There are parts of the country that prop up a rather sinister dichotomy: live here and flirt with the poverty line, or enlist and better your economic prospects (and maybe take a bullet). You can see these outcomes in the faces of the homeless, the working poor, and veterans that are functional members of society. Our society does the rest by having almost no social safety net, lavishing the wealthy with praise, and vilifying poor people, all at the same time. Lastly, recruitment targets 18-22 year olds, which are people whose brains are in the final years of their developmental cycle, and have not yet begun to understand how the rest of the world works. This all operates together to push people towards putting on a uniform.
Solve any of the problems above and the comic will start to look like a thing of the past.
Edit: While we’re on the topic, the IT industry has a tidy white-collar equivalent: You can make more money and get more job security, but you have to be indifferent about how your work is used. Usually, the more ethically grey (or outright evil) the job, the more it pays.
I blame the system.
There are parts of the country that prop up a rather sinister dichotomy: live here and flirt with the poverty line, or enlist and better your economic prospects (and maybe take a bullet). You can see these outcomes in the faces of the homeless, the working poor, and veterans that are functional members of society. Our society does the rest by having almost no social safety net, lavishing the wealthy with praise, and vilifying poor people, all at the same time. Lastly, recruitment targets 18-22 year olds, which are people whose brains are in the final years of their developmental cycle, and have not yet begun to understand how the rest of the world works. This all operates together to push people towards putting on a uniform.
Solve any of the problems above and the comic will start to look like a thing of the past.
Edit: While we’re on the topic, the IT industry has a tidy white-collar equivalent: You can make more money and get more job security, but you have to be indifferent about how your work is used. Usually, the more ethically grey (or outright evil) the job, the more it pays.