Games With Fake Wars Are Stupid

[Alandoril]

Paranoid fantasies are as American as Apple Pie.

You are kind of ignoring the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time in the real world. Why do you think France and the US are always stirring up trouble? Both countries have so much of their GDPs dependent on arm sales that it's not even funny.

I didn't know France and the US were PMCs.

It wouldn't even work if they were PMCs. Such action ultimately costs the country more money than it would make back in trade through such measures, by virtue of defense contractors gouging the military for more than they do the market (I can say this is the case for the US; and it'd blow your mind how much military-paid hardware is just laying around Iraq).

Government Defense Contractor: "Great! We sold more TOW missiles and APCs to foreign nations due to conflict!...And our military still spent far more than that in taxpayer dollars!"

It's a snake eating its own tail.

Yup, that's capitalism for you.

 

[Marik2]

Yeah you are right about Peacewalker. The guy was launching a nuke so that he can prove that nuclear deterrence works?

His logic was extremely flawed and the whole plan was stupid, not to mention vague.

But the game did have great conversations with those tapes and some cool people

 

[IronMit]

3. Creating a niche for your business doesn't necessarily mean you'll fill it

The equivalent to the "Engineer war so that people will hire your PMC" scheme would be if someone at, say, Cadbury's, tried to improve sales by dumping hunger-inducing drugs into the water supply. You make everyone hungry, but they're not necessarily going to buy your product, are they. This notion often seems to slip by the evil PMC.

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classic case of adapting/skewing an analogy to support your argument.

The narrative in gaming is limited but in the real world politicians are pressured by other politicians and lobbyists.
In many cases the politician has a lucrative seat waiting for him on a board;
eg. Dick Cheney and arms maufacturers after pushing for war, half the Republican Party and Drug lobbyists after passing legislation for free drugs for old people for over the top prices paid for by the tax payer. etc etc (I'm not a Democrat or even american...just the most obvious examples)

So you can ensure people will buy your product because the government will make it mandatory...the government hires PMC's with tax payer money currently. It buys weapons with tax payer money.

So after you drug the water supply with hunger pills, the government will give out 'free' chocolate to combat this (because you have an arrangement with them to buy it off you)..and simply add it onto the national debt. Your company gets money, the politicians get money...and average joe pays for it.

In the case of a fictional universe with PMC overload - we can just assume they have a monopoly on the market (or government links)

MGS4 is the most messed up storyline I have experienced but by the end you are supposed to realise the military industrial complex is self sustaining. Human logic no longer comes into it. Just like how you can't shut down wall street and trading goods that don't actually exist yet, you can't shut down the military industrial complex. it would be like firing half the brokers and traders in each City. They don't produce anything of value but everything will just collapse for a while.

 

[Kopikatsu]

You are kind of ignoring the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time in the real world. Why do you think France and the US are always stirring up trouble? Both countries have so much of their GDPs dependent on arm sales that it's not even funny.

Gotta love these conspiracy theories. As much as I loathe the French and despise the US's system of government I can still recognize that it would take an absurdly deluded individual to first think such a thing was a worthwhile goal of a nation and second have to be terribly lucky to maintain support as they attempt to push that agenda.

The whole PMC thing always falls flat when it attempts to be a global-wide conspiracy. They work as the personal 'henchmen' of a wealthy antagonist who in turn has his own global agenda but they're a business and a business won't do something that promises its own downfall in 3-5 years without anyone left alive to/capable of buying it. Unless you're called Umbrella.

I don't know about the people who work for Umbrella, but Umbrella's only purpose was to provide funding for Spencer to achieve immortality through research on the Progenitor Virus.

So Spencer, and by extension Umbrella, only cares about that. Money isn't an issue, and so Spencer doesn't care if half the world is reduced to ruins, so long as he gets his immortality.

 

[level27smartass]

Paranoid fantasies are as American as Apple Pie.

You are kind of ignoring the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time in the real world. Why do you think France and the US are always stirring up trouble? Both countries have so much of their GDPs dependent on arm sales that it's not even funny.

I didn't know France and the US were PMCs.

The analogue falls flat in part because the countries involve themselves directly with a level of control a mere PMC cannot.

Academi previously known as Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide have been use by USA in operations in the Middle East currently they have CIA contracts there pretty much the go to guy for dirty OPS. In fact the company its self had to change its name twice because of law suits regarding the use of Excessive force. Moreover America has used the military industrial complex to its advantage before just look at Woodrow Wilson's nonintervention policy. We sold guns and bombs to the Allies and didn't enter the war until Germany started to threaten our money. Same thing in world two FDR's Arsenal of Diplomacy, which was ironic because it was just Deal between Government and Big industry to sell more guns to Allies. In fact GE helped build the Atomic Bomb. TL;DR Military Industrial Complex is real and it's scary that people deny it.

