GURPS 3e- WW2 World Ablaze - war profiteer

[Solomon Draak]

Between the Wealthy professions in GURPS World Ablaze there is , as example, the War profiteer.
The definition I found online is, generically, a person who obtains an illicit profit from a state of war.

Now, mabye I have little immagination but the only thing I can think about is selling goods on the black market - and the black market dealer is a separate job.

So, what exactly a ww1 or ww2 war profiteer does?
And how is that different from black marketing?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Solomon Draak

So, what exactly a ww1 or ww2 war profiteer does?
And how is that different from black marketing?

"War profiteer" is morally frowned upon rather than illegal. It probably has to be defined as something like "Person who makes money selling things indiscriminately to countries not his own who are involved in wars.".

This would fit Daddy Warbucks from Little Orphan Annie which began as a comic strip while the US was at peace (1924).

It might be expanded to "person who sells things to his own country during a war at premium prices.". If he had cut his own salary to a dollar a year and provided needed goods at cost to his own country he'd have been a patriot.

[fwcain]

If I produce weapons, military grade weapons that is, and I choose to sell these weapons to anyone with money, be they on one side of a war or another, then so long as I have not officially broken any laws, I would be a war profiteer. My customers can be the most loathsome people on Earth, I can just barely skate by the relevant laws on whom I can sell to and what I can sell, and where I can deliver them to, but if I'm OK with all that and sleep just fine, then I am a war profiteer.

Think Obediah Stane from the first Iron Man movie in the MCU, or even Tony Stark himself, before his revelation while a prisoner in that cave.

Hope this helps.
Franklin

[ericthered]

In the movie Australia, a rancher with enormous holdings gets a contract for beef with the army just as WWII breaks out. It's noted that the price listed for the cattle is higher than market value, and one of the characters says wrylly, "its not a proper war until someone is making a profit".

War profiteers make enormous profits selling war material of various sorts at a premium in a market stressed to its limits while everyone else is buying sub-optimal government bonds, undergoing rationing, and sending family members to die. They aren't accused of breaking the law, but of being selfish when everyone else is being selfless.

[johndallman]

Classical elements of war profiteering include:

• Selling stuff that the government needs (or thinks it needs) at above-market prices.
• Paying below-market wages, and below-market prices to your suppliers.
• Using political influence, or outright corruption, to keep on doing these things.
• Taking advantage of the unusual conditions of wartime in other ways to make unreasonable profits.

Governments are usually aware of profiteering, but vary widely in their ability to do something about it. The most effective counter in history was probably the Trueman Committee, which saved somewhere in the region of $10-15 billion and many servicemen's lives, at a cost of about $360,000.

[Solomon Draak]

Let's say a country is severely impoverished due war strain. If someone exploits that situation of need and despair to build valuable assets ( jewelry, precious metals, valuable artwork, anything ) from desperate buyers at a fraction of the real value, this is "war profiteering"? ( I'm thinking about pawnshops )

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Solomon Draak

Let's say a country is severely impoverished due war strain. If someone exploits that situation of need and despair to build valuable assets ( jewelry, precious metals, valuable artwork, anything ) from desperate buyers at a fraction of the real value, this is "war profiteering"? ( I'm thinking about pawnshops )

Seems too penny-ante for Wealthy?

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Solomon Draak

Let's say a country is severely impoverished due war strain. If someone exploits that situation of need and despair to build valuable assets ( jewelry, precious metals, valuable artwork, anything ) from desperate buyers at a fraction of the real value, this is "war profiteering"? ( I'm thinking about pawnshops )

It's kind of on the low end for classical war profiteering, but it fits the profile. There would certainly be a lot of resentment towards the pawn shop owner/operator.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Solomon Draak

If someone exploits that situation of need and despair to build valuable assets from desperate buyers at a fraction of the real value, this is "war profiteering"?

Maybe. The thing that makes "profiteering", not just "war profiteering" hard to define is that it is a condemnation for behaving exactly like you are supposed to. That is you live in a society that says capitalist behavior is moral, you act exactly like a rational capitalist should, and people still label your actions wrong. Obviously it is OK to sell stuff to people that need it, and it's OK to sell stuff to people that need it and *make a profit*, because that's what capitalism is about, but at some point where they either need it badly enough, or the profit you make is too high, it becomes "immoral" profiteering and not normal business.

Nobody can quite define where that point is because it isn't built into the logic of capitalism at all, but on some other axiom of their moral system that says, you know, capitalism is actually EVIL. Most moral systems have a rule somewhere that says proper moral behavior is to freely share whatever you have with those who need it (likely because this is an excellent survival strategy for small tribes of close kin). Exactly where the justifications that allow adherents of such a system to tolerate sometimes charging for stuff, which is something they had to rationalize at some point to make large scale economies involving people you don't know and aren't kin to work at all, will break down is unpredictable.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Seems too penny-ante for Wealthy?

Very penny ante.

Historically the war profiteering label is aimed at people like the Krupp industrial dynasty in Germany before WWI. Compared tot hat a chiseling pawnbroker (probably common during the Great Depression before WWII) is too much like business as usual.