Reputable citizens sustain arms trafficking through responsibility diffusion

Evidence

The details of Terpil’s deadly operation are especially informative because they reveal, in stark detail, that those who trade in human destruction do not do so alone. They depend heavily on the collective moral disengagement of a vast network of reputable citizens who manage respectable businesses. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2197 (#expands, via linked claim)

One might imagine that only a small group of unsavory individuals is involved in merchandising the weapons used in terrorism, but this is far from the case. A worldwide network of reputable, high-level members of society contribute to this deadly enterprise by fractioning the operations, farming them out to different firms, displacing and diffusing responsibility, and distancing themselves from the uses to which the weaponry is put. One group might manufacture the tools of destruction. Others might amass arsenals for legitimate sale at trade shows. Still others operate storage centers for them. Others procure export and import licenses to move the weaponry among different countries. Others obtain spurious end-user certificates that get the weapons to embargoed nations through circuitous routes. And still others ship them. Major banks process the financial transactions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2202 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

1 Common knowledge: all defections have to be made public. This does not simply mean a public announcement. It has to be possible to distinguish between real and bogus claims, to know who really was the offending party. This is frequently impossible. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2609 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Armed autonomous robots raise unresolved accountability questions; Arms trafficking depends on collective moral disengagement; Arms trafficking depends on collective moral disengagement across a network of reputable businesspeople. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2197 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Arms trafficking depends on collective moral disengagement across a network of reputable businesspeople. #expands (0.97) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2197
• The arms trade runs on respectable professionals via fragmented, responsibility-diffusing operations. #corroborates (0.96) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2202
• Reputation deterrence requires verifiable public knowledge of defections #complicates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2609
• People are accountable when they will probably respond to legitimate authority. #complicates (0.73) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1156