Gun Control: Say What you Mean.

[Brian37]

The gun Manufactures are like the Porky Pig cartoon where Daffy sells him a futuristic automated home button panel. Every time something went wrong Daffy was there to sell him something else to solve his problems only to create another.

"WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T PRESS THE RED BUTTON"

Porky presses it, turns out to be the "Tidal Wave" button which raises the house.

Daffy flies up to the porch now high in the atmosphere in a chopper and extends his hand out with a blue button in his hand "For another 50 bucks I can install this to get you down".

Good metaphor, but it's not just the gun industry that does that. Every corporation out there is like that, not just gun manufacturers. McDonalds and other fast food companies don't hesitate to try to get us to eat their food every day three times a day regardless of what health impact it has on us. Video game companies want us to be addicted to their games, no matter what damage it does to our personal lives. Fossil fuel companies have been going out of their way to prevent green technology from becoming a viable alternative even though prices are going through the roof and there's environmental damage being done.

But I don't really blame the corporations, either. Evolution has impacted the corporate world and the companies that survive and thrive are the companies that are best suited to the current environment. Our current environment favors companies with a single vision of making money regardless of who gets hurt. If a company actually has ethics, you see them getting bought out or simply destroye by a bigger multi-national giant.

Right. It used to be that a business would provide you with quality and good service and something long lasting, even if cheap. But Windows alone is a good example of "Why make it good, if we make it good, they wont need more".

[TaraJo]

Right. It used to be that a business would provide you with quality and good service and something long lasting, even if cheap. But Windows alone is a good example of "Why make it good, if we make it good, they wont need more".

Yeah, I know. Things like computers, cars, video games, televisions, and lots of other stuff, they're all designed knowing that in 5-10 years, the technology will be obsolete and you'll have to replace it.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's one of the considerations when something is designed actually, it's expected service life. You -could- over-engineer a piece f electronics if you wanted to, making it prohibitively expensive but very high quality - but with current trends, no matter how high the quality of manufacture it will be junk very shortly....very pretty, very well made - junk. Used to be involved in quitte bit of that. Define the service life, design the board, find a way to make the board cheaper still, bank the difference in bonus (a % of it anyway).

[BGChuckLee]

Right. It used to be that a business would provide you with quality and good service and something long lasting, even if cheap. But Windows alone is a good example of "Why make it good, if we make it good, they wont need more".

Yeah, I know. Things like computers, cars, video games, televisions, and lots of other stuff, they're all designed knowing that in 5-10 years, the technology will be obsolete and you'll have to replace it.

No, product designer will go out of there way to make their product deliberately non functional. The reason why technology becomes obsolete is because it is an extremely competitive industry, there will always be a company that will make their computer leaner and meaner.

Apple/Microsoft are the two highest net worth companies in the world, there is no higher product competition in business than technology & computers.

[The Grand Nudger]

They might, but they'd be fired for it.

[CapnAwesome]

Now as for military spending...



I think we can cut our military budget in half (there's 350 billion in spending cuts right there!) and still be outspending China and Russia combined. Oh, by the way, they hate each other. Don't think we need to worry about the UK. I think they're cool with our independence now. France won't be invading us anytime soon either.

Let me be blunt: As long as we keep pouring money into this bloated Cold War defense budget, we on the left don't need to concede one damn dime in social safety net or school budget cuts.

I'm going to precursor this by saying that I totally agree that we should cut military spending. However I think the often brought up statistic about our military budget is a deceptive one. If you express our military as a percentage of the GDP, it's not as outrageous as people think. It's about 4 percent, about the same as China, a tiny bit more than Russia, less than almost all of the middle east. It's more than all European countries except Greece, but then again they would have larger militaries if they didn't know we would bail them out.

Also it's a bit of a logical fallacy yourself to say that as long as there is military waste, other waste is okay. Everything is certainly capable of being examined and cut at the same time. Nor does the fact that the military is a huge welfare program exclude other programs from being useless or bad.

Military budgets by GDP: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications...4rank.html

[Autumnlicious]

It is erroneous to make a political platform on cutting programs and cut other things except the military, which is one of the largest expenditures.

It is erroneous to make it seem like others are not at all for cutting waste because they're correct in pointing out the military-industrial complex's lion share of the budget.

I don't think anyone in this thread has been pro-waste except if it is military.

In fact, I've been left with the perception that others feel that the military gets special dispensation to waste as much as they want while every other social program that both military and nonmilitary personnel use is cut.

[Tiberius]

If there's one thing economic thing I agree with liberals on, it's that military budgets need to be drastically reduced. Even in the UK, we have a bloated budget (considering the size of us).

[CapnAwesome]

It is erroneous to make a political platform on cutting programs and cut other things except the military, which is one of the largest expenditures.

It is erroneous to make it seem like others are not at all for cutting waste because they're correct in pointing out the military-industrial complex's lion share of the budget.

I totally agree with your first point. The military is the most wasteful thing in the government, and the most useless at the same time. However the post I was replying actually specifically said that no cuts should be made to school budgets or the (always very general) 'social safety net' because we have a bloated military budget.

That statement is a red herring. It's nonsensical, imagine if our school budgets were ten times what they are, does the statement still stand? The military's budget has nothing at all to do with the validity of school budgets or medicare or anything.

[jonb]

This is not for me a right left issue.
What I see is a tendency in governments to destroy economies.
To take it away from armaments for a moment, and to explain we have a similar problem in Britain, Governments of all hues have for a long time used house prices as a mark of how well the economy is doing. The problem is that as industry has shrunk government have had to intervene to prop up the housing market. Now in Britain nearly all individuals will invest in housing rather than business, the average family cannot afford their own home without government subsidies. But no government can stand against this progression, without causing a collapse of the banks, and through that a crash of the economy. Long term though the government will not be able to tax enough to provide the subsidies given to housing.
Because the government is assessed, by house prices, it will devote so much wealth to that sector, the economy will no longer be able to support it.
You could see this as an addiction, where the addict eventually becomes so owned by the addiction all other things do not matter to them.
For America the same has been happening with armaments. If a senator spoke out against military spending, the ability to bring back government military contracts to their state would be reduced, and unemployment in their area would be increased. Why would you then vote for them.
Because the USA has a strong military it can force an issue, but each time it does so, the reasons why others feel they should resist it is also increased. However if the USA tried to stop this resistance with only diplomacy, because it has already won so much with force, in the short term of tens of years, it would have to expect to come out worse from negotiations, so it has to use its military power, which is also the reason why it is creating enemies, which forces it to spend on arms.
It is good to have strength, but when it becomes an addiction it will destroy you.