Nobody calls it that or thinks of it that way except for the media and the gov't. It will always be "the 401" to non pod-people.

God I can't stand this type of shit. There's no glory in having your dead carcass paraded down a road "named" in anticipation of exploiting your death for political collateral. I'm not saying everything our military does is bad, and our government certainly kicks a lot of ass compared to almost any other country.. But this renaming bullshit comes from the Afghan/Iraq conflicts which I think 99% of sane people agree are not about freedom but the military industrial complex sustaining itself.

And just like in the USA, most of our military is not comprised of "heroes" but the poor, the unintelligent, the naive, the unskilled, basically the dregs of society who have joined up for countless reasons that do not include protecting the country. Usually they're trying to avoid going on welfare or are trying to pay for an education (which is sort of heroic in some senses). In some cases they're just dumb enough to believe what a recruiter tells them.

@Tymbrwulf, I don't know what prompted your lame and sudden attack against me, but you do understand you're citing a cracked.com comedy page to bolster your argument, right?


@dystopianfuturetoday, glad to see you had to edit your comment above and add a bullet list. Very classy, sir. Allow me to touch on that NEW list.

-Why your anti corporate movement is funded by corporations.

You keep citing the Kochs as being supporters of CATO as if their contributions are in any way a strike against the liberty movement. Here's a fun fact: how many corporations can we count that donate to your Democratic Party? A whole helluva lot more than donate to any liberty movement. And don't get me started on the Democratic support of the military industrial complex.

-Your double standards on 'coercion by threat of violence' as it pertains to private property.

You're trying to compare defensive and offensive violence. Fail.

-An example of a successful modern society that doesn't tax.

Irrelevant. Also, I noted compulsory tax vs. voluntary tax above. I hope you're actually reading the comments before posting responses.

-Your use of deceptive slogans and frames in lieu of an actual argument.

Not sure what you mean unless you're trying to paint words like "central designer" and "statism" as being deceptive slogans? I've given nothing but cogent and well framed arguments. I understand I may be in the minority on this site and a lot of people vocally disagree with me, but that doesn't mean I'm not giving you strong arguments. To the contrary, I must be because I've brought on the wrath of several Sifters in here already. That's me tickling that cognitive dissonance.

-Your frequent use of 'begging the question'.

Where have I proposed a premise as truth that requires proof? This, to me, is grasping at straws. I know we love to accuse people of fallacious arguments, but this seems out of left field

-The striking similarities between your own opinion and corporate opinion.

Like your striking similarities to white land owners and their democratic belief in slavery?

-How markets reward violence, labor exploitation and pollution.

This is unfounded. You can post links to isolated incidents all day long, or how corporations (government created entities) are doing bad things under the limited liability protections of the state. And labor exploitation is real, but you're forgetting a part of the market that corrects for these things: the consumers. You like to use Nike as an example, but there's a couple problems with that argument: 1. You can't assume to know the economy of the country with these "sweatshops" (otherwise that would be begging the question, sir). 2. This may be more money than they can make in that part of the world. 3. Nike is a corporation, therefore a government protected entity that enjoys crony capitalism and corporate welfare that keeps competition in the marketplace noncompetitive, so there are less companies able to compete with Nike.

Boom.

Military spending by the pentagon and homeland security doesn't reflect all the money spent on "defense". There are billions in military spending through the department of energy (anything nuclear) as well as other bureaucracy such as NSA, NASA, commerce and transportation, all charged with the illusionary goal of "security". Hidden billions upon billions.

Further, there is billions in veterans benefits, and interest on loans for past spending. We also have over 450 military bases around the world, the operations of which do not fall solely within the pentagon budget. And that is before we get to the sweet tax deals given to the military industrial complex, which basically sub-contracts out work to almost every congressional district in the country, ensuring that our economy and our employment are tied to military spending, and that congressional representatives never vote against a "defense" measure, no matter how retarded. (Notice how Obama goes to India and claims to be creating jobs because the Indian government has ordered a whole bunch of C-47's? ... our own president is chief sales rep for the military industrial complex.)

Most importantly, as a factor in DISCRETIONARY spending, we are way past 50% of the discretionary budget on military spending. The US, by quite a margin, is the most militaristic nation in the world.
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

We've found out only a bit more about how it works (Electromagnetism) since this video. Most of the knowledge comes from our particle accelerators. (We've found particles that specifically carry the force, which combine into atoms, then elements, then molecules, and so on...)

Even if we explain how everything works (we figure out gravity's connection, what makes energy into mass) we're still left with origin answers. If you understand Quantum Mechanics w/QED (and as Feynman would say it that, "You don't!") you might allow some to see that "perhaps" we were created from nothing, it just required time.

This is something that we can "conceive" and "imagine". Understanding has definitions with clear boundaries, were as the Universe it seems may only be something that is only "conceivable" until It can define Itself.

