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Mandatory military service would alleviate so many social problems in the US. * people from different backgrounds and walks of life would live and work togethe
by badrabbit 8y ago
Mandatory military service would alleviate so many social problems in the US.
* people from different backgrounds and walks of life would live and work together at least once in their lives.
* people would recevie excercise and discipline training at it's most basic form.
* there wouldn't be a caste of people that serve in the military from one generation to the next.
* a lot more people would be exposed to the world outside of the US
* exposure to different types of work and training opportunities can alleviate labor shortage issues.
* last but not least, unity! America is dying as a result of extreme social fragmentation. I'd bet a lot less people would see issues as affecting the country as a whole as opposed to their "tribe" this way.
Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two)
- psychometry 8y agoSounds fine if we can replace "military service" with "civil service".
- baroffoos 8y agoExactly. You would get so many more benefits if you got those people planting trees around the city instead of shooting each other.
- c22 8y agoMaybe the military should just be tasked with more civil service work during times of peace. Then people will notice the absence of this work during times of war, putting political pressure towards ensuring wars are short and extremely justified.
- hermitdev 8y agoHow about we replace both with "service"?
- psychometry 8y agoBecause that's vague enough to be meaningless.
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoCivil service is better, just barely though. Even only the loss of liberty is enough to make the negatives outweigh the positives.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y agoThere are many other ways to achieve these goals that don't involve mandatory military service, and the benefits of these don't outweigh the costs, risks, not to mention loss of human liberty.
- blatant 8y agoDo you have any examples? Are you thinking about California Conservation Corps types of things?
- badrabbit 8y agoMaybe if there is a "civil service" arm of the service where you still go through basic training but serve in a social service department.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"not to mention loss of human liberty." That liberty is only made possible by those willing to step up and do their civic duty. If there is going to be a 'service' and there has to be in 2019, then it makes much better sense for everyone to serve. The issues, to me are when we get into 'unneeded' interventions etc.. Perhaps people could 'chose their corps', because there'd surely be a lot of medics, non-combat Engineers, IT etc. volunteers. Sweden, notably one of the most socialist countries on the planet does this out of obvious necessity: Russian on their doorstep. They stopped mandatory service and then re-started it again. "and the benefits of these don't outweigh the costs, risks" What costs and risks? To you? Or to the nation? It might actually be a lot cheaper. And I don't see any endemic risks in having everyone serve a couple of years.
- scythe 8y agoReminds me of this: https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html
- Datenstrom 8y ago> people from different backgrounds and walks of life would live and work together at least once in their lives. I have to disagree with this one. Rich kids would be butter bars and everyone else enlisted. They would probably also get to go to college first since you need a degree to be commissioned. Also, it would likely eliminate the only guaranteed escape hatch for non-wealthy people to finish at least a four year degree without crushing debt.
- RodericDay 8y agoLove the idea of a nerd on HackerNews demanding conscription. It's like Rico from Starship Troopers, but instead of a self-aware jock caricature, it's a geek with unironic fascist tendencies.
- superkuh 8y agoIt would introduce a very serious social problem that has otherwise (mostly) been eliminated: the use of force to make people do work. That is: slavery. The USA has always had a culture and set of laws (back to the founding documents) that prioritizes individual volition. Mandatory (ie, enforced with violence) military (or civil) service would be a refutation of the very things the military is there to protect. We (the USA) are really not at war (despite the problems with the executive branches' increasing power to use military force without declaration of war). Mandatory military service is very wrong and immoral in that context.
- badrabbit 8y agoThe military will be there no matter what. The US spends $700/bn a year on it. This is a question of who takes part in it. A lot of modern countries have mandatory service,look at it this way,you pay mandatory tax which is a result of your labor in order to support government. This is a tax except you pay directly by labor.
- unethical_ban 8y agoEquating compulsory military service with slavery as it has been experienced in this country is disingenuous. Getting paid vs. not paid, universal vs. race based, done by all vs. forced by one group onto another for the purposes of economic extortion and fundamental oppression... I do think that military service is a bad idea; but that some kind of civil national guard / social service like EMT, nursing, and service to the poor and elderly might go a long way to bringing the country closer.
- superkuh 8y agoJust to be clear. I'm equating compulsary service of any kind, military, civil, or whatever, with slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Forced_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Forced_labour
- rayiner 8y agoSlavery is a very specific thing, and narrower that coerced labor generally. Societies compel their members to do a wide variety of things for the social good. For example, forcing kids to go to school is not slavery. Nor is forcing kids to do community service as part of school, or sentencing an to do community service. Forcing children to do chores. Forcing people to give up 50% of the proceeds of their labor via taxes is not “half slavery.”
