The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Idealogical dilemma.
The Specialist
Happy FaceHappy PlaceRegistered User regular
Happy FaceHappy PlaceRegistered User regular
I lurk here a lot but generally refrain from posting because I don't like it when people point out what a douche I am. But I'm a little confused and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the matter.
I'm currently a US soldier looking at the end of his six year enlistment (technically 7 because I will be stop-lossed).
Taking a job with a government contractor in either Kuwait or Saudi Arabia maintaining aircraft is my highest paying prospect when my enlistment is up.
But If I believe that these government contractors are lining the pockets of the guys running the war to begin with, does taking the job make me a hypocrite? I don't like the idea of working for them. But I'm going to need the money, and it's a lot of money for a guy like me.
I'm currently a US soldier looking at the end of his six year enlistment (technically 7 because I will be stop-lossed).
Taking a job with a government contractor in either Kuwait or Saudi Arabia maintaining aircraft is my highest paying prospect when my enlistment is up.
But If I believe that these government contractors are lining the pockets of the guys running the war to begin with, does taking the job make me a hypocrite? I don't like the idea of working for them. But I'm going to need the money, and it's a lot of money for a guy like me.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge
The Specialist on
0
Posts
If your answers to the above questions are all "no," then there's nothing unethical/hypocritical/illegal about taking a job like that. If I could, I know I would.
Suck it up, you douche.
(I kid.)
Do you believe that the contractor is doing ill in the world? Or is it overall a good (or at least morally neutral) company that does some bad things? There isn't an employer in the world that is both successful and morally pure - every company is going to have some kind of corruption in its upper management. As long as you believe that the work you personally do is good, not liking your boss (or your company) doesn't make you a hypocrite.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well my answer two the first two and the last would be no. It's that third one that bugs me. Technically it wouldn't illegal or unethical. I mean, it's just fixing helicopters. But it supports a war I'm having a tough time living with now. But at least now I know that I don't have a choice in the matter. If I take the job I'll know I did it for the money. Regardless of how much I may need the money.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge
Until the performance review at any rate.
Alternately:
At least until you get married.
Whether or not you work to fix those helicopters isn't going to make the slightest difference as to whether the war continues or not. Not a bit. However, if it's big money for you, then why not?
Thoreau would be appauled right now. Not that you should necessarily give two shits about what he'd think.
I enlisted in the Navy in 2000, and did my four years and got out. On my way out I was offered a job as a communications contractor. Taking a job in a new town, the only people I've been able to make friends with are colleagues, and all of them are also comm contractors. In fact, one of them is taking a contract in Kuwait at the beginning of next year.
We've been struggling with this recently also. Here's what I've decided: Doing your job and doing it well helps keep the many soldiers who are fighting this war alive, in spite of the best efforts of the military industrial complex to get them killed off as quickly as possible. Without someone doing that job, the only person that suffers is not the faceless corporation, it's the guy in the sand.
As much money as you make there, and believe me I know how much money you can make there, you will be getting paid to do something that needs to be done.
The majority of the contractors that are wasteful and criminal are the no-bid contracts for base services, and the contstruction and shipping contractors (And many many comm guys), not mechanics.
So me, I'm not quitting. Like I said, the only person that suffers is the guy on the ground.
I'm probably just being an emo fag about it. But the people I usually ask about this sort of stuff (my grandfather mostly) tend to lean to the right anyway and I don't think they'd understand.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If you think you're going to keep feeling like this and that this feeling is going to make you so unhappy that the money isn't going to mean much you might not want to do it.
I don't really think it follows that repairing helicopters is helping the evil war continue but if you feel it does then that's what you need to make your choice upon.
I turned em down because I was headed to college with my GI bill check but I was sure as hell tempted.
Your hesitation is to your credit but I see no moral hippocracy here.
Don't get killed.
Do whatever will let you sleep with a clean conscience. If you're second guessing yourself and whether or not what you're doing is right every night, you're going to be miserable, no matter how much money you're making.
