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cyu@sh.itjust.works

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"Money for salaries, not weapons." National strike in Italy against rightwing budget. "People can't make it to the end of the month. This budget doesn't raise wages or allow people to retire." (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 week ago by cyu@sh.itjust.works to c/unions@sh.itjust.works

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[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For me, the more important caution is that military spending is a massive amount of private purchasing for something we ultimately don't want to happen. Private purchasing by the state begets private purchasing by the state, it creates an enemy of the people and worsens the system of governance. Those companies want not to provide means of defense but to make money. The only way to consistently make more money, or maybe the easiest, when your wares are only purchasable by the state is to encourage the state to buy more.

This is a systemic method for warping any countries budget, like the USA, and encouraging war - not preventing it. The more you spend on defense the more your country will use it and the worse it'll be for the world when they decide to.

It's simultaneously removing money from the places that benefit people the most, creating a systemic enemy of the people, and building a pathway to future wars. Prevention could just as easily be guaranteed with economic and cultural infrastructure/exchange/ties.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, there's good reason to study the US and to avoid doing whatever the hell they have been doing with their military industrial complex. I think the US has however been spectacularly stupid and corrupt - the shit they have gotten themselves into seems hugely avoidable.

As for "economic and cultural infrastructure/exchange/ties", it's nice when it works, but building Nord Stream and sucking up to Putin for decades did not exactly get us very far in terms of peace in our time. History is full of culturally rich civilizations with deep economic and cultural ties being completely fucked over by stronger military powers.

[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I mean, I agree but there's a difference between attempting to utilize demographic ties with democratic countries and authoritarian ones. Russia is a great reason for us to invest in a military, but we should be doing it entirely through the EU and with extremely thorough systems for deescalation.