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From: leff@smu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: A new topic - (nf)
Message-ID: <3855@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Nov-83 01:39:25 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3855
Posted: Tue Nov 15 01:39:25 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Nov-83 04:29:00 EST
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#R:wxlvax:-19400:smu:16200001:000:2002
smu!leff    Nov 14 09:09:00 1983

Your questions remind me of questions I had when I was a LIbertarian about
accepting government aid for college.  Government money was stolen money
and therefore I couldn't accept it.  (I resolved that dilemma at that time
by giving the money back to my father who was working and paid more in taxes
than I got from the government.)   

The problem with that argument is that all money is eventual government
taken.  You may get it directly from the government, from someone who
works for the government or from someone who works for a store who got
some money who works for the government etc.

In your case, eventually any money you receive will bepartially from people
who got paid for building weopons that you did not like.

There are some CS departments in University that receive no government
grants from the defense related departments.  However, some of your
students will go into defense related industries.  Some of them will
be getting VA benefits of some kind or other, etc. etc.

If you work for the phone company, government employees buy telephone services,
all government agencies have at least some of their communications over
regular telephone lines.

IBM does government work and most computer companies do sell at least a few
computers to the defense industries.  Atari was asked to develop some video
games for training soldiers!

IN short, you can't escape the government defense work.  

I personally think you might consider going into teaching where at least
you could say you helped give other people the opportunity to make the
same choice you are undergoing now.

It really is a matter of where do you draw the line as to how close
you wish to avoid being.  Probably, working for the defense department or
for a direct contractor is too close to the line.  Working as a technical
support person for a computer store would probably be very far on the
other side of the line.  In short, 'related to the defense industry' is
a fuzzy set when it comes to job opportunities.