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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Federal government has limited purview of its citizens, but can more easily regulate the people in the military and interactions with them.

As it derives its power from the delegates of the states, it has to appease them even if it has the power to regulate all facets of life. So there isn't a law for all people as not enough delegates can stomach that, but for the military its easy.

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> Federal government has limited purview of its citizens, but can more easily regulate the people in the military and interactions with them.

Congress passes these protections, the military just lobbies for them internally because they cause problems with the operations of the military. Some things I saw a lot:

- A Private, PFC, or Lance Corporal who lives in the barracks (therefore has the most straight-forward pay with little extra incentives) [1] gets approved for a car loan on a used car at 20%+ APR or credit cards which revolve into 20%+ APR with caps well above their means. When they can't pay they will attempt to contact the chain of command and pressure the military into intervening. Eventually they'll settle, the car or items get returned, the Marine gets busted down, and then they go on to do the same thing all over again with the same car.

- Lending services know that military are fixed income and that they are also low income, and will therefore shop predatory rates to them as a means of "refinancing". Really, it's debt consolidation because military members also have a high rate of divorce and debt.

- Banks will attempt to repossess homes while military members are on deployment and cannot access internet or financial services. Also happens to reservists who are without their primary income and are deployed. (ServiceMembers Civil Relief Act) [2]

Military just face some very unique situations, but a lot of it derives from the fact that we pay enlisted personnel (the greatest in number) dirt for their trade.

[1]: Note, these are pre-tax: https://militarybenefits.info/2021-military-pay-charts/

[2]: https://www.texasbar.com/flashdrive/materials/military_law/M...

> When they can't pay they will attempt to contact the chain of command and pressure the military into intervening

What logic does this follow? Like, why would I ask my employer to intervene if I have taken some loan with bad conditions?

I worded that poorly, sorry. Businesses will contact the troops chain of command.

The military exercises a lot influence over troops, they can bust you down or remove your security clearance. They can also push you into payment plans and reflect these situations in your performance reviews. The military, for all intents and purposes, acts as much more than just a simple employer and lending services (among other businesses and people) exploit that.

The military provides your clothes, your housing, your food, your laundry, your transport, your healthcare, and your chaplain. They can control your schedule 24 hours a day, decide who you're allowed to call or write to and what you're allowed to say, and decide what electric appliances you're allowed in your quarters. They can change your place of work to a foreign country, prevent you from resigning, and even literally have you imprisoned or executed.

While in some regards the military is like an employer, in other regards it's very different.

> but can more easily regulate the people in the military and interactions with them

I always found it amusing how the "patriots" worshipping the military are pretty much the same people who hate any kind of government intervention in their lives.

I’m reminded of the common quip that the US military is the largest socialist organization in the United States.

Not really socialist. It's just a giant imperial jobs program that also provides cover for channeling tax dollars into the coffers of the donor class.

A socialist meritocracy.

This is actually one of the things I like to highlight to folks that talk a little-too-gleefully about socialism. The military implements socialism for convenience and cost effectiveness. The result is atrocious. This was in Camp Lejeune, NC.

I almost never got adequate medical care. The medical system was strange and winding. There were all kinds of approvals needed for very simple things.

The food standards were absolutely terrible. I don't know if it was an actual thing, but I was told there was a threshold for the number of roaches that could be present on food dispensing equipment before they'd throw the food out.

The housing was disgusting. I lived in a barracks built in 1945 with inadequate parking, sewage that once popped a goldfish into a toilet bowl, water that occasionally would turn totally brown or yellow and is now known to have made people sick. There was a door to the interior of the building where ducts, pipes, and internet were run that all contained asbestos and asbestos warnings.

The worst part, you had no option to say, "Give me the dollar amount you spend on this so I can find my own options" but they'll gladly tell you what they spent at an inflated rate.

These are just the ones off the top of my head.

The results you describe sound very much like pre-1989 Czechoslovakia to me. I guess they actually did achieve socialism! :)

They do achieve socialism, without a doubt.

I have heard similar stories from all members of my family that served in the military. Their experiences with healthcare in the military have essentially guaranteed they will never get behind a single-payer health-care system.

