Military Industrial Complex

Maybe there is such a thing as a just war and maybe some of the war aims of conflicts in recent years were valid. The fact that just war might be possible should not cloud our views of the military industrial complex. This posting was provoked by the film "Why we fight" one of 57 videos recommended by v-radio, an internet radio station dedicated to spreading the word about TVP/TZM. The film is a bit plodding (IMHO) at the start, but persevere, because the intensity builds towards the end.

It features the nauseating collaboration between arms manufacturers and government, but in a profit driven world people must have jobs, making weapons is a job and weapons must be sold to get money to pay the workers. The  companies must make a profit and war - frankly - brings profit as it consumes weapons.

Another pericope in the film was about an articulate, intelligent 23 year old man who was joining the army as he couldn't get a job elsewhere. He also admired the tech. Middle aged women arms factory workers were also featured, torn between their need to have a job and their distaste at making weapons to kill people.

Part of the lie we are told is that the technology is super accurate and gets its targets without killing innocents nearby. The tech plainly is technically impressive and we should lament that the skill and resources that go into building this stuff is not be diverted to constructive end. It isn't surprising that manufacturers over egg the capability of what they are selling, and this is no different. The fact that we see the exaggerated claims as news is a feature of how the military-industrial complex pervades. But these weapons aren't as accurate as is made out, as we know from the pain wracked faces or corpses of "non combatants" on our screens.

As public sector cuts bite deep, many people look to military spending and argue that resources should be diverted. The arguments against are either along the "protecting freedom" lines - no-one can disagree with protecting freedom, or along the lines of just war, and removing nasty rulers from power. So we might feel a bit guilty as if we didn't really want freedom or a world free of nasty dictators. I'm also a bit conflicted around poppy day. Were those who fought / died freedom fighters fending off fascism, or were they suckers in the military industrial complex, or both. I'm moved by the ceremonies at the Menin Gate and by the last post and reveille on Remembrance Sunday, but I wonder if this is all part of the enormous commercial (advert) for the military industrial complex. Death or injury working for a company should merit compensation from that company, rather than a few quid in a poppy sellers tin. I accept that people think they are fighting for their country or a just cause, and (perhaps) that to some extent they actually are, but the profit motive is what has turned the whole thing into an industry. If the industry can get the country on board, why wouldn't it?

How to help people into employment in rural areas

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=19225665

I only saw the header for this article and it prompted me to write to Idea about Resource Based Economy and the ideas of The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). I'm writing my response here in the public domain, rather than just on the closed discussion boards of Idea.

My first point is practically verbatim from The Venus Project (TVP): It is not jobs/money that people need, it is access to the necessities of life. Peter Joseph, founder of TZM says that if a job does not have a 'social return' it should not be done. A 'social return' is something that benefits humanity / the planet - that is it helps us in - or at least does not hinder us from -living sustainably on this planet within the resources available to us as we quite plainly must do - hence Resource Based Economy (RBE).

In an RBE, it's only jobs with a social return that get done - and they get done the most efficient way possible, which means automation / mechanisation as much as possible - 'Cybernation' in TVP language. Remember, it's not jobs/money that people need but access to the necessities of life - so we must access 'the necessities of life' as efficiently and sustainably as possible. Such jobs as can't ever be cybernated- which would be few - would be done by humans.

In the current system, people have to get a job to get money to access 'the necessities of life'. This may take them away from doing something with a social return - bringing up children, say, to doing something with no social return, say giving out leaflets at the station. In our value system the second is worthwhile as it's a job earning money but the first is undesirable as it's not (unless it's a paid child carer, paradoxically). It's plainly nuts.

To step it up several levels, does anyone really accept that it's OK for millions of people to be starving - even die of starvation - because they haven't got enough money to buy food, because they haven't got a job? This is an utter disgrace. Some people argue that the planet is overpopulated - but who says it's the people with the money who get to say who lives and who dies?

Or take it from a political stance. Working in the armaments industry is a job, but to use arms, we need wars. Therefore there's an incentive to start or escalate wars to generate jobs in the arms industry. How sure are we that the fighting our forces are carrying out is entirely to rid the world of 'evil dictators' or 'terrorist organisations' and not at least in part to generate work in the arms industry?

The need for people to work to get money to access the necessities of life is completely opposite to the need to be efficient as only 'cybernation' can bring efficiency - look at automation in the car industry and agriculture for obvious examples. Also the need to keep people in work means that companies need to compete with each other to sell things. Those things must not be as reliable and durable as possible because that won't keep people in work repairing or replacing them. This means they land up as waste - maybe even in landfill - but no matter, the waste industry creates more work.

If you work in a company that produces anti-cancer drugs, you need people to get cancer so that you can sell your product and stay in work.

On a more human level, people doing jobs with no 'social return' are wasting their lives "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" as Wordsworth put it. People doing jobs with a negative social return are wasting other people's lives.

To add to all this, the money system is totally broken. Practically every country owes money and not enough money exists to pay back all the debts. Therefore one or more countries have to go bust.