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoIt would create a shitton of problems too. * Young people dying for causes they don't believe in and didn't volunteer for. * Absolutely massive opportunity costs for each individual pressed into service. * Dramatic expansion of the US military, which is already far too large given our real defense needs and our military strength compared to teh rest of the world. * Significant economic drag as money and time is diverted away from productive ends toward largely wasted military training. You'd be surprised at how little non-military utility there is in knowing missile destroyer subsystems. * Labor shortages!? Try diverting ~5% of every able-bodied person's career to military service. > Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two) Look at how society is in some other countries with mandatory military service! Myanmar is fucked. North Korea is fucked. Russia is fucked. Israel is semi-fucked. You have seriously cherry-picked some of the highest functioning examples out of a set that is not obviously better or worse than the overall population of countries.
- jcranmer 8y ago> Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two) Or France, or Germany, or Israel, or Eritrea. The US is unusual in that it never had a mandatory peacetime military service program [1]; this is a practice that has been fairly typical in many countries, particularly European countries. There doesn't seem to be much actual correlation between having a mandatory military service and having a cohesive social structure. [1] We have had conscription, which was a lottery system, and we even had peacetime conscription, although that was in a period of time where the US knew it was likely to be drawn into a major war very soon and that preparing before war broke out might be a good idea.
- untog 8y agoIt's a nice idea but if history is anything to go by it wouldn't work out that way. The rich would just get exemptions (like the current President did during Vietnam). Not to mention, the countries with mandatory service don't often send those soldiers to foreign locations anyway.
- badrabbit 8y agoBut the poor would be less than likely to take side with rich against other poor people?
- paxys 8y agoHow exactly do you pay to train and provide foreign trips to every person in the country? Another few trillion dollars to the military budget?
- badrabbit 8y agoWho said everyone needs to take a foreign trip or have a combat role?
- ascar 8y agoWe had until about a decade ago a system in Germany that forced us to choose between 9 months of military service or 9 months of civil service (everything from emergency service to elderly care). It was highly unfair in the sense that women were exempt and all male with physical "disabilities" unfit for military service were also exempt from civil service. (I put disabilities in quotation marks, because people found ridiculous things that never impacted them in regular life that gave them an exemption for military service; think the chronic backpain of the sports team captain.) It made sense to give up mandatory military service, but I still think it was a bad idea we also gave up the civil service system instead of making it fair and mandatory for everyone.
- snek 8y agoOn the other hand, violent conflict is terrible and contributing to these conflicts is, from at least my moral standpoint, not a good thing to do. And then after you deal with the morality of this, you get to the horrible causes of all these conflicts which can usually be traced to either rich people/companies and their {oil, gas, gold, etc} or religious conflict. Count me out of this tyvm. Some sort of motivation for civil service would be pretty sweet though.
- rayiner 8y agoViolent conflict is one of the most fundamental interactions between living creatures. It is terrible in the same sense that death and taxes are terrible, but that is no reason to shield people from the social customs surrounding death, or the payment of taxes.
- throwawaymath 8y agoYeah but...taxes don't kill people. Warfare is pretty clearly not like taxes.
- rayiner 8y agoNo, but taxes, like killing people, are unavoidable in any society of non-trivial size and complexity. You can’t have a country without taxes, just as you can’t have a country without a military. And once you have a military, why shouldn’t everyone participate at some level for the common good, just as everyone is forced to pay taxes for the common good?
- throwawaymath 8y agoIsn't there a pretty vast gulf between something that's unavoidable and something that should be actively encouraged? Without making any further analogies to litigate, isn't it pretty straightward that we shouldn't encourage a thing just because it frequently happens? Responding to your edit...I'm not really following anymore. Taxes are necessary and mundane. Warfare is mundane, but it's not obvious to me that it's necessary. Therefore why not get all the individual benefits of military service without joining the military?
- chevas 8y agoMandatory service by the government is slavery. It is anti-liberty. The government does not own the fruits of your labor.
- toasterlovin 8y agoThe government already owns the fruits of a percentage of your labor. And a percentage of your income from assets.
- sandov 8y agoThat's also wrong when the percentage is too high (and it's too high in almost all countries). Doesn't change what parent comment said.
- toasterlovin 8y agoI'm not seeing much of a conceptual difference between owning a portion of your life by having a monopoly on all of your time for a limited period vs. owning a portion of your life by owning a percentage of your working hours in perpetuity.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chevas 8y agoI should have clarified that it's not by consent.
