PugJesus

If the admins are at some point distracted, or otherwise are unexpectedly removed from their ability to moderate for a time, and comms have no reliable moderators, then everything will be... well, unmoderated. Having active users as moderators, even if they currently don't do much moderating compared to the admins, makes the moderation system as a whole more likely to survive any unforeseen events.

With Lockheed you are forced to choose between being complacent with it because they supply Ukraine’s defense against occupation by an imperialist power or outright oppose it due to its supplying towards the Palestinian genocide. The genocide is a dealbreaker in any capacity for me.

But then, is that not just enabling one genocide in exchange for another? Palestinian genocide is a dealbreaker, but Ukrainian genocide is an acceptable price to pay? (I'm not actually accusing you of accepting Ukrainian genocide for not supporting Lockheed-Martin - honestly, fuck Lockheed-Martin as a company - just highlighting that the argument necessitates accepting utilitarian consequences that run contrary to the anti-genocidal goal of the principled stand)

My point, though, is more that Lockheed-Martin is more than a no-brainer. There is consideration to be had. These firms are amoral, but that means that they are capable of enabling good as well as enabling evil.

If your choice is designing tractors, which will be sold to farmers recovering from a genocidal civil war in Sudan as well as genocidal colonists in Israel to consolidate their land gains and draw a profit with which to imperialize more, or designing warplanes, which will be sold to those resisting genocide in Ukraine as well as those perpetuating genocide in Israel, which is the moral choice? I don't think it's a no-brainer to say that the weaponry is the more immoral of the two. I'd say that the core immorality is selling to the genocidaires at all - which would not be specific to either industry.

And the core of the objection is against the idea in the meme that people who work at these firms as engineers are in some way more immoral than the rest of us working for soulless genocide-enabling corporations that provide the tools and funding for genocide.

Even ignoring the genocide, the bad outweighs the good to me by a longshot. I oppose it just like how I oppose McDonald’s, Amazon, Starbucks, and more.

I mean, I wouldn't argue with that. But I also wouldn't put much moral weight on whether someone chose to work at one of those places in anything but a pretty high executive capacity.

Not so sure about the deterrence argument. My point is just that defense industry firms are not particularly core to the problem of people murdering each other, and certainly not the workers therein, any more than farmers are guilty of feeding murderers if their client sells to a genocidal state.

They are produced for imperialist powers to defend the interests of exploitors, oppressors, and war mongers.

And also to oppose the interests of exploiters, oppressors, and warmongers.

From causes as good as anarchists in Rojava to as evil as fascists in Israel.

I do think there is nuance to the situation and exceptions. Your example being one. But I would consider Lockheed (the example of the original post) would be the no brainer one. Those weapons aren’t going to defending my family from an imperialist power, they are going to death squads in South America and committing genocide in Palestine.

But Lockheed-Martin's equipment is going to Ukraine as well. Are the families of Ukrainians not worth defending? And 'death squads' in South America are not particularly likely to be using state-of-the-art US jets and missiles for their murders. And considering the state of things in Taiwan and Europe, if the US doesn't end up on the side of the imperialist powers, I don't know how much I would bet that Lockheed-Martin weapons won't be defending other families from imperialist powers in the near the future,

Considering the strict controls on defense exports, it is far more relevant to question who the US government chooses (directly or indirectly) to support with Lockheed-Martin's output. When the US is against genocide, as in Ukraine, Lockheed-Martin's output is used to save innocent lives; when the US is for genocide, as in Palestine, Lockheed-Martin's output is used for murder. Though even then I would note that it's not particularly pivotal to the murders committed.

The correct target for ire in this, other than perhaps capitalism in general for creating a significant disconnect between social responsibility and firms of all industries, is the US government and where it funnels this equipment. The firms themselves are amoral but unexceptional, both in consequences and in nature; and the people who work at them (other than at the highest decision-making levels) are no more immoral than any other cog in the capitalist machine.

There are only a handful of genocides that even compare on a numbers scale

On raw numbers, that's because the world population tripled between 1600 and 1900.

Try percentages, and you get a good idea of how many people a single human with a blade can kill.

Hmm if all the candidates will both be responsible for killing people, are the people who didn’t vote responsible?

You'll be responsible for different sets of people being killed.

There's no option for innocence, as much as folk wish there was.

It might be a no-brainer if it was all "We are making orphan crushers for the orphans", but the defense industry is much more complex than that. For example, would you say that a Ukrainian working for a Ukrainian defense firm, whose sole purpose is to develop weapons for killing people, is evil?

And if you haven't voted (but been able to), you are likewise guilty for allowing the candidate who became president and CiC to commit their crimes (instead of the crimes the other candidate would have committed).

The only way forward is to improve society as a whole.

Good. I'm no friend of the PRC, but bowing to US coercion is no future worth having.

Mark Hamill is a national treasure.

I mean, I agree that selling weapons to war criminals is horrific. But the manufacturers aren't really at the heart of the problem so much as the US government. There are strict export laws regarding the defense industry. They aren't exactly jumping to sell WP to Russia (statement may be subject to change considering the Trump administration). They're acting in accordance with the desires of their biggest customer, the US government, which is currently (and has been for quite some time) supporting war criminals in Israel.