Hacker News Reader

Comment by RockyMcNuts | Hacker News Reader

You let entrepreneurs make billion-dollar fortunes on war, they're going to make wars keep happening.

Roosevelt said 'not one war millionaire' from WWII and it's one of the things that made WWII legitimate and successful.

Adventurers wearing the mantle of patriotism while enriching themselves and leaving a trail of destruction and hatred that will last for generations are one of the things that made Iraq and Afghanistan a travesty.

View on HN

> Roosevelt said 'not one war millionaire' from WWII and it's one of the things that made WWII legitimate and successful.

WWII made a lot of millionaires. I suggest you re-evaluate what you've been led to believe regarding that.

I never said it didn't, however it was a goal and a statement Roosevelt made, and there were no billionaire private army princes. So I gently invite you to re-evaluate your reading comprehension before getting snide :)

Is that really a realistic solution for maximizing profits for a PMC? Constant conflict? In the first place the suggestion that human conflict will somehow extinguish and contractors would need to generate demand seems to fly right in the face of 3,400 year of history of which a mere 268 had peace. Security spending isn't just for active demand - wouldn't it be more profitable to be contracted to guard something when nothing happens then to be actively engaged in a conflict?

Also contractors didn't make Iraq and Afghanistan a travesty, that was on state actors.

Have you heard about IBM's role in WWII? Go read "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black. Those tattooed numbers on the arms of people in concentration camps were numbers tabulated by IBM machines.

I believe Roosevelt was mostly talking about nobody making a fortune off american war expenditure, not german. (also, the Holocaust and WW2 are not the same thing)

Pretty interesting read from IBM about this:

https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1388.wss

Reply on news.ycombinator.com