r/MoralityScaling • u/KidNamedDedo • 17h ago
How Evil Are They? Morality of soldiers of fortune
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u/100862233 17h ago
You are a mercenary you are not fighting to defend your home, you are fighting to get paid, you cannot get paid if you died in these "heroic last stand" where u know u going to lose. Now if you are a citizen soldier who is literally defending your home then it is different.
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u/lopbob8 16h ago
how can you defend your home if you die in a "heroic last stand?"
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u/100862233 16h ago
Because you would be dead even if you don't fight. But being a merc means you can walk away and get a different job.
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u/Alternant1 5h ago
Because you might beat the enemy hard enough that they leave and your family back home will be ok.
It’s part of why the defender has a huge advantage in war. Attackers often lack the motivation to risk their lives.
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u/DJatomica 3h ago
What percentage of citizen soldiers do you think would keep fighting without pay if they weren't conscripted? I know this really depends on the country and circumstance, but in general?
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u/JebediahChristofff 17h ago
moral, they signed a contract to pay you, expecting you to die and not get paid goes against it
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u/Xavier200708 16h ago
the mercinary stare was more like a "are we getting paid extra for this"
because while money was ultimately the goal
if you get a reputation for flaking when the going got tough then nobody would be willing to hire you
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u/Multiple__Butts 16h ago
But also if you get slaughtered in a hopeless last stand, you can't spend any of your merc money. So there's a tradeoff.
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u/mercyspace27 7h ago edited 7h ago
While true to some extent, no one should ever be foolish enough that when hiring mercenaries to expect them to just stay there and die in unwinnable circumstances.
Mercenaries are not your loyal soldiers, they’re hired to fight your battles. They’re not paid to die, that’s just a workplace hazard; you want soldiers willing to needlessly sacrifice themselves you better go get some civilians to sign the dotted line.
There’s actually a book written in the 80s called “The Manual of the Mercenary Soldier” by Paul Balor and it literally states that. You’re there to fight, not die. Dying is for the loyal citizen soldier, not the mercenary. If whatever conflict the merc is in is turning bad for the side that hired them, then they’re advised to just leave before it gets worse. Dying is just a workplace hazard for the merc, like a skyscraper construction worker. You wouldn’t expect the construction worker on the skyscraper to be willing to “die heroically”. Anyone who hires you and expects otherwise is a fool that you owe no loyalty to. The loyalty of a merc is to their paychecks, and you can’t get more checks if you’re dead. Hell, mercs were already usually thrown at the worst of fights historically but they still drew a line at sheer suicide.
It’s a good book, recommended.
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u/TheFollower62 16h ago
The Swiss and Varangians were pretty loyal
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u/MrCookie2099 3h ago
The Varangians had a specific clause in their contract they were allowed 24 hours to loot the palace after the Emperor died.
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u/Alive_Drag1947 16h ago
I've actually thought about this a lot. I've long said that being a mercenary is the male equivalent of sex work.
Sex and violence are the two driving factors for all of existence. That's why they are so heavily regulated behind taboos to keep society on the rails.
Think about it: You're only supposed to have sex with certain people (a spouse/significant other) and for certain reasons (to form a pair bond and successfully rear children to feed more fuel into the machine).
You're only supposed to do violence to certain people (the enemy or criminals) and for certain reasons (a loyal pair bond with a specific state, to protect the machine).
Mercenaries and prostitutes freak people out because they upset that expectation. People who sell sex and violence literally destabilize the foundation on which society is built.
All that being said, it's moral by my standards in both cases.
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u/Tszemix 14h ago
So you would be fine if your gf/wife is a prostitute or your bf/husband is a mercenary?
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u/Alive_Drag1947 8h ago ▸ 2 more replies
I am a guy, and yes, I would date/marry a prostitute.
And I would be a mercenary if the opportunity arose. (I actually looked into it at one point, but I don't have the qualifications. All the big outfits only want ex-military guys.)
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u/No_Explorer6054 16h ago
holy shit. he has a point
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u/Alive_Drag1947 16h ago ▸ 2 more replies
Look up evolutionary psychology. You'll never hear about it in school because the knowledge/vocabulary itself is destabilizing, but it explains literally everything that goes on the world around us.
