As Germany’s defence stocks go ballistic, armsmakers are tooling up

I hate war, I hate profiteering off human misery and I hate that the only way to deterr others from attacking you is to be ready for war yourself because humans still can't get over the drive to dominate and exploit.

But that despicable reality of the Security Dilemma means we need to spend money on defense. We cannot yet trust other humans enough that disarmament is viable. I consider myself a pacifist, but I am not so naive to think violence can be checked by words along. The feather may be stronger than the sword, but only if it lives long enough to write.

I hate that so much production has to be wasted on means of destruction. I hope we never have to use them.

Europe is already spending 430 billion Euros annually on defense (compared to about 150 or PPP adjusted 300 for Russia).

This is not about pacifism, this is about not being manipulated into spending even more, when you could rather look into what you are already spending and use that more efficiently. There is a lot of potential to massively improve spending efficiency and also strengthen the defense capabilities.

Defense is not the only problem Europe has, and also just ramping up defense spending elsewhere does not help the Ukrainians defend themselves against Russia.

So what's your alternative? Do nothing as Russia invades country after country and hope that they'll stop before it's our turn?

Noone should profit of war. Arms production is something that the state should do. We devinetively should communism arms production.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/TQqQIZEXDuE

Russia will never destroy our way of life!

/s obviously but all of this warmongering is scary as fuck, and I hate that the ultra rich will just get even richer from this.
If people were as serious about it as they pretend to be, we would be talking about nationalizing those defense industries.

You know who the biggest shareholders of Rheinmetall are? US American investment fonds linked to fascists. And the original founders of all these German companies? Yeah, litteral Nazis.

They are of course happy to sell to both sides. They always do.
- Even during the World Wars the defence industry wasn't wholly nationalised.
  
  37% of Rheinmetall's shares are owned by NA investors, none individually control more than 6%. And no, Rheinmetall wasn't founded by Nazis. It predates the Nazis by decades, the company was founded in the same year Hitler was born in. And even if it was, why would that matter today? The company is not owned by the people who founded it. It's not even owned by their descendants (who still would not be the same people).
  
  They are also NOT selling to both sides. I'm not even disputing that they wouldn't, they might well want to, but they literally can't. They're not allowed to and that is enforced.
  
  Ah, because Nazis in Germany magically appeared with Hitlers birth and all magically disappeared when he committed suicide? 🙄
  
  As I already said elsewhere, Rheinmetall itself might not sell, but the profits go to people that can invest them into other businesses that can sell and/or otherwise support fascists regimes around the world.
  
  Rheinmetall was founded in 1889. The NSDAP was founded after the 1st world war. There's literally no way Nazis founded Rheinmetall because it predates Nazism by about thirty years.
  
  I wasn't only talking about Rheinmetall, and while the Rheinmetall founder died in 1923, the company went on to be a major part in the Nazi war production.
  
  Can't wait to see how you move the goal posts next!
  
  People really need to learn how to read here. It is astonishing 😱
  
  It’s lemmy.world, people here are mostly liberals, agreeing with you on anything that goes against the system would make their world collapse. I’m happy downvotes don’t mean shit on Lemmy though, because imo you’re right and it’s pretty fucked up how we‘re all being manipulated into hooraying for more war, more arms, more destruction just to make some oligarchs even richer.
  
  For the record, I have no idea when what German arms company got founded but I think that’s nitpicking compared to the fact that fascists will make profit from our governments buying more weapons from these defense companies.
- Ok, but what is your proposed solution to the current problem? Problem being: aggressive Russia, and isolationist USA (and possibly aggressive in the future).
  
  Start the nationalization process and if someone attacks, we will shout "give me 10 more years, I'm almost done restructuring"?
  
  How is the ownership structure of an already existing company relevant to it's capability to produce the outputs necessary? If anything they will be more able to produce the needed things if a large part of the money isn't siphoned off to US American investment fonds.
  
  On what grounds? Are you suggesting a soviet style government takeover of existing business? If you would like to do it in the "civilized way" you would have to buy that business and while it might be profitable in a very long run it would cost you much more right now (and state owned companies tend to get less efficient).
  
  The German constitution allows this kind of nationalization in times of crisis.
  
  My suggestion would be to refund these speculators the (inflation adjusted) pre-war value of the stock. That's currently less than a tenth of the current stock price, to give you an idea how much they have already profitted.
  
  And it is a bit funny to argue state owned companies are less efficient and the same time fear-monger about the Russian war economy that is now fully state controlled. But yes, in times of peace when companies can freely chose what to produce, non-state owned companies tend to be more efficient.
  
  Russia has allocated 25% of its current (2025) budget to military spending.
- The founders argument is misleading, though I find no fault in the rest of your sentiment. Still, the perfect is the enemy of the good. If they issue Eurobonds I'm buying them whether it's going to deepen liberalist hold over the west or not, and the one thing I think we can count on is that they won't sell to Russia or the United States.
  
  Some of these companies are still family owned, but yes I consider the other point to be more important. There are loads of war profiteers, and while Rheinmetall itself is unlikely to sell weapons to Russia or the US, I assume their owners have little reason not to and also own other companies that will.
  
  So do you propose you and I start an arms cooperative this afternoon? I don't exactly disapprove, it's what I might have done in the 50s, yet we're out of time.
  
  No, I am saying if people truely believed that we are in a situation of existential risk, then the German government would be talking about nationalizing existing companies like Rheinmetall.
  
  That they are not talking about that at all, tells us a lot about their true motivations.
  
