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Comment by ToothlessJake | Hacker News Reader

The changing of national defense to a for-profit venture that also included protecting corporations within said nation has resulted in a magnificent shift in the quality of staffing.

No longer do you have idealists willing to drive their vision of a great United States by taking a job with marginal income but great reward. You have folks like those above, who see headlines of rights abuses and think "I would like to profit off that."

Sure the quality of life is better in the locality the work is in, but only because it is built upon the lessening of quality of life for others at the expensive of said others.

Others who do not want their tax monies being driven to immunity shielded corporations who work to kill others via drones under the guise of freedom and liberty. Yes, that is SAIC[1].

[1] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/06/14/news-saic-wins-95-mil...

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Hi, ToothlessJake; thank you for your comment. I understand why you might consider people like me as opportunists. However, as I get older, I care less about the abstract goals of "justice/altruism" and more concrete goals of helping out friends and family.

Perhaps you and I have a different perspective on quality of staffing. Too often, I find a lot of people in academia/life sciences research/NGO's have a propensity to feel or appear to others that they are altruistic or making a difference. But when push comes to shove, the same "altruistic" person will resort to the same old Machiavellian tactics for personal gains that's commonly seen everywhere.

Best way IMO to establish a fair society and company is to make everyone as informed as possible how you will be exploited and lied to; and I find that honest attitude to be more prevalent in BigCo vs. startup's where management appeals more to the "startup" culture to manipulate people to do more work and take less pay.

If you wanted to help your friends and family you would not work for murderers or their support staff. Helping friends and family means more than monetary income with walled gardens that consume the rest of society outside of it. It means furthering society, the health of it.

Go find a flower company or something, you can easily avoid work at SAIC or Boeing.

we have a very corrupt system that has many layers of deniability in-built. the next decade will see either an unraveling of the fascist machine we have built, or more genocides perpetrated by US. you know in advance that it is unlikely that our defense infrastructure will be used for completely defensive purposes. how do you avoid not just culpability but reprisal if we are targeted by agents of a foreign foe?

> as I get older, I care less about the abstract goals of "justice/altruism"

Is this that abstract? These are the tools that will be used to usurp Americans of their privacy. If you just don't care, I can understand that. But if you do care, why sacrifice your values for salary money. I'm just saying, my personal price for driving society back into the dark ages is much higher.

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