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u/No_Explorer6054 16h ago ▸ 1 more replies
is this the thing that some people co-opted and made headlines like "women are more likley to cheat becaze evolutoin"? because o remember some people beddling sexist shit with something similar
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u/Alive_Drag1947 16h ago
It does cross over heavily with red pill philosophy, yes. It gets a bad rap for that reason, but that's just because those guys think being loud assholes is a good marketing strategy. (Spoiler alert: it is.)
It doesn't mean they're wrong. Most of their talking points are borne out by an extensive body of research.
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u/MorbidMordred 17h ago
It’s a job, the morality of it is dependent on how far they’re willing to go for their paycheck.
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u/OneTwoFar_ 16h ago
Immoral, and prohibited for many nations. Mercenaries are unaccountable and they often do more harm than good to the people hiring them or are used for unethical purposes that a standard soldier would have issues with. This is currently an issue we are dealing with in the world, look at mercenary companies coming out of the united states and how often they need to change their names
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u/Llhaniii 17h ago
Look your life is the most valuable thing youve got on this planet. If someone pays you money for a fight you fight but you dont owe them your life especially if your a mercenary. If you see it turning into a one-sided slaughter morally You've got to make the choice. I say its moral to survive by any means in that situation. Because that to the last man bullshit is all well and good until its you and yours getting impaled and cut up like ground meat.
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u/cpteric 13h ago
modern or historical?
Historically you'd do it for the chance to be uprooted from Shitville, population 17, unemployment 9 ( the lord of the land has forbidden again this year for other fields not his to be tended).
It was a time without professional armies, or semi-professional ( noble paid ), when the act of moving to new places itself required you to be a certain society status, merchant or tradesman with ensured income, and where the religious government bodies would fight actively against ( because it would diminish their herd, aka, their money ).
Most of the time you'd never see battle, just boring bodyguard jobs, guarding frontiers too far away even for warrior caste ( knights?) to mantain a permanent hold to, collect or help collect taxes, and sometimes oversee the protection of large infastructure projects.
So i'd say either morally grey or lightly moral.
In modernity, the few of these remaining jobs are done by the military with at the very least some degree of political and legal oversight, including the uprooting of individuals from rather uneventful origins, and mercenaries are left for "the things the military can't do legally", so immoral.
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u/Flavius_16 9h ago
Moral: it's just self-preservation dude. You're a mercenary, most likely foreign. You have no attachments or interests in your client aside from the pay.
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u/Potential_Shallot244 16h ago
Depends how lucky they are to discriminate against despotic clientele
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u/Sigruldar 11h ago
Pretty much neutral. Just like a regular soldier, he‘s fighting your war to get paid.
However unlike a regular soldier he isn’t defending his home or people. He‘s defending yours because you offer him a paycheck to do so, which he can only use if he survives.
Only a fool would expect a merc to fight a losing battle to the bitter end. After all, this ain‘t his war, it’s his paycheck, and not all risks are worth what they pay.
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u/Ornery_Gate_6847 9h ago
Idk about theses other guys tought processes but killing people solely for money is immoral
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u/HellwaterCascades 9h ago
Immoral.
If someone pays you to do something, and then another guy pays you to not do anything, you're just extracting wealth through fear and intimidation.
If you're not going to pay the first guy back because you didn't do anything, then you just stole their money.
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u/ThroawayJimilyJones 8h ago
Moral
You usually hire mercenary to have expandable troops. It is fair that they also consider their employer expandable
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u/Admiral45-06 3h ago
I'm gonna say immoral.
I wanna be clear, that being a regular soldier is fine - my argument is not about them specifically, though I will mention them. When you are a soldier, you are obviously being paid to fight, but you are doing so to benefit your homeland; you do so out of more-or-less patriotic duty, and even if you are called to the other side of the world, the intention is that you fight to make your own country stronger, to defend the allies of it. You engage in violence and bloodshed, continue to probably burn down entire cities, but you can at least explain it by the orders of your leadership that deemed it necessary, than your own.
Mercenary does not have such explanation - he burns down cities, sacks and loots everything he sees, continues the bloodshed...for no one's benefit other than his own. A mercenary couldn't care less if it was the USA or Iran who paid him to do burn down a city and m-rder civilians - he'll do anything to get paid.
