Hacker News Reader

Comment by frogpelt | Hacker News Reader

Let me guess, you think there's a cure for cancer but the doctors are withholding it and Exxon Mobil bought the patent for a combustion engine that would achieve 100+ mpg.

Any industry that is built on addressing problems that people naturally have is going to generate lots of revenue. It has been proven that people naturally fight with each other. People fight over race, religion, sports, politics, and territory. Nations do the same thing.

If you think it would end terrorism by killing all current terrorists and if you think it would even be possible, I think you're misguided.

View on HN

It doesn't matter what he or you think is likely happening right now. The fact is there is a conflict of incentives and in such situations people act according to the ones the closest to their personal ones. We can't expect people to be heroes against their own personal interest.

It won't change until people in the chain have incentives to avoid war.

Now let's think how to accomplish it: maybe there should be huge tax on profits for military contractors in the time when operations are going ? Maybe private for-profit military contractors have to go in the first place ? Maybe we shouldn't pay them for every piece of equipment but only for time spent working ?

As to people in the field, there are some ideas as well like freezing all bonuses during the military operations and such. The thing is it has to be profitable for individuals involved to seek peace not war. The war machine is never going to stop otherwise. The balance should be such that once high command in charge feel it's necessary to start military operations they should meet at least some resistance from rest of the chain not "fuck yeah sir!" as it is now.

I worked for defence companies in the past. There are no morals and ethics. Just profit and plunder. The parent of your post is spot on.

"I worked for war companies in the past"

Exactly that.

And I'm fucking ashamed of myself for doing it, unlike the other 132000 employees who still work there.

I was naive to the point of being stupid.

Thank you for having the integrity to not try to justify the time you spent and the money you made by enabling these madmen.

I admire your intellectual honesty, you don't see it very often when it comes to criticizing one's own actions.

Let me guess, you said something similar to all the people that said the NSA were tracking everyone.

They laughed at Einstein[0] but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

The truth of one conspiracy cannot be used as evidence for the truth of others. It simply doesn't make sense.

[0] They didn't really laugh at Einstein, but you get the idea.

The metaphor in your argument is dependent on the fact that Einstein and Bozo are two separate entities.

Once Einstein[0] had published his theory of relativity people stopped laughing, and they never laughed at him again.

[0] They still didn't laugh at Einstein, but you get the idea.

Hmm, now that is really interesting! My initial reaction to your question is, "Of course they're separate entities." But then the person I'm replying to probably thinks, "Of course they're a single entity."

Is that the true division between conspiracy-minded people and others?

I don't agree with rdtsc's either, and I am not "conspiracy-minded" just because I point out that your einstein-clown argument is fallacious.

Therefore I would not like to draw that line. I would however say it's a division between our views. I do believe that a government can be considered a single entity. Care to explain why you disagree?

The government is a collection of a lot of different entities with different views, resources, and goals. It doesn't make sense to me to say that e.g. the FDA and the NSA are part of the same entity.

Furthermore, what's being discussed involves non-government actors too. Exxon, doctors, and defense contractors are entities outside the government.

"Any industry that is built on addressing problems that people naturally have is going to generate lots of revenue."

And in the meantime, if they can make people think they have those problems, that would be even more revenue.

Like the pharmaceutical industry that sell you drugs for diseases you didn't even know existed. Or cigarettes manufacturers that want to solve your problem of not being addicted to nicotine...

I have to agree. Someone out there benefits from every single bad thing that happens out there: securities fraud, child abuse, cancer, money laundering, murder, etc, etc.

Using the same logic, nothing should ever get better because those who benefit from "bad things" will never allow them to be stopped.

> Using the same logic, nothing should ever get better because those who benefit from "bad things" will never allow them to be stopped.

Thats not true because it ignores existing structures of power.

A common thief benefits from the bad things they do, but has no power to influence those that might seek to stop him, and so is convicted.

A banker who committed fraud (read: stole) during the recent financial crisis has the power of capital and lobby behind them, and walks.

The existing structures of power in place are actually designed to stop many of the bad things you describe, however there is nothing intrinsically moral about them so they can be corrupted by capital and lobbyists.

The difference is, in the OP's argument, the people whose job it is to stop these bad things are also the ones who are benefitting from it. Normally, it is the police's job to stop child abuse. However, if the police force happens to be running the child abuse ring, they are not going to do anything to stop it themselves. In such a situation, there is no incentive for these things to stop.

(Note: I'm not convinced war profiteering is the driving motivator for the NSA, just pointing out the fallacy in your argument.)

Sure it still work... let's look at my list:

securities fraud - all those jobs at the SEC would disappear if they ended securities fraud, therefore they must not really want to stop it

child abuse - the cops, social workers and judges would lose their jobs if child abuse stopped, therefore they must not really want to stop it

cancer - oncologists would have no job if cancer was cured, therefore they must not really want to stop it

money laundering - DOJ would lose their jobs if there was no money laundering, therefore they must not really want to stop it

murder - cops would lose their jobs if there was no murder, therefore they must not really want to stop it

And you can't say those people I noted above are not a part of the power structure...

It's all about capabilities.

Back in the 80's and 90's, people who insisted the NSA did all this or that really couldn't explain how the technology would work to do all that. People insisted spy satellites could read my newspaper, yada yada.

About 5 years ago, the chips, scale-out HW, storage and Linux (thanks submitters!) reached the point where the known daily capacity of information stream or their meta could be stored by someone like the NSA or Google.

One just needs to assume technical capabilities is what defines reality.

Usenet, before Sept 1993, carried the rumor that "the CIA" was archiving all Usenet posts.

I don't think that was too off-the-wall, even in 1988 or '89.

I can recall, although not google up, at least one back-of-the-envelope effort to figure out if some organization could store all internet traffic. I think the answer was "yes", and this was done maybe 5 years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com