[jMyles]

> the fact is you'd have to start by laying off millions of Americans and likely damaging the many smaller towns that have come to depend that income source.

They can cry me a river. Obviously it was to their (and everyone's) disadvantage for them to become economically depending on manufacturing death. They have nobody but themselves to blame.

My home town is one of these, and it's already pretty depressed. We'll all be happier after the pivot to an economy based on building things that aren't destructive and idiotic.

Other than this, I agree with every point you've made.

[PhasmaFelis]

> They can cry me a river. Obviously it was to their (and everyone's) disadvantage for them to become economically depending on manufacturing death. They have nobody but themselves to blame.

That's kinda bullshit. If you want to lay blame, lay it on your choice of national government/local government/the military-industrial complex for failing to provide better options/opportunities, but don't blame the little guy who took the only readily-available job so he could feed his family.

[jMyles]

If he chooses to 'feed his family' by building bombs to drop on a poor family on the other side of the world, I have absolutely no sympathy for him.

And I don't see any point in passing the buck to whatever government claims authority over his landmass. Yes, of course I wish that the government didn't corrupt the economy by making war seem like a viable way to "feed the family," but it's obviously not.

Nobody forced your hypothetical guy to take that job - and even if he's starving, he has no right to exact violence on strangers.

[politician]

> Nobody forced your hypothetical guy to take that job

Fine. I'll call you out. Hunger did. Do you have no compassion?

His children are starving. Now what?

[TimJRobinson]

Give them food and support? Like the rest of the modern world does when their citizens are out of work.

[jMyles]

I don't mean to sound devoid of compassion; I'm not.

Most military contractors make very good money.

Even if, in your hypothetical, he has starving children, I don't see any compassion in telling him to murder other people's children. This just seems like insanity to me.

[PhasmaFelis]

If the guy who packs MREs or sews uniforms so his family won't starve is complicit in violence, then you are just as complicit for paying your taxes so you don't go to prison.

[jMyles]

I don't disagree really.

But in this particular case, I'm talking about Lockheed Martin.

[heartbreak]

I'm amazed at how _hatefully_ non-violent some people can be.

[justinsingh]

Is your home town ready for those who would have to seek new employment? If so, what type of jobs would be available to them? If not, in what (as specific as possible) ways do you imagine your home town to adapt to the change of sudden unemployment so that these people can have adequate jobs to still support their families?