 

[Something Amyss]

TL;DR Military Industrial Complex is real and it's scary that people deny it.

Cool!

I mean, it did nothing to actually refute me, and in fact sort of solidified my argument. Even Blackwater doesn't make a solid argument here.

But cool anyway.

 

[1337mokro]

Country has resource. Country keeps resource to national business exploitation. Other countries come together to install a puppet ruler to get access to said resource. Puppet ruler gets instated unleashing a civil war that will engulf the country for many years to come or instilling the puppet fails resulting in all out war between nations.

It's worth pointing out that the post invasion bloodshed in Iraq (and to an extent, Afghanistan) wasn't so much due to the installation of a puppet ruler as it was a combination of age old sectarian hatreds that had been exacerbated brutally by the regimes that had gotten kicked out, and a catastrophic failure of US strategy and counter-insurgency doctrine (for which there was no excuse given the fact that even the locals were expecting them to implement the thoroughly tried and tested COIN doctrines used by the British Army!).

Oh of course, absolutely the root of the violence is something else, but can't say it wasn't very helpful in finding a puppet. After all the puppet was found in the minority group and the promise of power, money and security is quite an alluring thing to control someone with. It also prevents any counter political movement from forming because now we have two clear sections that want to kill each others.

Call it the Scared Puppy approach to governmental manipulation with a dab of divide and conquer.

 

[Thamian]

[

Oh of course, absolutely the root of the violence is something else, but can't say it wasn't very helpful in finding a puppet. After all the puppet was found in the minority group and the promise of power, money and security is quite an alluring thing to control someone with. It also prevents any counter political movement from forming because now we have two clear sections that want to kill each others.

Call it the Scared Puppy approach to governmental manipulation with a dab of divide and conquer.

Well... Sorry to tell you this, but of the three men you could possibly accuse of being the puppet only one is from a minority(Prime Minister al-Maliki is a Shiite (majority in Iraq), President Karzai is a Sunni (majority in Afghanistan) and President Talabani is ok, both a Sunni and a Kurd (both minorities) but he doesn't actually run Iraq's government, that al-Maliki's job).

The two 'clear' (this is middle east, nothing is quite that simple out there (see the on-going conflict in Syria for a perfect example of that principle)) sides in other words are represented in the Iraqi government at the highest level and have been ever since the elections in 2005, meanwhile in Afghanistan, the primary insurgent force (i.e. the Taliban) is from the same majority as the President.

In other words, what you're saying doesn't make any sense in this context. Depending on such a strategy might work, but there are more efficient ways of going about it, especially in the context of the global war on terror. I know the US didn't have much of a clue about how to fight such a war back in the day, but even back then they weren't that stupid. As much as the access to the extra oil would have been nice, you do realise how badly terrorist attacks hit the stock markets don't you?

And thinking about Syria, that's another wonderful example of a dictator from a minority completely fucking things up as far as sectarian relations are concerned. Fuck knows what the end result of that one's gonna be. It's not going be pretty either way.

 

[Elijah Newton]

and despise the US's system of government

Do you maybe mean 'despise the US's policies'? Which I could sort of get behind.* Or do you mean its basis as a federal presidential constitutional republic, as opposed to, say, a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy. That would be more unusual and I'd be curious to hear your arguments for the one over the other.

FWIW, I think New Zealand is spiffy though I have only a cursory understanding of its government.


* inasmuch as I'm not a fan of a lot of our interventionist foreign policy and think our domestic social programs could use a great deal more support

 

[KingHodor]

Yeah, that kept bugging me about MGS4's "war economy" in which most of the world's armies had apparently been replaced by PMCs handling every aspect of the war for them - why would governments pay these guys several times the salary they're paying their soldiers for doing basically the same jobs? Why would they exchange an army that is at least somewhat loyal to the country for one that only serves the mighty buck and would thus turn against you as soon as it makes sense from a business standpoint?

I doubt Hitler would have gotten as far as he did if he'd used an army of Landsknechte mercenaries instead of an indoctrinated Wehrmacht (ok, let's see how long it takes for some German to point out that the term "Landser" for German soldiers serving in the World Wars is in fact derived from "Landsknecht").

Yes, PMCs have their uses even for governments with large regular armies (they can provide training and extra logistics, you have plausible deniability for morally dubious acts like torture or arming factions embargoed for human rights abuses), but mostly their services are either aimed at small-time wars in ressource-rich nations, nations with a very poorly trained army (i.e. mostly to train the aforementioned army, not fight as frontline troops) and corporations without their own army wishing to protect their assets.