  I agree with that being the better idea, in the governments'... limited defence I think it's more a lack of comprehending the urgency than profiteering. I hope so at least.
- I'm fairly certain any company deciding to supply arms to both their country and its enemy would immediately be charged with treason
  
  Sure for individual companies, but what about their owners?
  
  Bet most governments would question where the owner got the bazooka from if it's not coming from the company
  
  It's coming from another company that owner owns. We are talking about huge multinational investment fonds here.
  
  Mate what. It's not like the state is oblivious to ownership. If a person own a company in another country that sells armaments to an enemy country, the stat would smack down on that so hard.
  
  Dude that’s not a conspiracy, that’s just capitalism. E.g. NBC is owned by General Electric, one of the largest American defense contractors. So obviously NBC has a conflict of interest if they’re critical of warmongering.
  
  The same goes kind of for every bigger news outlet, if you look at their ownership structures they’re all owned by oligarchs and their main interest is in protecting capital, not being ethical and uphold journalistic standards or criticize how the government acts if it protects the interests of the ultra rich.
  
  The shareholders of public companies are, well, public information and it’s kind of hard to find a large company that’s not partly owned by Blackrock, Vanguard and the likes. Now, if you dig deep enough into their portfolio, e.g. through their emerging markets funds I would not be surprised if they have some shares in Chinese defense companies, unless they’re sanctioned and even then you can probably still invest if you set up some shell company that isn’t sanctioned.
  
  And the government will obviously not go against Blackrock, Vanguard, etc. because they have so much influence on public opinion that the government would be history pretty quickly. Oh yeah, the (most likely) new chancellor of Germany is ex-Blackrock, think he’ll care?
  
  On an US American investment fund? How exactly do you think the German government is going to "smack down" on that?

Everything is profits. Renewable energies is also profits. So is recycling. So is war. So is peace. If you're doing something not for profits you're delusional and will lose in the long run. Every time!

Nice dellusional capitalist thinking you got there 😅
- It's only realistic. Just look around. If you can't make something profitable, it's not going to be a thing. Even unprofitable things subsidized by governments are profitable through the subsidies and will die as soon as the subsidies stop.
  
  You want to accomplish something? Find a way to make it profitable!
  
  And look where this kind of thinking got us: Ecological collapse and the climate catastrophe. Have fun eating money I guess 🙄
  
  I think both things have some points.
  
  You're right that military industries should be nationalized, and I agree to a degree (I'd also rather not have the military industry power be 100% controlled by the state, so maybe 50% only).
  
  But also capitalism, if done as it was designed to be done and heavily regulated, can also spark innovation.
  
  Battery technology was in part invented really early on because someone wanted to get wealthy by creating a better mode of transport than the piston engine for example (it's older tech than people realize). The issue was that once the piston engine was growing in popularity, there wasn't heavy handed regulations in order to slow down it's growth and prevent them and eventually the oil companies from using their new power to stifle electrics research.
  
  I don't think the solution to capitalism's (and democracy's by extension) downfalls has been invented or even solved on paper yet. But in the meantime, something in the middle might be the best solution than either extreme.
  
  Even a socialist command economy has to reason in terms of inputs and outputs. The difference in value between the two is a pretty good indicator of whether the given economic activity is successful or not. In a capitalist system the positive difference is called profits and the capitalists get to keep it. That fact doesn't discredit the entire concept of "profits" as a net gain in value.
  
  Anyway, just because the capitalists may win most (the whole system is called capitalism after all), doesn't mean that ramping up European arms production isn't a huge benefit for Ukraine.
  
  I said nothing about socialist command economy 🙄
  
  Try reading up about "capitalist realism" and you might realize that there are a lot of other options than capitalism or socialist dictatorship. Anyone who argues in binaries like that is either extremely naive or has a capitalist agenda.
  
  And no. The benefit to Ukraine is indirect at best. Notice how the pundits like to always say "but Ukraine" and how there is a suspicious absense of concrete plans on how this increased defense spending is directly benefitting Ukraine?
  
  Your kind of naive and emotionalized thinking will get you nowhere. Nowhere!
  
  Sacrifice of prosperity for the good of mankind, as you're suggesting it, has never worked. A society is only content when they can feel a constant upwind in their quality of life. See China for example: people are comparatively happy there despite the authoritarian government because they can feel growth and growing prosperity in their everyday lives like they have never felt before. If you don't have that, you get social unrest, radicalization and eventually wars. You're seing the infancy of that already in Europe and the US.
  
  There is a very easy way to fix the climate: make it profitable. Guide the economy in a direction such that eventually they don't need subsidies for climate-friendly production. This is the only way. But for it to work, you need to have a plan! This is very important. A plan to make climate protection profitable. Else, it will NEVER work.
  
  Yeah keep sticking your fingers in your ears and pretend everything is fine 🙄
  
  You're not even listening. Probably haven't even read my comments. I never suggested that everything is fine.
  
  I'm just pointing out your constraint world view. If you don't change it, your frustration will just end up in more frustration. Emotional and irrational people are being stomped on or ignored at best. You won't accomplish anything.
  
  The first step towards change is accepting the current situation and using it for your best advantage.
  
  Says the person that literally just held a sermon on the core believes of capitalism that have very little to do with the real world 🙄
  
  🙄🙄🙄
- You act like those aren’t just social norms and facts. Greed is king because cash is king.

Because wars are for the profit of the people, right? The people of Ukraine will be busy for half a century or more paying back the US already.