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From: charlie@cca.UUCP (Charlie Kaufman)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Working for the War Machine
Message-ID: <6146@cca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Nov-83 21:55:31 EST
Article-I.D.: cca.6146
Posted: Fri Nov 18 21:55:31 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Nov-83 00:33:25 EST
Lines: 30

I work for the war machine.  Once, when I was feeling moral qualms about
it all, a friend (who is similarly employed) commented:

	Well, I figure the Department of Defense has all this money, and
	they are either going to use it to build things to kill people
	or they are going to give it to me.  Which is better?

There really is something to that.  Unless you drop out of society
totally, you are going to something which results in your paying income
taxes.  If you do, you are fueling the machine.  There's no getting
around it.  You can't avoid the issue so face it.

The issue for me is "Am I improving or hurting the prospects of mankind
by doing what I am doing"?  For most activities, you have to think
fairly hard (counting direct and indirect effects and probable results)
to convince yourself one way or the other.  And convincing yourself is
about the best you can hope for;  the world is far too complicated to
make a really solid argument.

If you are truly interested in improving the prospects for mankind,
you'll have to do better than not working for a company involved with
"defense".  You may avoid having to think about it, which is pleasant, but
your tax dollars will be hard at work.  Actually having a positive
effect will take looking for positive actions.  And those are more
likely to be found within the military industrial complex than outside
of it.

                          --Charlie Kaufman
                            charlie@cca
                            ...decvax!cca!charlie