What would happen if America privatized its military?

When it comes to hardware, at least the US military gets the very best money can buy. No expenses are spared on techs (with exceptions of the marines ground troops maybe). And the results show. When America landed as part of the allies, only the US lost over 2000 soldiers in the first few hours. Now they can take over a country without coming close to that figure.

What would happen if the military was privatized and employed by the government for operations? Would the CEOs still spare no expenses to keep US troops alive, or would they be looking for the sweet spot of US deaths, a number of US deaths that is neither so high that it hurts future bluishness and recruitment, nor so low that to achieve a low level of causalities an unreasonable amount of money has to be invested in tech and training?

I do not recall private contractors riding in APCs or having access to Dust Off in case they get wounded.

Can you think of other areas where using profits as the carrot isnt necessarily the best approach?

Blackwater, etc...

reply to post by Merinda

Has there ever been a case when government was more efficient than private industry?

Politicians have perfected waste and mismanagement, which should be expected when there are no consequences.

A private company may actually go out of business so they have an incentive to act prudently.

Unless of-course youre a bank or some other giant enterprise. You can still take risks, go bankrupt and have the government bail you out.

Regardless, its a moot point. One of the few powers that the Constitution grants the federal government is a standing army, not a global empire, which is what we have.

America already has privatized its military. The government itself is controlled by corporations, and acts primarily in the best interests of those corporations. If they want to go to war, we'll go to war. It's as simple as that.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by Merinda

 

Has there ever been a case when government was more efficient than private industry?

Politicians have perfected waste and mismanagement, which should be expected when there are no consequences.

A private company may actually go out of business so they have an incentive to act prudently.

Unless of-course youre a bank or some other giant enterprise. You can still take risks, go bankrupt and have the government bail you out.

Regardless, its a moot point. One of the few powers that the Constitution grants the federal government is a standing army, not a global empire, which is what we have.

edit on 11-12-2012 by gladtobehere because: (no reason given)

and those in public office can "go out of business" when people stop voting along partisan lines and allowing these turds to hold office
the government can do it better.... it doesnt.... but it could
government needs reform regardless so wouldnt it be more logical to reform government to stop the waste, sweetheart deals, and mismanagement than to simply privatize anything and everything and make the only motive profit rather than what is good for the country
you need money for a strong country yes but money does not make a strong country all the money in the world doesnt amount to a hill of beans when none of it is going towards things that benefit the populace

To a large extent, it already is.

Contractors are given over a quarter of the total defense budget. Lockheed Martin alone gets well over 30 billion alone or so to build weapons.

There's also a lot of privatization in the intelligence sector...Top Secret America Washington Post

wiki link

reply to post by Merinda

You'd get much more of this:

In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of ''ethnic cleansing,'' an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents.

Source: America's For-Profit Secret Army, The New York Times, October 13, 2002.

More scary stuff (on publicintegrity.org): Privatizing combat, the new world order.

More about MPRI (on sourcewatch.org): Military Professional Resources Inc.

AlJazeera about L-3 (youtube video): US company in Iraq accused of malpractice.

Read more here: CorpWatch Report on L-3/Titan (PDF)

reply to post by Merinda


Once ANYTHING goes the way of privatization it becomes ALL about the profit, and if the military were to go that route many more lives would be unnecessarily lost.

Here is an example of how profit is deemed more important than lives:
I have a friend that works for a major railroad. We had a local railroad crossing where many had been killed and even after pleadings from city and county officials and private citizens who had lost loved ones at this crossing the railroad refused to put up the lights and guards that could save future lives. This went on for years. Finally, after the last death at that particular crossing the railroad put up the necessary safety precautions. I asked my friend who works for the railroad why they had finally done it even though people had been pleading for it for years. He informed me that the railroad has a formula they use to determine when a crossing guard is needed, and "X" amount of people have to be killed at a particular crossing before it is financially feasible to put up the life saving crossing guards.

If the military is ever privatized I have a feeling their "formula" would be even more ridiculous and too many lives would be lost !

reply to post by Merinda


I do not know what might happen in the short term but in the mid term we would be investigating mysterious deaths of our own men and in the long term they would become a threat to "the people" and civilization and the country and eventually we would have to band together to protect ourselves from them. Trust me.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by Merinda

 

Has there ever been a case when government was more efficient than private industry?

Politicians have perfected waste and mismanagement, which should be expected when there are no consequences.

A private company may actually go out of business so they have an incentive to act prudently.

Unless of-course youre a bank or some other giant enterprise. You can still take risks, go bankrupt and have the government bail you out.

Regardless, its a moot point. One of the few powers that the Constitution grants the federal government is a standing army, not a global empire, which is what we have.

edit on 11-12-2012 by gladtobehere because: (no reason given)

really? more efficent? ...yes.... in many aspects. you need to do some research, because i'm not going to list them for you.

