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American Science: Addicted to Pentagon Cash?
An anonymous submitter writes: "In totalitarian states the military can compel scientists to perform research for weapons systems. That's not true in the United States, yet American scientists who refuse military work are exceedingly rare today. This may be in part because scientists, like most other citizens, agree that the U.S. is facing dangerous foes. But some dissidents argue the cause is more likely that Pentagon cash has become an addiction that scientists rationalize by working on 'dual use' technologies -- radar that maps planets and guides missiles; robots that peer through smoke in apartment fires to rescue victims, and through battlefield smoke to find human targets."
To use on the US!
What we see here is the addiction to a funding agency (the military)...this is typical of societies that have developed large militaries...before, it was the Britan (before WWI) that was the biggest military, now, due to history, it's the US's turn...in the distant future, it's going to be China's turn. The trouble with this situation, is that, sure, you now have this giant funding machine, (given a given superpower (this case, the US), the funding machine in question (military), is the biggest in this given country, it drains all the funding resources into itself (like a black hole), it therefore pervades all thinking as it is the biggest and therefore, the correct way of thinking and funding all new technologies..this is dangerous in the long run because it promotes a military view of the world: all funding goes through the military/ industrial complex, it is the only source of decent funding for future hi-tech, most important, big militaries determin your politics (IE: Goerge Bush-lets invade everybody thinking to sove all problems). The trouble with this, is many, first all other countries do the same (arms race to oblivion), because wepons get bigger and scarier (real bakc holes, super AI, genetics gone wild), it drains funding for real science and commercial developemnt.. this is the most important, as countries that develop normal science and commercial technology will win in the long run as most lasting and productive science and products manufacturing come form the commercial sector (whitness the current and future growth of far east manufacturing).. it has been pointed out before by historians that big military states fail because, they can't compeat commercially, the big military ssytems don't make money, they burn up money, cost money to maintain and, most important, they produce generations of scientists, engineers that can't develope/manufature good comercial items on-time and under budget because they came form this very inefficient military/industrial culture, it happened after the last big military/industrial spending spree in the 80's, it looks like it is starting over again in a new cycle.
Just for the record - I have no problem with the people living in the US, just the way your government works, especially doing such a great job at preventing the american population of actually finding out what's actually going on.
Good luck with that debt!
--- Worst tagline ever.
He said big fat titties, not pudgy turtle necked penises you fag!
Hey, how come dictionary.com has three definitions for bullshit, and none of them are "feces from a male cow?"
Dude, that's fucked up right there.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's bulletproof, because Americans will support any military expense (if you doubt me, I refer you to Bush's $87 billion request this week).
Hammer of Truth
Yeah, and the way to solve violence is by killing everyone who isn't like you. That's much easier than, say, removing their reasons for resorting to violence. And everybody knows that we should all just grow up and realize that it is more important to do the easy thing, rather than the right thing.
I don't think it's the scientist who has to grow up. It's the president. This is the real world, where actions have real consequences, and real people are dying. And it's not cheap.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Surprise, surprise, we do spend loads of money on countries that need schools and agricultural help and so on
In actual fact the U.S. foreign aid budget is a mere 0.117 percent of its GNP, the lowest percentage in the world.
The sad history of development aid ...
Perhaps if the U.S. didn't go round killing democratically elected leaders those countries wouldn't be in the state they are today.
Yep ... better to save those precision weapons for more lucrative civilian targets, like the Chinese embassy.
One thing I haven't seen yet, unless it's "below my current threshold" or something, is the idea that the military is one of the major means of controlling our economy, and has been since the second world war. This is the famous military industrial complex first warned of by Eisenhower.
There are many articles / analyses on this idea by Noam Chomsky, which can be found at the web site devoted to his work at:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
Chomsky rejects the idea that modern nation-states have anything resembling a free market, despite propaganda to the contrary. Much of the planning in the United States' economy, then, occurs through the army. This is one reason why so much military research is really dual-purpose military / civilian. (as was mentioned somewhere in this tangle of posts) It's supposed to be this way so that the taxpayer can pay for the basic research, and then when that's done some corporation can take the technology and become rich from it. Much of the high tech and aerospace industry works this way. In a country like Japan, in contrast, such government support of industry is done more out in the open, since they don't have the military that we have.
Anyway, in this manner, the free market is left to the little guy -- the small businesses, while large corporations have a constant government feed. It may be that there are scientists who will refuse military money on principal, but if there weren't a lot of others who didn't, our economny was sink pretty fast.
I don't know why I would bother replying to a post like this, but...
This is usually the knee-jerk reaction made by many who simply can't handle the idea of a world where the more difficult path to peace is chosen in favor of violence.
To defend that, let's say you're a politician and you're confronted with a situation where you can either: A) invoke infinite patience and do the hard, long, tiring work of resolving differences and finding the root cause of problems, or: B) blow them up.
I assure you, option B is chosen most frequently and usually by the weak minded, for those whom it hurts to think. Without a doubt, it is the easier path. Nevertheless, there's a tradeoff with everything, thus the costs in the long run are much more severe in terms of life and property.
It is people like you that regard purveyors of option A as "fucking stupid" because you don't understand how that would work. You don't understand regression. You don't understand that every problem has a root (and that root may be a problem to resolve in itself). Find the cause of an effect. It's not easy and it's abstract and requires a lot of time and concentration. To you, that's "fucking stupid".
To people who wish for something better, it's worth the effort.
Are these people the cause or the product of the conditions we presently live in?
If they don't "give a damn" about anything or anyone, why would they "love" to deal?
I never said these ideals were reality. That is your mistake. However, they are most certainly not nonsense.
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LOL ! This is rich coming from the largest distributor and manufacturer of WMD on the planet. If the US stopped arming the world things would be a little safer for people everywhere on the planet.