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After previously working for a defense contractor, I witnessed first-hand the excessive spending and waste there. Recently, a former coworker of mine told me about the first use of the term Military Industrial Complex, used in Eiseinhower's farewell speech. I agree that the complex has reached a point where it's hurting us. Some key points, in no particular order, are: 1. It turns defense, a necessity, into a for-profit industry targeted for producing gains for its shareholders before actually protecting our soldiers. 2. Massive bills to the government, that make costs of education and entitlement pale in comparison. 3. The US defense industry is now largely controlled by foreign financial interests. 4. Mass incompetence, excessive hiring, at over-inflated, above-market salaries. 5. We spend so much on defense, we outrank the next several countries put together, and that's excessively large by any standard. Like any place, it had many talented people and many worthless people. My main reason for posting this is that I'm curious what people here, or in various literature, have to say about how to solve the problem. One idea that I personally have thought of is to force companies over a given size that have a given percentage of their revenue come from government contracts to be non-profit. Effectively, force them to back up their words of "protecting the Soldier" by actually producing their products at labor and materials cost, with salary information available to the public. Further ideas involve phasing government contractors into research organizations for different groups (not just defense) and let defense products themselves be manufactured by the government, potentially with guidance from contracting agencies that built them. A final idea is to limit the size of government contractors so there will be more competition, as well as enforce contracting rules to prevent phony no-bid contracts from being accepted by government agencies (mainly defense) in bed with the contractors. On a political scale, not declaring pointless wars would help a lot with this. What are your thoughts?
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Jun 23, 2014 04:54
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Jolly Jumbuck posted:3. The US defense industry is now largely controlled by foreign financial interests. Could you expand on this please. Are the majority of shares of defense contractors like Lockheed, or Northrop owned by foreigners? I'm legitimately curious.
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Jun 23, 2014 04:58
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Jolly Jumbuck posted:Further ideas involve phasing government contractors into research organizations for different groups (not just defense) and let defense products themselves be manufactured by the government, potentially with guidance from contracting agencies that built them. Why? Massive waste and bloating seems to come from R&D rather than actual manufacturing of weapons, not only that but the government itself is better suited out to carry out R&D than manufacturing. If your goal is to cut down on bloat why not nationalize R&D instead?
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Jun 26, 2014 02:13
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