When you're thinking about the defense budget, more than half of it is actually spent on contracts at this point. Lockheed is the winner of that competition as has been mentioned already...


Well if you really wanna know more you could watch this lecture:
(The military industrial complex revisited 2011 lecture by new america)
www.watchdoable.com...

Simple Answer - They will create more wars just so they can create more profit.

Hang on, isnt this already happening?

A hypothetical question of reality?

What would happen if the military were privatized?
What would happen if the politicians used war and fear to influence the electorate?

Kind of like asking "what would happen if the sun rose tomorrow?"

It will, it does, it has.

A paid employee doesn't hold a candle to a volunteer.You'd get war attrocities no one could be blamed for.

Originally posted by cavtrooper7
A paid employee doesn't hold a candle to a volunteer.You'd get war attrocities no one could be blamed for.

In what way?

On one hand we have a paid employee. Just doing enough to earn the paycheck. Regardless of the task.

On the other we have somebody who volunteered to be shot at and shoot at others.

Look at the TSA. Some of them just needed a job and others went toward the job for a myriad of nefarious reasons ranging from power to molestation.

The volunteers creep me out more than the paid employees.

Originally posted by Merinda
When it comes to hardware, at least the US military gets the very best money can buy. No expenses are spared on techs (with exceptions of the marines ground troops maybe). And the results show. When America landed as part of the allies, only the US lost over 2000 soldiers in the first few hours. Now they can take over a country without coming close to that figure.

What would happen if the military was privatized and employed by the government for operations? Would the CEOs still spare no expenses to keep US troops alive, or would they be looking for the sweet spot of US deaths, a number of US deaths that is neither so high that it hurts future bluishness and recruitment, nor so low that to achieve a low level of causalities an unreasonable amount of money has to be invested in tech and training?

I do not recall private contractors riding in APCs or having access to Dust Off in case they get wounded.

Can you think of other areas where using profits as the carrot isnt necessarily the best approach?

If the US military was privatized, they would be used simply as a means of force for US Corporations to rape, pillage, and plunder the resource-rich 3rd world. We would see them protecting the interests of corporate profits and Wall St over the interests of the actual human beings and founding document which they are sworn to protect.

Likewise, we would see MASSIVE spending on confusing, bloated, and questionable weapon systems given that their inherent complexity provides ample opportunity for graft...even while the actual troops don't have basic necessities in the field like body armor, a Leatherman, or other routine pieces of gear. We would expect that money being spent on things such as health care or disability payments would be slashed to be in accordance with the 30 yr trend in the private sector....even to the point where the widows of deceased service members might have to jump through nonsensical hoops to qualify for the death benefits they thought came with their husbands serving their country.

Similarly, one could only surmise that there would be a radical improvement in the propaganda, marketing, and arguably "brainwashing" tactics utilized to start, justify, and continue their military efforts. Let's face it...the good ol' USA may not be the #1 in terms of infrastructure or manufacturing anymore...but it's looking like we will ALWAYS be #1 in scammy marketing tactics, used car salesman, and subverting the normal human critical thinking process via a message which contains cleverly disguised appeals to humanities basest and most primal fears, desires, and predispositions such as xenophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, and co-opting religious beliefs in the name of "peace".

Lastly, we would begin to see a blatant disregard for what the private sector refers to as "negative externalities" in the name of the Almighty Dollar. Just as massive global destruction caused by man-made global warming is deemed acceptable in the name of quarterly financial reports...we would expect to see increased "collateral damage" by weapon systems which simply provide "more bang for the buck" in a literal sense...with little to no concern about what was actually being caught up in all of those explosions.

Hey...WAIT A SECOND!?!??!

...Looks like the military has actually already been privatized, huh?

It's called the police force.
Their enemy is everyone but them or the people who bribe their bosses.

The salaries paid to the troops would go up approximately 3 fold on average (more for special forces and fighter pilots) if it was privatized.

reply to post by Merinda

I am dismayed that the level of interest for this thread / topic here on ATS is so low.

In contrast to many other conspiracy theories on this forum, this topic is very real and very scary, yet it seems like nobody really cares.

Shocking. I guess a fictitious anunnaki planet is much more entertaining.

reply to post by ColCurious
no there is no conspiracy or a" what if" it is what it is real. The unreal just gets more S&F's than the real post threads do. It is however not 100% privatized, but enough to keep the MIC happy for now, MIC= military Industrial complex.
When there is no one left to send over, then it will be money driven and they do not want a draft they would end their plans of world domination. So far the number is in the black for the MIC to keep up the war, more of them than us KIA or wounded, this is the way it should be.
The wars of WW1 WW2 Korea and Nam are for the most part, done no other wars will be fought like them, we are now in the High Tec days, one tank can do what a battalion did one plane = one squadron, so on and so on, the foot soldier is for the most part obsolete he is now on the way out of the battle field. Drones will take his place and they for the most part are payed game players.