Public servants/members of the military not only pledge to avoid conflicts of interest, but the appearance of them as well. Shouldn't we hold economic activity that services those interests to that same standard?
But are we willing to pay for it? Government jobs already pay pretty poorly compared to the private sector. Slapping the equivalent of a non-compete onto them isn't going to make them more appealing. You might have gotten rid of all the corruption, but you also ensured that the government will be staffed by monkeys.
Even then an O-9/O-10 gets $17,675.10 a month[0] in base pay and $3,963 a month[1] in *tax exempt*[2] housing allowance for the DC metro area. That's $259,657.20 a year in salary. While maybe not high by C-suite or Silicone Valley standards, that ain't bad at all.
0. https://militarypay.defense.gov/Portals/3/Documents/2023%20B... 1. https://veteran.com/bah-rates-state/district-of-columbia-dc/ 2. https://militarypay.defense.gov/Pay/Tax-Information/Exempt/
O-10s are almost all direct reports of the Secretary of Defense and skip-level reports of the President. Many O-9s are direct reports of an O-10 and skip-level reports of the Secretary of Defense.
The Pentagon cannot pass an audit of its budget to save its life, it's the status quo: https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2019/11/20/Pentagon-Fails-Aud....
The Pentagon makes tens of trillions of dollars of accounting adjustments each year because its internal financial controls are basically non existent.
If the Pentagon was a publicly traded company, Matt Levine would be writing about it as an exemplar of fraud every week and its shareholders would be suing.
You're underplaying the corruption by an order of magnitude at least.
That's not what the link claims though.
>The fiscal 2019 audit examined more than $2.9 trillion in assets and $2.8 trillion in liabilities, the Pentagon said. The process involved about 1,400 auditors conducting 600 site visits, at a cost of nearly $1 billion.
Sounds like they can't keep track of all the stuff they supposedly own (ie. "assets"). That's slightly different than its yearly budget simply disappearing. Even if this year they tracked down where every cent went, they'd still fail the audit, because they can't account for the stuff they purchased years ago.
Your response to the corruption is whataboutism? Should we aim to end corruption regardless of what happens in other sectors?
What's more, funding allocations to the services start with what's called the Defense Planning Guidance, which is a document issued by the Office of the (civilian) Secretary of Defense. This is then broken down into Service Program Guidance about where each military service spends its money. Services then come up with a Program Objective Memorandum outlining the budget they need, which then goes to the Joint Staff, because the Joint Staff's job is refereeing interservice food fights. This then goes to the (civilian) Presidential administration, who presents a budget to Congress, who approves it.
So there are many cooks in this budgetary kitchen, and if Congress doesn't like the military Congress funded and approved for the President to use, then perhaps Congress can look itself in the face and ask itself why it's not fulfilling its duties under Article I of the United States Constitution, instead of trying to pass the buck onto the President's subordinate officers, when it's ultimately Congress who controls the purse strings.
I keep saying "Congress" for a reason . . .
aiming to eliminate corruptoin is a bit pie in the sky.
Again, looking back on a 20-year active and reserve career in uniform, my personal opinion is that a lot of the waste and inefficiency in DOD is precisely because of all the ethics rules. Not that I don't approve of ethics rules, but there are times it seems the hoops you have to jump through to spend government money are based on the assumption that A) everything has to be above board and B) all contractors involved are inherently a bunch of flim-flam artists who will fleece the government given half a chance.
And this is precisely why the Pentagon bureaucracy is so infamous, and why companies want to hire retired Generals and Admirals to help them navigate it.
Yes it absolutely is. Obviously people who choose to do it don't find that to be the case, but there's no reason we have to agree with them.
If the US can't exist without the atrocities it has been using its military to commit for the last century then sure, it should not exist. I suspect there are other paths, however.
Be thankful that you are not in charge of a country where hard decisions get made, and each decision costs lives no matter what you do.
I would not trust you.
They’re there for connections.
Every general and flag officer started out as a junior officer or junior enlisted servicemember. There is literally no other way to get there. There are no lateral hires into the military; it's "up or out."
Most of these generals also went through the military academies, not ROTC or some other pipeline. They had to convince a member of Congress to recommend them, so yes navigating politics plays heavily into their career from day one.
Plenty of other career officers go into consulting or actual leadership roles but the generals named in the article are bought off with these board seats to use their influence over military decision makers, not some other nebulous expertise.
The US has many flaws, but the idea that one poll determines what is or isn't a "full democracy" is frankly childish. As is pulling out snarky Clemenceau quotes when the US already has full civilian control over the military.
I think that the US armed forces have a far wider set of responsibilities than "war". For example, they act as a social protection service for its members, and weapons program are managed as part of economic policies as job guarantee programmes.
Then there are research programs who started out as military projects which ended up benefitting the whole mankind, such as the internet or GPS.
This takes place in a country whose society has been almost rabidly opposed to any policy remotely associated with socialism. It's almost a cheat code of sorts.
In pragmatic terms, criticising the US armed forces just because "war" seems ignorant and foolish.
I don't think you fully understand the issue you're trying to comment on. Not only is conflating a military organization with communism beyond wrong, but you're also completely oblivious to very basic aspects of human nature that are key to living fulfilling lives such as human rights and individual freedom.
I don't think so. The definition of communism is not a organization with a hierarchical structure. You even fail to touch the central traits of communism. You're simply trying to forcefully conflate two separate concepts while ignoring it's primary traits.
In short, gibberish.
The primary traits of interest I listed in the previous comment. Are they exactly the same? of course not. But that doesn't mean they can't share similarities.
I'm not convinced you realize that the definition of communism is not "a hierarchical organization".
I don't see the point of continuing this discussion. Even your basic assumptions are fundamentally wrong.
Otherwise sometimes partisan, but topical; Ctrl-F "lobby"; 2 year waiting period for lawmakers; "End Washington Corruption": https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/end-washington-corruption
Lord of War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_War
Tropic Thunder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_Thunder
Barry on HBO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_(TV_series)
Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ryan_(TV_series)
[citation needed]
> based on my 20 years in uniform
Ah. Could have lead with that conflict of interest up front.
That's not how it works. You don't get to pull out of your ass that a random career is dishonorable and pretend that it's everyone else's responsibility to fix your unsubstantiated accusation.
Either you have a valid reason to argue that a career is dishonorable, or you should just stay quiet.
You find it strange to consider murderers and torturers to be dishonorable?
The issue with defense contracting is not corruption, but the fact that it can feel like a trap for a lot of transitioning vets. For every general that retires there’s 1000+ mid level officers and enlisted not knowing what else to do with themselves. And after 6-20 years in service joining a defense company because they were under equipped to and unprepared to transition from military duty to a fully civilian position.
Sure, it's always needed to have ethics safeguards when people involved in contracting switch jobs, but domain expertise is a thing that's valued. And as much as it's an uncomfortable truth for some people on the internet, working in defense is not a dishonorable career. And while corruption in the so-called "military-industrial complex" exists, based on my 20 years in uniform, I'm not sure it's worse than in other sectors of the economy.