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Comment by satiric | Hacker News Reader

Some of us in gen z don't see much of a point to killing people in real life, but don't see the harm in video games. Neither have any "real purpose" other than making money.

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Most people in the military never kill anyone. In fact, most people in the army are never even in the opportunity to look at someone who they may need to kill. You're probably far more likely to be on a humanitarian mission helping out people in need than you are to be firing a gun or dropping a bomb on someone.

The purpose of the entire enterprise is killing people. I never sell anything, but that doesn't mean my job isn't making the company money, by way of making the stuff that the company sells.

That's not even necessarily a bad thing. WWII? Solid war, the Nazi's needed killing. And I like having people willing to do that on my behalf, so that I don't have to. But pretending the military is some lollipop guild that goes around spreading happiness and cheer is extremely disingenuous.

I never said it was a lollipop guild. I was pushing back against the implication that "in the military = killing people", as if it is a rite of passage or something. And no, the military actually isn't about killing people, it is merely about the threat of being able to kill people. Probably the best military in the world would be one so powerful that no one would even try to battle it.

The purpose of a country having a military is about the threat of killing people. The purpose the military itself is killing people. The military doesn't threaten, it is the threat. The same way I own a gun to defend myself, but the intrinsic purpose of the gun itself is to kill.

Hence the recent army/navy/air force ads that imply that enlisting is just as fun and cool as playing CoD or Fortnite.

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