8 ms·

We haven't had the draft since 1973. What's in question is registration for the draft in case we ever decide we should need it again. I think this is largely

by curtis 8y ago

We haven't had the draft since 1973. What's in question is registration for the draft in case we ever decide we should need it again. I think this is largely a moot point, since we're well into the information age, and identifying all American citizens of a draftable age is likely pretty easy whether they are registered or not.

lsiebert 8y ago
I suppose the draft doesn't necessarily have to be for military service for a war with other countries. For example, if we learned that something large was on a collision course for the earth, we might have years to prepare to deflect it, or to build shelters, or something along those lines, but I can absolutely see a mobilization being necessary. Of course, there's no legitimate reason why we'd mobilize men and not women.
- henvic 8y ago
  There is no legitimate reason to draft anyone. People aren't your slave. It doesn't matter that there might bad consequences if there is something 'to be done'. If you don't respect human beings as individuals in the first place, we already lost.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    If individuals would rather not participate in a society, with all responsibilities and privileges thereof, there are many alternatives to choose from. And the path to doing so is quite clear: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Renunciation-US-Nationality-Abroad.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    I feel like "the human race will literally be wiped out if we don't all pitch in" is a perfect example of a legitimate reason for the draft. If you benefit from a society, then you have a certain degree of responsibility to that society. I personally don't think the draft is defensible for anything less than an existential threat to the nation, but the popular notion that the government shouldn't be able to make you do anything you don't want to is silly.
  - lsiebert 8y ago
    If you mean unpaid labor, then that's not how drafts work, but I'll assume you mean forced labor. I've seen the same argument used regarding taxation. I'd argue that people have duties and obligations to their government, just as a government has duties and obligations to it's citizens. So I absolutely believe that the government has a right draft people to defend the country. Drafting people just to wage war to advance our interests I have a lot more qualms about.
    - henvic 8y ago
      Taxation is theft and drafting is forced labor and the kind of forced labor that might mean you murder innocent people if you do it. I have moral obligations towards doing something good for people around me. One of them is not supporting such evil schemes.
    - Pristina 8y ago
      Do you think slavery is fine then? If compelled labour in the military is permissible by you because people have 'obligations' to the government? What is a government except as an entity to ensure people's natural rights are not infringed. And we are somehow obligated to be slaves to this entity?
      - afiori 8y ago
        Forced labour and slavery have little in common, for one you do not own the children of your employee. > What is a government except as an entity to ensure people's natural rights are not infringed. People cannot eat freedom nor warm up in the cold with rights. A government intended purpose is the continuation and stability of a country/culture/society. This does not mean that anything is fine if it is for survival nor that citizens are expendable.
      - eesmith 8y ago
        "Slavery" is both a narrow term and a broad term. In the narrow term, it applies property ownership laws to people. You want to use it in the broadest of senses, including for purposes which the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930 excludes, listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour . You are of course free to do that, but I believe 1) it downplays the horribleness of, for example, chattel slavery in the US by equating it, among other things, being obligated to jury duty, and 2) you haven't said what isn't slavery. Most of use are wage slaves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery > The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job.[31] However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other". ... > [Marx:] The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.

by curtis 8y ago

lsiebert 8y ago

I suppose the draft doesn't necessarily have to be for military service for a war with other countries. For example, if we learned that something large was on a collision course for the earth, we might have years to prepare to deflect it, or to build shelters, or something along those lines, but I can absolutely see a mobilization being necessary. Of course, there's no legitimate reason why we'd mobilize men and not women.

henvic 8y ago
There is no legitimate reason to draft anyone. People aren't your slave. It doesn't matter that there might bad consequences if there is something 'to be done'. If you don't respect human beings as individuals in the first place, we already lost.
- ethbro 8y ago
  If individuals would rather not participate in a society, with all responsibilities and privileges thereof, there are many alternatives to choose from. And the path to doing so is quite clear: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Renunciation-US-Nationality-Abroad.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I feel like "the human race will literally be wiped out if we don't all pitch in" is a perfect example of a legitimate reason for the draft. If you benefit from a society, then you have a certain degree of responsibility to that society. I personally don't think the draft is defensible for anything less than an existential threat to the nation, but the popular notion that the government shouldn't be able to make you do anything you don't want to is silly.
- lsiebert 8y ago
  If you mean unpaid labor, then that's not how drafts work, but I'll assume you mean forced labor. I've seen the same argument used regarding taxation. I'd argue that people have duties and obligations to their government, just as a government has duties and obligations to it's citizens. So I absolutely believe that the government has a right draft people to defend the country. Drafting people just to wage war to advance our interests I have a lot more qualms about.
  - henvic 8y ago
    Taxation is theft and drafting is forced labor and the kind of forced labor that might mean you murder innocent people if you do it. I have moral obligations towards doing something good for people around me. One of them is not supporting such evil schemes.
  - Pristina 8y ago
    Do you think slavery is fine then? If compelled labour in the military is permissible by you because people have 'obligations' to the government? What is a government except as an entity to ensure people's natural rights are not infringed. And we are somehow obligated to be slaves to this entity?
    - afiori 8y ago
      Forced labour and slavery have little in common, for one you do not own the children of your employee. > What is a government except as an entity to ensure people's natural rights are not infringed. People cannot eat freedom nor warm up in the cold with rights. A government intended purpose is the continuation and stability of a country/culture/society. This does not mean that anything is fine if it is for survival nor that citizens are expendable.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      "Slavery" is both a narrow term and a broad term. In the narrow term, it applies property ownership laws to people. You want to use it in the broadest of senses, including for purposes which the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930 excludes, listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour . You are of course free to do that, but I believe 1) it downplays the horribleness of, for example, chattel slavery in the US by equating it, among other things, being obligated to jury duty, and 2) you haven't said what isn't slavery. Most of use are wage slaves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery > The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job.[31] However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other". ... > [Marx:] The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.