Also, lastly, if PMCs are so damn powerful - how come Blackwater recently changed their name *again* (from "Xe" to "Academi")? I think it's pretty clear that they want to portray themselves mainly as a provider of training services, not somebody who will fight an entire war for you.

 

[Abomination]

and despise the US's system of government

Do you maybe mean 'despise the US's policies'? Which I could sort of get behind.* Or do you mean its basis as a federal presidential constitutional republic, as opposed to, say, a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy. That would be more unusual and I'd be curious to hear your arguments for the one over the other.

FWIW, I think New Zealand is spiffy though I have only a cursory understanding of its government.


* inasmuch as I'm not a fan of a lot of our interventionist foreign policy and think our domestic social programs could use a great deal more support

I mean its 2 party system, paranoia of federal government authority, absurd bureaucratic costs of introducing new policy, the incredible power and susceptibility to lobbying that senators hold, and the tennis ball that is the constitution (the number of nations who do not have one yet have HIGHER personal freedom ratings than the United States should be a wake up call as to how the constitution is BAD for the United States).

Its policies are a result of its system of government, they're a symptom but the system is the cause or catalyst.

New Zealand's system of government does have a few shortfallings but by comparison to the United States we run like a terribly well oiled machine. I would prefer 5 years between general elections over our present 3 years but MMP means that if a party just drags its feet in order to simply oppose policy on the grounds that their opposition party suggested it they will find themselves losing a significant portion of their support to another closely-aligned-but-not-identical party.

From an outsider's perspective the flaws in the US government's system are so terribly obvious.

 

[Elijah Newton]

I mean its 2 party system, paranoia of federal government authority, absurd bureaucratic costs of introducing new policy, the incredible power and susceptibility to lobbying that senators hold, and the tennis ball that is the constitution (the number of nations who do not have one yet have HIGHER personal freedom ratings than the United States should be a wake up call as to how the constitution is BAD for the United States).

Its policies are a result of its system of government, they're a symptom but the system is the cause or catalyst.

New Zealand's system of government does have a few shortfallings but by comparison to the United States we run like a terribly well oiled machine. I would prefer 5 years between general elections over our present 3 years but MMP means that if a party just drags its feet in order to simply oppose policy on the grounds that their opposition party suggested it they will find themselves losing a significant portion of their support to another closely-aligned-but-not-identical party.

From an outsider's perspective the flaws in the US government's system are so terribly obvious.

Yow - easy, there, man. You've got some good points but the words you'd initially chosen did not necessarily translate into the items with which you are so frustrated. I appreciate your insights but not everyone inside is blind to the flaws. It would be more charitable to say that since we're inside they are the rules of a game by which we are obligated to play. *shrug* Short of pulling up stakes and moving (which I consider from time to time) them's the breaks. But your opinion is fair enough.

I'm lightly surprised by your apparent vitriol, to be honest. People here getting worked up over those issues I can dig, but you live in a physical paradise which is a well-oiled machine to boot. Are you overburdened with a predisposition to sympathy or simply frustrated by any kind of inefficiency / missed potential?

Anyway, we're likely boring folks here and are wandering pretty far off topic but drop me a message if you've an interest in continuing the discussion.

 

[Abomination]

You've got some good points but the words you'd initially chosen did not necessarily translate into the items with which you are so frustrated.
...
Are you overburdened with a predisposition to sympathy or simply frustrated by any kind of inefficiency / missed potential?

If it isn't the system of the government I can't think of another word to describe it.

I am not frustrated in the least - someone raised the idea that France and/or the United States engage in wars like some stereotypical PMC antagonist plot. I mentioned that despite how much I despise the former nation and recognize the political failings of the other I do not think for one second either would engage in such activities.

You asked me to elaborate on what particular failings I felt the US government system embodied and I elaborated.

There is no frustration, let alone emotion, I was simply stating my opinion on the matter as I was requested to.

 

[level27smartass]

TL;DR Military Industrial Complex is real and it's scary that people deny it.

Cool!

I mean, it did nothing to actually refute me, and in fact sort of solidified my argument. Even Blackwater doesn't make a solid argument here.

But cool anyway.

I was giving you examples of war profiteering and how America is using PMCs to do dirty work, PMC making money off way America asserts its self as global strong man.

 

[xPixelatedx]

It's quirky bits alongside attempts at serious character drama where the writing gets just plain bad. Like Metal Gear Solid 4, in which a soul-sick dying old man puts a gun in his mouth in hour 1 and rolls around in a barrel until he pukes in hour 2.