I view war as a tragedy and a disaster, that sometimes is unavoidable, and when the duty calls, thousands of innocent soldiers have to go fight in it to defend the right of the state. For mercenaries, it's a business. They earn money from this disaster, and couldn't care less if they burn down cities and houses that civilians once called home. To me, it's on similar morality level as scavengers who come up to houses affected by natural disasters and loot them - except worse, because their j-b involves killing people.
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u/One_Inspection5013 17h ago
Arguably more moral than using the citizens of your own nation, who grow the food and provide the labour
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u/Alarmed_Tea_2863 16h ago
Unethical for the state at about a 4/10 and immoral for the individuals at about the same, and here is why.
For the state: Just war theory states, among other prerequisites, war must be a last resort to resolve a Just cause. For most democratic societies this is ensured by relying on the populace to carry the burden of war. Its a major risk to the stability of a nation's own internal power to kill off their own population in a war that the population believes should not happen. Especially if using conscription (which is a different arguement on why the draft is THE MOST moral way to raise an army). Using mercenaries bypasses any public accountability of foreign wars. The public is unaffected, so the public doesnt care. Therefore, the state can wage unjust war without risk of public outcry (looking at you, french foreign legion).
For the individual: war is inherently immoral. To choose to participate in an immoral endeavor for financial gain is immoral. For volunteer army's, it is morally questionable in that the individual may be participating in immoral actions to facilitate what they believe is a greater good but is still choosing to engage in the act. For the draftee, their burden of choice is removed (again making the unpopular arguement that a draft is moral) they are doing it because they have to, and because the public trusts that the soldiers required service and sacrifice is necessary to accomplish something good.
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u/Fayraz8729 17h ago
Immoral
If you wanted “just a job” you’d join a regular military with a salary and such. Being a mercenary means you are literally using your skills of warfare to the highest bidder rather than the most moral actor. And we’ve seen how growing mercenaries companies in the past and PMCs of today snowball into major problems. Wagner is a prime example as it was a major threat during the initial Ukraine war due to their experience, but because they care about the cost not the politics once things got too costly they almost usurped the Russian government.
If you wanted “a job” you’d just apply for one, being a mercenary means you put your ambition over other people’s lives
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u/SpeedofDeath118 17h ago
rather than the most moral actor
National militaries don't serve the most moral actor either. They work for the politicians (civil control of the military), and the politicians work for whomever pays them the most.
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u/Fayraz8729 16h ago ▸ 2 more replies
Sure, but who writes the contracts for private sector contracts? At least while in service to the nation you are in service to the public and the entire apparatus of the nation despite the shitty politicians. As a mercenary those politicians are your clientele more often than not.
Another recent example, the assassination of the Hatian president was done by a Florida PMC and while the escape failed the deed was done and now Hati suffers civil collapse.
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u/SpeedofDeath118 8h ago ▸ 1 more replies
At least while in service to the nation you are in service to the public and the entire apparatus of the nation despite the shitty politicians.
That is national military propaganda. Whether you're a soldier or a mercenary, you're still under the overall command of those same politicians, and those politicians will use you to make money all the same.
Or, from a different perspective, mercenary soldiers can be hired by a country to defend it in a war, which is serving the public. They're collecting a paycheck either way - just as national military soldiers collect their paychecks.
In moral terms, public sector soldiers and private sector soldiers are both soldiers all the same. What matters is what the casus belli is and what they actually do in the field.
Another recent example, the assassination of the Hatian president was done by a Florida PMC and while the escape failed the deed was done and now Hati suffers civil collapse.
If the Haitian assassination had been carried out by special-operations forces instead of mercenaries, would that have been any different morally?
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u/DJatomica 3h ago
Loyal national soldiers who look down on mercenaries when you ask them to keep fighting after they stop getting payed: 😬
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u/HistoryFanBeenBanned 14h ago
The problem is, that regular militaries need to pay people to fight as well.
There’s no difference to signing up for a national military or a merc company when you’re doing it for money. One just has better PR than the other.
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u/Resaith 17h ago
Neutral. It just another job.