I think it's possible. I existed in that system and am at times still bound to it when dealing with the VA. I think my attitude is more, "go fix the system you already have to experiment with."

On the flip side, the military also has Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Medical Center (both who regularly treat the President, such as when Trump had covid), life insurance, TSGLI, G.I. Bill (free plus monthly stipend), lifetime disability, Tricare, VA home loans, among others. I know people who lived in brand new barracks with keycards. People who lived in air conditioned pods in the middle of the desert with four square meals a day.

Sounds like you had a bad experience and things could certainly improve. The military won't always offer a stellar experience, and Marines are often rough with their surroundings. Just ask people deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your experiences are meaningful to you, but they don't indicate anything significant about socialism. Socialism is not the goal of USA military. The point of the exercise is to transfer resources from citizens to armaments manufacturers. Who lives or dies, how they're treated in the meantime, the stories we tell about the whole mess, all this is random noise about which the generals DGAF. If we want to know about socialism, we'll observe Scandinavia or anywhere else where it actually happens. We don't need the tortured analogies of frustrated NCOs.

I'm not a socialist, BTW.

I don't think it's entirely accurate to say "ignore this evidence of a failed system". My point in highlighting it is there's an opportunity to fix it and experiment on a small scale. Imagine if you made that system work, how much you'd learn, and how much support you'd garner.

You only consider USA military to be a "failed system" because you don't realize its actual purpose. One might imagine that it's about security... which, sure, total failure on that front. The actual purpose, as indicated above, is to transfer resources from USA citizens to armaments manufacturers, a purpose that is accomplished to greater degrees every year. Taking good care of the troops would detract from the goal, which is why that doesn't happen.

Eh, what?

You were at Camp Lejeune so you might have heard about "baby heaven". [0] That shit is just evil. No socialist system has deliberately poisoned military families just so the generals could get sweet jobs from private companies after they retired, so your experiences were of capitalism, not socialism. Calling it socialism just makes you look sort of clueless.

This awful poisoning shit is still happening right now. [1] The officers who run particular installations DGAF about the health of people living there. They just want to "accomplish their objectives" which is invariably some wargames bullshit or fake statistical readiness scam. They get their ribbons or promotions or whatever and GTFO. Their grandkids won't have to drink tetrachloroethylene when they're living in some swanky NoVA suburb.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-trust-betrayed-the...

[1] https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2021/12/22/two-red-hill-spills...

> I almost never got adequate medical care. The medical system was strange and winding. There were all kinds of approvals needed for very simple things.

The military implements socialism _poorly_.

By contrast, when I had a horrific gout flareup in Australia, there was no approvals needed to admit me for a nine day inpatient stay with rheumatologist, PT, etc.

I am getting surgery on a heavily deviated septum, in the US. It shows up on imaging so notably that even when I had a head CT for something completely else, the radiologist flagged it as being of note. When I went to an ENT, he confirmed a "90%+" occlusion that would need septoplasty and a bilateral turbinate reduction to relieve. He talked me through the pros and cons of surgery for informed consent purposes.

"I'm fine with all of that, let's schedule."

"So, no. Not yet. First I'm going to give you these two nasal sprays for six weeks, that you'll take and come back and tell me didn't resolve your issue, and _then_ we can schedule. That way your insurance won't reject it."

I had to spend $180 on two nasal sprays that, according to my insurer, may have resolved a cartilage issue in my nose.

i.e. 1) the non-socialist system in the US also requires all kinds of approvals (I'm also a paramedic - UHC years ago got fined for denying Heli EMS coverage for people involved in among other things, car accidents, for "lack of preapproval"), and 2) "socialist" systems in other countries don't require all kinds of approvals - that isn't an inherent aspect of the socialism.

I find it more amusing that the same people also worship the police ("thin blue line" etc), despite the fact that cops are literally the very people who implement day-to-day government intervention in their lives.

It gets even weirder when the same person also rants about the federal (FBI, BATFE, DEA etc) "jack-booted thugs". This is incredibly common in the right-wing gun owner community.

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