Industrial complex

The concept was popularized by President Dwight Eisenhower[1] in his Jan. 17, 1961 farewell speech. Eisenhower described a "threat to democratic government"[2] called the military industrial complex. This complex involved the military establishment gaining "unwarranted influence" over the economic, political, and spiritual realms of American society due to the profitability of the US arms industry and the number of citizens employed in various branches of military service, the armaments industry, and other businesses providing goods to the US army. The "complex" arises from the creation of a multilateral economy serving military goals, as well as the paradox that arises from the goal of the multilateralism (sustained profit) as antithetical to the military's theoretical goal (peace).

In many cases, the industrial complex refers to a conflict of interest between an institution's purported socio-political purpose and the financial interests of the businesses and government agencies that profit from the pursuit of such purpose, when achieving the stated purpose would result in a financial loss for those businesses. For example, the purported purpose of the US penal system is to assist offenders in becoming law abiding citizens[3]yet the prison industrial complex subsists upon high inmate populations, thus relying on the penal system's failure to meet its goal of criminal reform and re-entry. In these types of cases, government agencies are often thought to profit financially from institutional industrialization, perhaps eroding their motivation to legislate such institutions in ways that may be socially beneficial.

The industrial complex concept has also been used informally to denote the artificial creation, inflation, or manipulation of an institution's societal value in order to increase profit opportunities, especially through specialty businesses and niche products. An example of this is the marriage industrial complex,[4][5][6][7] where demand for wedding dress makers, wedding venues, wedding planners, wedding cake bakers, wedding rentals companies, wedding photographers, etc, is created by the perceived social necessity of an elaborate wedding ceremony.[8]

• Military-Industrial Complex — Businesses that supply the army with uniforms, artillery, etc, profit from the continuation of war and will be hurt by peace.[9]
• Prison-Industrial Complex — Businesses access labor from prisoners that is cheaper than civilian labor, thus they profit from high incarceration rates.[10]
• Medical-Industrial Complex — Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies require patients to be sick, thus business interests are at odds with the goal of making people healthy.[11]
• Wedding/Marriage-Industrial Complex — Wedding-related businesses and vendors profit from the growing extravagance and cost of weddings and will be negatively impacted by smaller, cheaper events or elopements, thus they perpetuate the pressure on brides to have expensive weddings.[12]

The suffix "-industrial complex" has been applied to the following:

• Military-industrial complex
• Prison-industrial complex[13]
• Medical–industrial complex or medical-pharmacological industrial complex
• Academic-industrial complex[14][15][16]
• Wedding-industrial complex and divorce-industrial complex
• Celebrity-industrial complex
• Baby or diaper-industrial complex[17][18][19]
• Religion-industrial complex
• Athletic-industrial complex
• Nonprofit-industrial complex[20] or NGO-industrial complex[21]

• Military–industrial complex, a close and symbiotic relationship between a nation's armed forces and its private industry
• Prison–industrial complex, interest groups that represent organizations that do business in correctional facilities who are believed to be more concerned with making more money than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates
• Medical–industrial complex
• Industrial complex (disambiguation)