- toasterlovin 8y agoNeither are taxes.
- chevas 8y agoPrecisely.
- dilyevsky 8y ago> a lot more people would be exposed to the world outside of the US Lol is this meant to be satire? Too bad most of “the world” doesn’t wish that kind of exposure
- toasterlovin 8y agoThe US has a peaceful presence in many countries. I’m pretty sure that’s what OP is talking about.
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoThey still don't want that kind of exposure. The servicemen at the US bases at Japan are considered as parasites by the locals for example.
- protomyth 8y agoI seem to remember a couple articles by Army Generals that specifically thought mandatory service is a real problem given budgets and discipline problems. They want people motivated to be there. It apparently got fairly bad in the 70's.
- CalChris 8y agoWell, there was that whole Vietnam War thing going on. That might have had something to do with it. The Vietnam War was much worse for us than Iraq+Afghanistan combined. Ten times worse. We lost 60,000 and had 300,000 wounded in Vietnam. In Afghanistan, we lost 2,419 and had 19,950 wounded. In Iraq, we had 4,496 and 32,252 wounded. It was a stupid meat grinder and after a decade, do you think soldiers wanted to be there?
- protomyth 8y agoI'm pretty sure the papers took it into account. I still cannot find the things, but they mostly were talking about non-Vietnam troops. I remember Germany being mentioned. I'm well aware of Vietnam as it didn't go too well for some of my relatives.
- austincheney 8y agoAgreed. However, as a military officer I think this a bad idea. The US military is actually somewhat small considering the size of the population, so a mandatory draft wouldn’t apply widely enough for the mentioned benefits to materialize in a meaningful way for social change. It would also change the internal social nature of the military by filling it with people who don’t want to be there. In addition to being a part time military officer I am also a senior developer at a really big bank. The disciplined young people in the military seem substantially less entitled than some junior developers I have worked with. In the military I can choose to raise performance standards for the people I manage, but in the civilian world if you try that people will bitch and go get a different job.
- badrabbit 8y agoI heard most recruits join for the college money anyways? When the country goes to war,it's this class of people that fight and the rest of the country that doesn't take part just stands from a distance and thanks you for your service. Mandatory service can change how the country thinks about war and external conflicts.
- pooloo1 8y agoActually a very small number of those who serve utilize the benefits they have earned. Mandatory service would create a whole new environment, and likely eliminate everything listed by OP. So while I wish people could have the opportunities I had serving, it just would not work on a massive scale.
- austincheney 8y agoThe relevant question is how big must a draft be for that change to realistically occur?
- badrabbit 8y agoMandatory service isn't draft. It's "before 22yrs old,you must serve 2yrs in the military or civil service" which would rotate a few hundred thousamd "soldiers" each year (probably 70-80% of soldiers).
- AnaniasAnanas 8y ago> discipline training I would argue that teaching people about how to be free and respect the freedom of others is more important than teaching them how to follow your every command that might go against their morals. > Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service Greece, Turkey, Iran, North Korea, multiple African countries. Does not sound that good. Why not look how society is in countries without military service instead?
- hermitdev 8y agoThere are multiple European contriea with compulsory service as well. I dont know off the cuff all of them, but I'm pretty sure Switzerland still requires service of all able bodied men for 2 years. Thing is, in the US, we have the 14th amendment to the Constitution, that among other things, guarantees equal protection under law based upon sex. This ruling was long overdue, even before the female combat restriction was removed. In a time of need for a draft, there are still plenty of non-combat roles to be filled.
- dingaling 8y agoDiscipline training is also about self-discipline which I would define as the motivation to deviate from the state of least-effort in order to pursue intangible or delayed benefits. Military service isn't the only way to instill that, but most ex-forces people I know have good self-discipline.
- aaomidi 8y agoThis is the biggest waste of time in Iranian society. This is literally government mandated slavery. The current system already incentives you quite a bit to join the military for all the perks you get once you're done. I'm honestly surprised the top comment is advocating for something that goes against every core value of the United States.
- dkural 8y agoNo, it is not "literally" slavery. It would be nothing like slavery as practiced in the United States. Slaves were property; traded like cattle, killed / lynched without justice, desecrated - left hanging on tress, burned in public. In fact they were not even allowed to serve in the military.
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoThese are not properties necessary for something to be called slavery. In Sparta for example slaves were public property rather than private property and could not be traded, in addition to that they were forced to serve in the front lines of the military. > lynched without justice While probably not lynched I do not think that you will have a lot of justice if your superior is pissed with you in the military.
