government. There is a political check on munitions. Not everyone likes the defense industry, but banning weapons exports polls terribly.

In this case, that democratic check is released. That makes it different from traditional weapons exports.

*moral/ethical loophole.

You're just using those deeds you also don't fight against to shrug this off, as well.

If a large public corporation does it, it's a statistic, if it's a small business, it's a tragedy.

Tu quoque...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Your point doesn’t change the validity of the article, the poor working conditions for the employees, or the fact that perhaps such exports need to stop.

Edit: What’s with the downvotes? So now HN is yet another forum where Whataboutism reigns? Shouldn’t we point out logical fallacies in arguments when we see them, or at least offer something constructive to the conversation? And, yes, this reply is constructive, since it points out that the parent reply is illogical and should be discounted.

The OP wasn't whatabouting, just pointing out that it's business as usual.

Whataboutism as an accusation only take makes sense when it's whatabouting something from the accuser's camp, which doesn't seem to apply here.

The OP was clearly trying to throw shade at the article. The argument of the article is that they shouldn’t be exporting this gas. The comment was saying “well these other guys do worse.” That’s the exact definition of Whataboutism, and I urge you to read the Wikipedia articles to understand why that type of moral relativism is a logical fallacy.

Otherwise why point out it’s “business as usual”. It’s not like the comment was adding information anyone didn’t already know. Trying to paint the comment as something else is just being purposefully obtuse.

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