Oh ok, thank you for the very pointed and substantial argument against how many things you enjoy were borne of military spending.

Also the audits don’t cost money, it’s the rules we follow so that contractors (usually those evil big businesses I know you hate) get to charge 20-30% more because of those dumb rules.

I do construction management, and have many friends in the industry that do both govt and commercial. A good example is a 7.5 ton package HVAC unit. Outside world would pay 12-16k to hook it up to a building, while I was quoted 24k and 34k by different firms. Imagine that happening tens of thousands of times across the govt, not just the military and that’s the best place to start with reducing our govt budget.

In your perfect world with one govt how would that happen? You’d need a military to conquer all the people you’d like to have a benevolent world govt for and none will go without fighting for their sovereignty. So that idea is ridiculous and unrealistic.

Fat fingered, not sure where the nut thing comes into play.

I can’t speak to high level corruption, but at the low levels we are so audited and so controlled everything is proper. If they just allowed us to do things differently at the low level we could save billions.

And if you think the military is zero value, you should tell Ukraine that. Or Europe for that matter, as the Ukraine war has greatly impacted energy prices and the world economy.

And saying no one should have a military is about as stupid as saying no one should have a gun. Your tree correct that if there was no violence we wouldn’t need the means to do it, but people are violent so we need the means to protect ourselves and our interests.

Also many daily technology things you use, like the internet we are having this discussion on, was invented either by or for the military. Even LCD screens were invented by a military scientist in his spare time, I got to meet him once.

No, I think they could cut military spending by a 1/4 to 1/3 if congress got rid of the ridiculous rules governing procurement. I manage a sizable budget of govt money and the way I have to go about contracting to get things done adds 15-30% based on what it is.

If they got rid of stupid rules and let us do our procurement like a normal business (at the unit level at least) we could save billions easy.

It’s hard to have nuanced conversations with someone who has opinions but zero knowledge, can’t have a real talk if it’s all nuts broad strokes don’t you think?

I find it funny how people on Reddit love to attack business and want to govt to regulate them, but they do the exact same thing.

My red herring points out the govt you think should protect people actually predates on them the exact same way business do. They won’t help because they don’t want to.

But pick apart what you think I mean instead of what I actually mean, you can win that argument. Too bad it’s not the one I am making.

Before you get too upset, did you know about 24% of all enlisted military are on welfare programs because the government doesn’t pay them enough?

Wal mart looks More generous than the government many would argue should be regulating this by percentage and pure numbers. And the government takes in way more money than Walmart. It would take over 100 times the annual profits Walmart makes to pay just the defense budget, and they pay people that little.

Source: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/u-s-army-recommends-food-stamps-for-soldiers-struggling-with-inflation/article_34e15302-3048-11ed-9730-97264b6694d5.html