One of the worst and best things to happen to the world was the rise of the private defense contractors.
Obviously I don’t need to explain why it is one of the worst things. But as for the best? Man, if all of the worst excesses of capitalism and neoliberalism aren’t captured in a microcosm that is defence contractors…
The sheer amount of graft and inefficiency and boondoggles and everything else that comes from putting profits first in a captive capital environment. That’s not to say that truly free-range capital is somehow a force for good but when defence contractors know that they’re going to get handed billions upon billions of dollars every year and that they’re competing against maybe a couple of other contractors, and sometimes none at all, then they’re largely insulated from the forces of the market that tend to drive capitalist innovation.
The fact that the US had basically emptied its stocks of certain munitions really early in the Ukraine war speaks volumes about how fragile of a paper tiger the military-industrial complex really is. Obviously the US would have strategic stockpiles tucked away for when the shit hits the fan but last I checked it was going to take years for stocks of certain munitions to be replenished.
And the US isn’t even in close to being in a full-blown war right now.
If it was like the old model the US would be able to take direct intervention into production, command-economy style, to produce weapons in order to fill the current shortfall in production but it would probably require an all out war with the US at the centre before they’d even consider abandoning their precious and fundamentally hamstrung neoliberal model.
Shit’s rotten to the core and it is glorious thing to behold.
One of the worst and best things to happen to the world was the rise of the private defense contractors.
Obviously I don’t need to explain why it is one of the worst things. But as for the best? Man, if all of the worst excesses of capitalism and neoliberalism aren’t captured in a microcosm that is defence contractors…
The sheer amount of graft and inefficiency and boondoggles and everything else that comes from putting profits first in a captive capital environment. That’s not to say that truly free-range capital is somehow a force for good but when defence contractors know that they’re going to get handed billions upon billions of dollars every year and that they’re competing against maybe a couple of other contractors, and sometimes none at all, then they’re largely insulated from the forces of the market that tend to drive capitalist innovation.
The fact that the US had basically emptied its stocks of certain munitions really early in the Ukraine war speaks volumes about how fragile of a paper tiger the military-industrial complex really is. Obviously the US would have strategic stockpiles tucked away for when the shit hits the fan but last I checked it was going to take years for stocks of certain munitions to be replenished.
And the US isn’t even in close to being in a full-blown war right now.
If it was like the old model the US would be able to take direct intervention into production, command-economy style, to produce weapons in order to fill the current shortfall in production but it would probably require an all out war with the US at the centre before they’d even consider abandoning their precious and fundamentally hamstrung neoliberal model.
Shit’s rotten to the core and it is glorious thing to behold.