War Profiteers

A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized as excessive or unreasonable, also occurs in peacetime. An example of war profiteers were the "shoddy" millionaires who allegedly sold recycled wool and cardboard shoes to soldiers during the American Civil War. Some have argued that major modern defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and Raytheon fit the description in the post-9/11 era. This argument is based in the political influence of the defense industry, for example in 2010 the defense industry spent $144 million on lobbying and donated over $22.6 million to congressional candidates, as well as large profits for defense company shareholders in the post-9/11 period.

History

American Revolution

There were a number of food riots during the American Revolution against profiteering merchants, there were more than thirty riots in the period between 1776 and 1779. In 1777 a mob of Boston women beat the merchant Thomas Boylston and confiscated his stock for hoarding coffee and sugar to drive up the price. In East Hartford, Connecticut a mob of twenty women and three men took 218lbs of sugar from a Mr. Pitkin's. In Beverly, Massachusetts a mob of 60 women and some additional men forced local merchants to charge the same price for sugar in American paper money and gold coin.

Industrial Revolution

In 1798, American inventor Eli Whitney received a government contract to manufacture 10,000 muskets in less than two years. After failing to produce a single musket, he was called to Washington to defend his expenditure of the treasury funds before a committee that included both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Believing to demonstrate the ingenuity of interchangeable parts, Whitney earned widespread support and has been incorrectly credited with inventing the idea of interchangeable parts. However Merritt Roe Smith concluded that this demonstration was staged by marking the parts beforehand, so they were not as interchangeable as he made them seem. Eventually Whitney was able to accomplish his goal of 10,000 muskets with interchangeable parts at a relatively low cost in the next 8 years, and later produced more than 15,000 in the following 4 years.

Military–industrial complex

A prominent example of the impact arms-producing industries have over American policy is evident in the case of Lockheed Martin donating $75,000 to House Armed Services Committee chair Representative Mac Thornberry (R-TX). Rep. Thornberry later passed a bill through the House of Representatives that would benefit Lockheed Martin. This decision was made as a direct result of the influence of Lockheed Martin. Politico has stated Rep. Thornberry is the "highest overall recipient of contractor contributions among all of the 89 members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees."

Contemporary manufacturing

Currently, the United States is the world's largest weapons manufacturer and exporter, followed by Russia, France, Germany, China and the United Kingdom consecutively.

International arms dealers

Others make their money by cooperating with the authorities. Basil Zaharoff's Vickers Company sold weapons to all the parties involved in the Chaco War