It's a support position, meaning doing the work helps save lives, and even if you chose to "protest" and decline the position on moral grounds only one of two things will happen: (1) Someone else, hopefully as qualified as you, will fill the position and do the work, leading to the same result at best or a worse result if they do a worse job or (2) The company will be unable to fill the spot, and the other workers will have to stretch to cover the missing manpower, leading to a chance of shoddier work and people getting hurt.
Ultimately, it comes down to either you can do the job well and help people, or turn down the job and have no effect or a negative impact. This isn't to say that you have to or should take the job from a moral viewpoint, merely that the net moral effect of your taking the job is either non-existent or positive.
I want to go back to school so bad I can taste it. But if I can do it in a way where I don't have to worry about much else than that's the way I'd prefer to do it.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge
That's basicly the idea...
Well guys, I don't know if all this has cleared the issue for me, but it's certainly given me other ways to think about it. I gotta crash though.
Thanks for the input.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge
Mario Kart DS: 3320 6595 7026 5000
This reduces the pay of soldiers, and reduces their benefits.
If you take this job, you not only support a military industiral complex expanding into the realm of private armies, you support the people who are pushing that change.
As well, you are helping to reduce the wages of soldiers, of whom you are one yourself.
All in all, I say, that knowing what you know, it is unethical to take the job. And if, especialy if, you are already having reservations about the war, continueing to support is is a bad idea.
It will be financialy worth it, but not ethically or morally.
This I know is true but, how does that lead to this:
I am well aware that the military does not get paid nearly what the job is worth, as evidenced by how much a civilain doing the same job gets, but I fail to see how it reduces pay and benifits.
edit: you do have a point about the privitization of some parts of the military. However, I would like to point out that the quality of the logistical support has improved by orders of magnitude since the veitnam era, when the attitude was that there were always more men to send in. In an all volunteer force soldiers are a commodity. I quite liked somone else setting up and maintaining the latrines and showers and cooking the food and other day-to-day stuff. Having civilians do some of the more mundane jobs frees up more soldiers to do the job they were trained for i.e. not building bathrooms.
Because in an all volunteer army, in order to attract more people to the job, they need to offer more pay and more benefits.
Contractors get payed very well, much better than soldiers, and that pay increase is why they are able to get people to come work for them.
Its supply and demand, if you need to buy more of something, you have to pay more per unit.
Part of the reason for the increase in civilians filling the non-combt roles is that the supply of soldiers is low. Right now the demand is quite high, the recruitment standards have even been lowered to try and make up for this. Cutting pay and benifits when it is already difficult to get new recruits and retain current troops would seem counterintuitive.
You're fixing helicopters and other aircraft your fellow soldiers will be relying on to stay safe and keep the advantage in their favor. Sure, eventually that translates to "supporting the war" which you (and most others) are not fond of. More directly, however, you'd be contributing to the safety of fellow U.S. soldiers that my not like the war any more than you do but must fulfill their military obligation. If less good men die in the war due to your efforts you can rest easy at night, so I would recommend you pursue this career.
Because if they didnt hire contractors to do the jobs, they would have to recruit more soldiers, and if they have to recruit more soldiers they have to pay them more.
Soldiers = Supply. The Higher the quantity you want, the higher the marginal cost of soldiers.
Less soldiers you need, the less you have to pay to get that many soldiers.
If after some soul-searching, you find that this was just a moment of hesitation and that you'd actually feel OK about doing this work, then I say, go for it. If you can't shake those doubts, though, don't let the money trick you into thinking this is a good idea.
1) Military pay will only stay the same or go up.
2) The military is not a doughnut shop, simple supply and demand do not apply.
3) Civilians are being hired precicely because there is a shortage of soldiers.
4) There is ALWAYS a demand for more soldiers, If you can pass the ASVAB and the physical, YOU WILL GET IN.
You guys are getting deployed?
