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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25230 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?

Monetary incentives, as proposed both by rootless cosmopolitan Bryan Caplan and Tatar patriot Kamil Galeev.

Bribery as weapon of war - not secret offers to enemy generals as in Iraq but public offer of cash for enemy soldiers en masse is super weapon exactly tailored to strength of Western US+NATO bloc. US dollar is still the king, despite printing press going into overdrive, everyone knows what dollars are and everyone wants them. The printing press is American true superpower, why not use it?

Of course, paying enemies to surrender would be extremely unpopular among your own troops - this plan must be compounded with even more generous reward for bringing live POW's. The dirty secret of war is that most killing of POW's happens not because of sadism, hatred and revenge, but just because soldiers cannot/do not want to guard and care for the prisoners and have no incentive to keep them alive.

Had something like it been ever tried? Check Operation Moolah.

On March 20, 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the plan. The approved operation was forwarded on April 1, 1953, to the Joint Psychological Committee at FEAF in Tokyo, Japan, where it was staffed, approved, and advanced to Clark. He dubbed the plan Operation Moolah. The plan offered $50,000 to any pilot who flew a fully mission capable MiG-15 to South Korea. The first pilot to defect would be awarded an additional $50,000. The plan also included complete political asylum, resettlement in a non-Communist country, and anonymity if desired.

What was the impact on enemy activity?

According to General Clark, immediately after the drop of the leaflets on April 26, UN aircraft did not make visual contact with any MiG aircraft for the following eight days. Though weather may have been a factor, he opines that the leaflets had a direct effect and believes that senior Communist military leaders began to screen for politically unreliable pilots.

But not everyone was happy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not support Operation Moolah. He thought it unethical to offer money to a defector and was concerned about the North Korean reaction to the defection due to the uneasy armistice agreement.

As all professional ethicists will tell you, it is much more ethical to kill people than pay them.

This plan would never come to fruition, because it is as extremely dishonorable as it is extremely rational, utilitarian and effectively altruistic. No surprise - we do not live on dath-ilan, we live on planet of the apes. Conduct yourself accordingly.

When the British offered money for dead snakes in India, the Indians weren't so stupid as to actually do what was expected of them - in a display of enterpreneurial elan, they started breeding snakes. When the bounty was withdrawn, they promptly released their snakes into the wild, thus worsening the problem the Brits were trying to solve. So how do we know that this won't just create a rush to join up?

I think that's why they required the defectors to bring a very expensive MiG with them.

I have little to add, except that like fuckduck (isn't duck sufficient? They're fond of rape enough as is, maybe additional fucking), I deeply appreciate this comment.

It's far, far cheaper to pay for someone to lay down their weapons than to kill them in most conflicts, and you're not out of anything till they do. It might not work well if they're fanatics who prefer to die, but even then you don't lose much by offering.

Maybe this was more common back when mercenaries were used more alongside standing armies, a person motivated by opening of purse strings is probably the best person to fight, they're not going to try too hard after all.

Like Mewis said above though, you might encourage extortion if you pay off anyone who raises arms against you.

I think in peer or near peer conflicts this isn't an issue in practise. I strongly doubt that Russians would sign up to the army in the hopes that they could surrender to the Ukrainians for a payout.

I doubt this is how it would work in most situations either, and if it was an issue it could be solved.

I loved and agreed with this comment so much I had to think of something to say.

The best part of democracy is that it’s the sublimation of a battle. Count heads, go home alive, prosper. Of course it relies on using sheer number of people as proxy for fighting prowess, but it’s a decent one, and it has paid off handsomely.

So why not sublimate even more battles? Richest side was very likely going to win anyway. Count your money, go home alive, prosper. I completely agree with caplan, it’s a magnificient, tremendously assymetric, super-ethical weapon: even if they had the money, and they don’t, militaristic dictatorships do not have the credibility, or the quality of life to spend the money in.

What do the virtue ethicists here think? Is it dishonorable to make soldiers betray their country, or is it good to save lives and ordnance?

This is why I'm afraid of AI. Once most humans are economically and militarily obsolete, and can't go on strike, we will leak power one way or another, and it will eventually end up in the hands of whoever controls the value-producing robots and chip factories.

At least since WW2 leaflets and other propaganda aimed to convince enemy soldiers to turn themselves in, along with their vehicles if possible, has been commonplace, was it not?

Weird, I only received notification of this comment now. I am almost certain this comment did not appear earlier in the thread, I could not see it.

This is a relatively new measure enforced on new accounts, I think their comments are being manually approved by the mods, or if that's not done, showing up after 24 hours.

I had this same thing happen to me just now with a reply to a comment of mine in a different thread. It also appeared to have just turned 24h old when I got the notification for it, and I'm also almost certain I could not see it before that.

Sure, but this is about offering considerable sums of money – paying for desertion, paying for proof of sabotage, paying at least market price for any equipment they bring with them. I think a russian soldier trusts, and can trust, EU states far more than a japanese soldier in WWII can trust the US government. So the leaflets of the time were far less credible.

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