I don't care about metal gear very much, but I still have to disagree with this sentiment. Some of us don't mind if our peas and mashed potatoes touch, and if they do it's in no way evidence of a bad dinner. Life isn't just drama, nor is it just quirky. I can be crying over the death of a friend on a Monday but still manage to bring myself to laugh at an (old) episode of the Simpsons in the same week. If anything, I think more entertainment should broaden it's scope of what it's willing to show us outside of it's perceived genre.

This is why Cabin in the Woods was a brilliant movie, if not the most brilliant I've seen in the last decade.

 

[1337mokro]

[

Oh of course, absolutely the root of the violence is something else, but can't say it wasn't very helpful in finding a puppet. After all the puppet was found in the minority group and the promise of power, money and security is quite an alluring thing to control someone with. It also prevents any counter political movement from forming because now we have two clear sections that want to kill each others.

Call it the Scared Puppy approach to governmental manipulation with a dab of divide and conquer.

Well... Sorry to tell you this, but of the three men you could possibly accuse of being the puppet only one is from a minority(Prime Minister al-Maliki is a Shiite (majority in Iraq), President Karzai is a Sunni (majority in Afghanistan) and President Talabani is ok, both a Sunni and a Kurd (both minorities) but he doesn't actually run Iraq's government, that al-Maliki's job).

The two 'clear' (this is middle east, nothing is quite that simple out there (see the on-going conflict in Syria for a perfect example of that principle)) sides in other words are represented in the Iraqi government at the highest level and have been ever since the elections in 2005, meanwhile in Afghanistan, the primary insurgent force (i.e. the Taliban) is from the same majority as the President.

In other words, what you're saying doesn't make any sense in this context. Depending on such a strategy might work, but there are more efficient ways of going about it, especially in the context of the global war on terror. I know the US didn't have much of a clue about how to fight such a war back in the day, but even back then they weren't that stupid. As much as the access to the extra oil would have been nice, you do realise how badly terrorist attacks hit the stock markets don't you?

And thinking about Syria, that's another wonderful example of a dictator from a minority completely fucking things up as far as sectarian relations are concerned. Fuck knows what the end result of that one's gonna be. It's not going be pretty either way.

I didn't know we were talking about 5 different conflicts at the same time. I was talking solely about the Iraq internal conflict and it's roots being in a governmental power being consolidated solely in the hands of a minority group after the conflict. We're 10 years further now and if they actually kept to election schedules we should have the 2nd or 3rd president pop up soon, if there is an actual democracy we might see a change in that. I can't blame Talabani for what the people 5 years ago did, though he was again also part of that tight-knit little group of Kurdish-Sunni politicians.

Though here is of course how all this works. You start a conflict, then instate an interim regime or whatever who WILL pass sweeping legislation such as the Hydrocarbon law, MASSIVELY unpopular with the Iraqi people, still passed. Personally overseen by consulting firms hired by Bush. This is one of many of the tell tale signs of puppetry. A law that is unnecessary, seeing as most if not all of the oil installations survived and really all they had to do was hire people to work there. Some oil fields were burning but even then why is it mostly American companies AND do the American companies demand the biggest profit percentage in comparison to other bidders and still get the contracts? Doesn't really make sense right? "We'll do it for half of what they are asking" ---> "REFUSED!!!"

We can mull over conspiracies all day long. In the end really we can only conclude one thing. That the entire Iraq war was a miserable debacle most likely governed by greed and exploitation of resources rather than democracy.

Actually this is the Middle East, things are as clear as spring water. Foreign powers keep stirring the pot over and over and over and stirring up a shit storm. We had America funding their late dictator pall Saddam for YEARS whilst he did battle with Iran, then after he dared touch their oil in Kuwait well the rest is history. Same for the Taliban where they were perfect anti Red menace material, consequences be damned. It really is that simple. It's unofficial imperialism which always results in the crowning of Tyrants and the maintaining of conflict.

Same for most of North Africa with dictators being instilled and held in power for decades by outside manipulations.

 

[Elijah Newton]

You asked me to elaborate on what particular failings I felt the US government system embodied and I elaborated.

There is no frustration, let alone emotion, I was simply stating my opinion on the matter as I was requested to.

I am sorry for my misunderstanding. Thank you for having taken the time to respond.

 

[Brainwreck]

Schroedinger's Critic. Existentialism at it's purest.

Where was I?
Oh, yeah. PMC looks a bit like PPC and that makes me want to drink unsafe quantities of alcohol.

 

[hazydawn]

"But I think we as a species would be a lot mentally healthier if we stopped taking comfort in delusions and learned to accept the transitive nature of our existence."

Somebody care to explain me that sentence?