And if you can't they will get you a waiver and let you in anyway.
Believe me, I work with the fucking morons who can't even score a 31 on the ASVAB.
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying
I'm Dem who's worked for defense contractors since I left college, doing work from relatively benign or beneficial (nuclear test ban monitoring) to questionable (signal intelligence analysis) to wasteful (national missile defense) to involving weapons (cruise missile mission planning).
I don't like it, really. I don't really like the environment, the work, the people (mostly very conservative, though less so in Massachusetts). I didn't mind the cause when America was behaving sanely, but I have my doubts now. I don't like the obvious and systemic waste.
But, you know, it's a living. And most of the projects I've worked on are either things that are going to need to be done by someone, or else just a case where the government is throwing money at a contractor as quid pro quo, and someone's going to be hired to be paid as a function of the contracting structure.
I don't like this, and I campaign and vote against these fuckers every election, but I keep going to work every day.
I too work for a defense contractor, and have asked myself this very same question before. My company makes UAV's - nothing as ominous as tanks or guns thankfully. I never came up with a satisfactory answer, i'm not sure there is one.
The one universal given is that our country will always be involved of some kind of conflict. America was founded on a war, and we declare war on every fucking thing, the war on drugs, on poverty, on literacy - whatever man, war war war. The military industrial complex just feeds that addiction to war, with it's more creative and innovative ways to kill people. It's a never ending cycle of lobby-types doing their very goddamn best to get the government to spend more money on military shit so thier companies can bring in more profit. As for personally lining thier pockets, i'm pretty sure that's against the laws. We all know lobbyiests have thier ways - still, I can't see it as bad as I imagine it to be.
In your case, it's not as bad I suspect - Uncle Sam is increasingly out sourcing service related functions to contractors, things like vehicle maintence, or IT support. Their take is that the military should be about the war fighter, and anything that detracts from that hurts thier ability to wage war. So, take your security clearance, sit overseas for a while, and make some good cash. Clearances are rare, and very bankable. I was offered several jobs over there, and the money was outstanding - but decided against it for personal reasons.
The only possible scenario in which the DoD might have to reassess is if there were some sort of mercenary collective action who was somehow able to hold the line and boycott the war. Clearly, this isn't going to happen.
I agree, if you actually want to stop the war then start a strike, but since that won't work, partly cause it's america and partly cause it's in friggin war, people won't strike in war.
Now i think you should do it, simply because it is not really "war" work which is imorral. If everyone stopped repairing helicopters then some people would crash, or they'd hire mexicans or something. Not really an ideal outcome. If all soldiers stopped fighting, then that would have an impact. But yeah, it's not gonna happen.
As for all the bullshit reasons in this thread, mainly being "someone's gonna do it anyway" or "all companies that are successful are corrupt" you are full of shit. Strikes are actually pretty damn useful, and there is a reason you should not walk past a picket line. People should be able to have a decent pay, and if they don't get so, they should be able to refuse working to get one. End of story. And i am pretty damn certain not all succesful companies are corrupt, sure, most, but that's not a good reason for accepting it.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
Was in Camp Humphreys. I'm stationed at Fort Campbell now looking at a deployment to Afghanistan within the next year.
As far as military pay goes, I know that it doesnt decrease. But I also know that we just got the lowest pay increase in like, the last twenty years.
Yet every soldier I talk to still seems to think that republicans actually want to pay them more. It's like we're all just uniform filling with no actual brains.
I think I've pretty much decided that working for a contractor is like that is against what I believe in. But that doesn't mean I've decided not to seek out one of these jobs. There are alternatives to it in the civilian world, especially with my FCC license. The word I get though is that these jobs tend to be sparse and the tend to be difficult to hang on to. On the other hand I'm not really planning on making a career out of this.
Dammit, this is an irritating decision to have to make. Military guys get out all the time and take jobs with contractors.
Origin Handle - OminousBulge
XBox Live GT - TheOminousBulge