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Comment by anonyme-honteux | Hacker News Reader

War is too serious a matter to be left to the generals. An absolutely oversized military industrial complex is indeed problematic if a country wants to be a full democracy. It's not the only reason obviously, but according to the economist democracy index, the USA ranks as "flawed democracy", #30 in the world, which is better than Slovenia and Botsnawa but far from the countries from Scandinavia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

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The main reason The Economist ranked down the US was the electral college, and gerrymandering. Not it's military industrial complex or revolving door between politics and industry.

> War is too serious a matter to be left to the generals. An absolutely oversized military industrial complex is indeed problematic if a country wants to be a full democracy.

I think that the US armed forces have a far wider set of responsibilities than "war". For example, they act as a social protection service for its members, and weapons program are managed as part of economic policies as job guarantee programmes.

Then there are research programs who started out as military projects which ended up benefitting the whole mankind, such as the internet or GPS.

This takes place in a country whose society has been almost rabidly opposed to any policy remotely associated with socialism. It's almost a cheat code of sorts.

In pragmatic terms, criticising the US armed forces just because "war" seems ignorant and foolish.

The US military, in a sense then, is actually a fully self-contained centrally managed economy and state. Funny how 'communism' can be both the ultimate evil AND the structural model needed for efficient running of such a large organization like the military.

> Funny how 'communism' can be both the ultimate evil (...)

I don't think you fully understand the issue you're trying to comment on. Not only is conflating a military organization with communism beyond wrong, but you're also completely oblivious to very basic aspects of human nature that are key to living fulfilling lives such as human rights and individual freedom.

I'm not oblivious to any of those things. But the parallels still seem to exist; both communism and the military are centrally managed, rigidly hierarchical, demand loyalty, punish dissent, and both place the goals of the organization above the freedom of the individual.

> I'm not oblivious to any of those things.

I don't think so. The definition of communism is not a organization with a hierarchical structure. You even fail to touch the central traits of communism. You're simply trying to forcefully conflate two separate concepts while ignoring it's primary traits.

In short, gibberish.

Communism as applied in practice, specifically the former soviet union, very much had a hierarchy.

The primary traits of interest I listed in the previous comment. Are they exactly the same? of course not. But that doesn't mean they can't share similarities.

> Communism as applied in practice, specifically the former soviet union, very much had a hierarchy.

I'm not convinced you realize that the definition of communism is not "a hierarchical organization".

I don't see the point of continuing this discussion. Even your basic assumptions are fundamentally wrong.

Did read the 'as applied in practice' part and then think I was talking about the idealized dictionary definition? Because that's weird if you did.

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