this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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If less people worked to make weapons, there would be less weapons made.
How is this a hard concept to understand?
Okay?
How is that relevant?
Do you think that there is a dire shortage of tools for murder, and only the modern defense industry is sustaining the strained supply?
Israel, Russia, and Ukraine sure seem to think so. None are producing enough munitions domestically to satisfy themselves.
Less weapons made still means less weapon used.
In the case of Russia and Ukraine, the reason they need to produce more munitions is to prevent the opposition from having the advantage in the war. If both sides were totally stripped of munitions by tomorrow, you wouldn't see a cessation of the war, you'd see a continuation of the war simply with less advanced tools, such as in the civil war in Sudan. And Russia has already demonstrated that it has no shortage of men who are willing to murder people with knives and sledgehammers.
Don't really know what you think "No more munitions!" is going to achieve here. Certainly don't know what shunning the Western MIC is going to do here, except expose more Ukrainians to Russian genocide.
Israel isn't producing enough munitions to satisfy itself because it knows it doesn't have to when the US is willing to subsidize their genocide.
No, it means less of that particular weapon used.
So do you work for a defense contractor or do you just have great respect for the act of killing in general
Sorry for having the radical idea that mass violence predates specialized weapons industries. Or the radical idea that countries should be allowed to defend themselves against genocidal aggressors. Whichever of the two you're objecting to.
It is pretty radical to argue that a small contingent of Zionist Israelis would be successfully eradicating the people of Palestine if both sides just had sticks, so the U.S. should just keep manufacturing and selling MK-84 bombs. Or we can talk about how absurd a claim it is that the arms industry is looking out for the little guy—you know, the group that can pay for less of their product? Thank god for arms manufacturers—that’s probably what Uyghurs think when they’re stopped at checkpoints by military police
Yes, a small contingent of some half-a-million Israeli soldiers and reservists obviously wouldn't be able to shoot any Palestinians if the US wasn't supplying them. This is why nowhere on earth does genocide happen, save when America is supplying someone involved.
lmao
Not even trying, are you?
"If only they didn't have stealth jets created by the massive and advanced Chinese defense industry" probably isn't what goes through the minds of most Uyghurs when stopped by military police.
Yeah, that’s a pretty pointless response on the Uyghur front and I don’t think we’re making progress on the “how easily is the genocide carried out” front so let’s just drop everything else and hone in here:
China’s comprehensive surveillance system is what makes tracking the movements of Uyghurs possible. It is what has made detaining and killing them so easy. So the people that made that system possible are responsible. Please explain how actually it’s nobody’s fault because things just happen.
"I wish I was being beaten to death with a homemade truncheon, instead of a mass-produced one"?
You're absolutely right. Everyone who makes computers for any company which sells to China is going to hell.
I’m sure it would be interesting to talk to you in some other set of circumstances—I think you have twice now made a salient point about how seemingly innocent industries end up fueling these genocides, just now and elsewhere regarding steel manufacturing—but under these circumstances it’s like pulling teeth. You are arguing that advanced weaponry does not increase bloodshed, which I disagree with, and you are avoiding any discussion of responsibility, which I think is a pretty natural impulse within all of us but it really fucking matters. I hope at least that you enjoyed interpreting everyone’s critiques in the worst possible light.
Man, go on and look at the bloodiest conflicts in world history. Tell me what advanced modern tools they were waged with. Tell me what advanced technology enabled Pol Pot to stick the heads of dissidents on wooden stakes and murder some 25% of the entire population.
No, I'm not avoiding a discussion of responsibility. I'm pointing out that a double-standard for responsibility is being used. You want the defense industry to be the scapegoat to avoid having to confront that every major industry that does international business is neck-deep in horrific shit by the standard of "You sell it, you're responsible for what it's used for". You can try to avoid looking in the mirror by pointing fingers, but it's a very easy tactic to recognize. "Weapons evil" is an easy sell on an emotional level, but you don't want to confront that it doesn't actually hold up as a coherent argument.
It is a perfectly coherent argument that Boeing is more harmful than Lowes despite both being $120 billion megacorporations. You have a point, but there are real functional differences between the actions a person or a corporation or a country takes. Make another pro-nihilist argument, I will listen, discount the validity of viewing the world through any other lens and I will not give a shit
I do not think it is a coherent argument to lean on history to discount the effects of brand new surveillance and killing tools. Drones are supposed to be able to limit casualties with precise strikes but the disconnect between the operator and the victims is so great that it makes the act of killing easier, evidenced by so many botched attacks during Bush and Obama administrations. Which way does the pendulum swing? We don’t have historians and declassified documents and longitudinal studies to rely on for an answer. Maybe our children’s children can fill us in, but in the meantime I actually feel very confident claiming that expensive advanced weaponry widens the gap in power between oppressor and oppressed. The fact that practically nobody from the US died while the Misdle East cowered is evidence of this; I think Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge actually reinforce this claim as well. Clashes and bloodshed and genocide are ancient—but I think the systemic rounding up and genocide of millions in just 4 years is quite difficult to accomplish without fairly modern weaponry. There are only a handful of genocides that even compare on a numbers scale and only one I can think of is pre military industrial complex. I don’t see how today’s superiority through guided missile, drone, etc. systems differ from yesteryear’s superiority via small arms in that regard.
On raw numbers, that's because the world population tripled between 1600 and 1900.
Try percentages, and you get a good idea of how many people a single human with a blade can kill.
Your takes are getting worse and worse, defending genocide, America, and defense contractors is fucking disgusting and also racist af. Nazi piece of shit
But you are literally arguing in defense of America, which is funding genocide, so now you are just straight up lying
Defending defense contractors isnt as cool as you think it is, Jesus would be ashamed.