/(Being able to "define" itself could be a term to subjectively describe Humanity.)(Or Aliens...)

-- (edited in) --
The only thing the "ICP" added to that speech is that they're correct, but only if the question was asked by a serious mind. Otherwise, they show their complete and utter lack of any knowledge we've had available--to them--since before they were born. It's a parody (almost dark irony; new *tag?) only in the sense of how ridiculously rampant this type of thinking is; in the common populace. It's more ironically sad (as above), in a lot of ways. Their video shows (atleast in their city school zone) how ineffective our teaching methodology/funding is. (Not the teachers; more society and the structure of learning. Teachers tend to be the only glue holding anything together. I've had more than enough first hand knowledge and/or witnessing.)

I could add on forever. The Teachers are willing to change and many bend over backwards; paying for NEW texts (sometimes buying new texts so they don't use some text that has been broken by another state), materials (chemistry, biology, music, etc... pay the most -- unless you're an elementary teacher...then you pay 1/10 your paycheck, if you care for your kids). IT'S not the teachers and the children will go with the flow. There needs to be an ideological change in how kids are taught. I'd go with a college type. Small classes, higher budgets, good training for teachers. Consequences that will make a bully STOP, and if they don't make sure there are classes to help them and if necessary the parents as well. (Yes, parents should be able to be pulled from work.) On staff Doctors/Psych to always help (I know some are starting this). Apprenticing. Not holding a kid back in all areas cause they suck at one. I could go on for awhile longer. Some of this might require us to demobilize the military/industrial complex. Look at how well they can teach "children/teenagers with no hope" into a Tier One Operator, SOC etc...

/Didn't mean to be so long, but as you can see, the "ICP" really bug me.

No. It may jumpstart it temporarily but as you print more money, the value of the dollar drops, and then we're stuck with inflation. And so to incentivize people to spend money in an inflated economy the Fed then in turn manipulates interest rates (cheap credit) and creates market bubbles that give the impression people are making more money because more money is available than before and there's no major change in interest rates, so it's cheap credit.

And so because credit is cheap we no longer spend from savings, but spend from credit. That means we don't save our money before buying that TV or buying that car, but instead buy it on credit. This poses a major problem because we become accustomed to living in debt, and we tend to spend more. And why shouldn't we when saving money means it will be devalued over time based on inflation.

Between 1813 and 1913 the cost of gold per ounce remained rather steady (approx. $30/ounce), and it wasn't until we abandoned a value backed currency (meaning currency that cannot be printed out of thin air like the Fed has been doing since 1913) that we saw increases from 1913 to 2010. Today gold is closer to $2000/ounce. This is why saving money in a bank is a bad investment (and so is saving your cash in a coffee can) and therefore people are incentivized to spend from credit and invest in risk retirement investments.

Capital is savings. Capitalism is spending from savings. What we have now isn't not true Capitalism, but rather spending from credit, i.e., spending from debt. And it's dangerous. Eventually the dollar bubble will pop, and we'll most likely be left where the Germans were after WWI with a worthless currency they burned in the winter to stay warm.

The largest scam of the fiat currency system, however, is who is rewarded and who is most strongly affected negatively. when money is printed, the government, the banks and the military industrial complex receives the money first and spends it before "inflation" drops the value. It then gets circulated through society, and the last people to have their cost of living adjusted for inflation tends to be those on Social Security. It's really an unfair and cruel system.

Anyhow, that's the gist of it as far as I understand it.

....Big Oil, The Pharmaceutical Industry, The Banking Industry, The Insurance Industry, The Military Industrial Complex....

I finally begin to understand what they mean by saying that the military industrial complex has changed american society over the past 40 years..

>> ^peggedbea:

^ my tea party family members say they're libertarians.

Interesting. I've heard this a lot recently. But libertarians are for pure equality, civil rights and open borders and much of the things the typical conservative dislikes. Libertarians and conservatives only agree on limiting government and shrinking taxes, but even then it seems to be conservative rhetoric. Last time I checked spending trillions on the military industrial complex and creating bureaucratic agencies (i.e., Homeland Security) wasn't limiting the power of government.


Yeah, and I have tea party family members, too, but they dare not call themselves libertarian around me lest they hear an earful of my bullshit for an hour.

It was a fair point and he said it nice enough. No harm no foul in my book.

For the record, I would have called it
Child Performance Artist Questions the Individual's Role Within the Military Industrial Complex*

*not really

10 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by chicchorea.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Eisenhower on the Military Industrial Complex. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by gwiz665. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Eisenhower-warns-of-the-military-industrial-complex

@pigeon you got the isdupe covered?

Alright it's been over 3 days.

I'm making an executive decision:
*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Eisenhower-warns-of-the-military-industrial-complex

the other one http://www.videosift.com/video/Eisenhowers-Farewell-Address-to-the-American-People stays as it is, as they are different enough videos to merit their own sift.