- aaomidi 8y agoYeah your superior can really ruin your life if you're not "obedient"
- aaomidi 8y agoRight because slavery that existed in the United States is the only true definition for slavery? You're forcing people to do work. What happens if someone says they don't want to do this civic service?
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"that goes against every core value of the United States." This is upside down, but maybe an understandable perspective for someone who is from (or very familiar with) a totalitarian state? "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" - JFK Civic duty is absolutely a 'core value' of the US, and most other successful nations. I'm constantly amazed not only at the level of civic cynicism among large swaths of people, but also that so many don't seem to grasp that our social systems are utterly dependent on civic duty, not self interest. Civilizations are not made by Mark Zuckerbergs, they're made by your mother, father, brother, neighbour, guy down the street - all doing their jobs responsibly and effectively, and being good citizens irrespective of what the laws are.
- sytelus 8y agoMilitary at its core is a mechanism designed to erase all personal identity and free will. You can achieve collaboration, unity, discipline, exercise etc via more peaceful means like volunteering to build houses for the poor, teach kids, build infrastructure in disadvantaged neighborhoods, natural conservation etc. As we become more resourceful, hope is that political boundaries will be erased and nations unite. May be 500 years down the line people will be amazed that we used to keep military and spend large chunk of our fruits of labor on it.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"Military at its core is a powerful mechanism to erase personal identity and free will. " I dare to hope that you have some military experience to make such a boldly false claim; It's nary impossible to grasp these kinds of organizations from the outside. 'At it's core' - the military is an organization charged with the defence of the community via (mostly) the use of managed violence. What appears to be fairly extreme elements from the outside (haircuts, indoctrination etc.) make sense, and they work well in that ethos. Almost every participant is essentially voluntary, and it is their 'will' to be a part of the team, because they know by doing so, they will have considerably greater effect. And FYI - when 'the world comes together' really means 'when the world becomes a 'mono-American' culture, and actual diversity is wiped out in lieu of the false diversity of pop culture. Yes - we can and should all get along, but remember that political boundaries are also usually cultural boundaries. As for the ruling - it's about time. Welcome to equality ladies. (I'm not being cynical or sarcastic)
- sytelus 8y agoOne of my favorite euphemism is to call army as "defense force". Army exist to enforce ones will when other means to do so becomes less economical. The invention of army is itself a psychological wonder. A person wants to enforce his will using large swath of other humans. So he pays these other humans for no reason except getting trained day after day at following orders without any questions. This requires continuous suppression of counter-thoughts and de-rationalization. One might think this would be impossible to achieve at scale and consistently but apparently there exist a regime and synthesis of moral framework that allows to do this! Technique of creating organized armed forces that can move in unison at the command of a single person despite of any level of risks while heavily suppressing individual counter-thoughts is one of the most powerful innovations that stands in shoulder to shoulder with things like farming.
- muzani 8y agoMany countries don't actually have military conflicts though. In many countries (Korea, Israel), they are defending their homeland. American military has been engaging in military conflicts all around the world, and right or not, many may disagree with them.
- badrabbit 8y agoAnd this will solve that too. Foreign conflicts would imo be reduced if it meant everyone takes part instead of volunteers. Vietnam could have lasted longer without the draft if they had a large number of volunteers like Iraq and Afghanistan. Democracy isn't all that effective on warmongering if only a select few class of people do the dirty work.
- PostOnce 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription The majority of the developed world has no mandatory service, and "look at the society" in all of those places, many of which border Switzerland that you mentioned as an exemplar. Are Iceland, the Netherlands, or Canada violent hellholes of tribal insularity? No, and they didn't need conscription. Meanwhile there are plenty of horrible places with mandatory conscription, per the maps on Wikipedia. You can't magically make people love each other by putting them in proximity or the middle east would not currently be on fire. Particularly in America, mandatory conscription would be a fantastic way to get people to resent the government more than they already do, which is probably currently at an all-time high. Finally, you go serve if you want to, but it's tyranny to tell other people what they have to do, esp. when you're talking about many months or years of their life. What's next, mandatory church? Wouldn't that also be great for society, according to some opinions. Church attendance, also, is extremely high in South Korea, are you sure it's the conscription and not the Church responsible for the society you admire?
- lstroud 8y agoWell, they would be unified in their hate of government. Maybe that’s better than unified in their hate if each other.
- pandaman 8y agoOne does not exclude another. Quite the opposite. E.g. in the USSR conscripts formed "gangs" based on ethnicity to fight with other ethnicities (not unlike prison gangs in the US) and hated government mostly because they perceived their own ethnicity being oppressed in favor of others (and not just in the service).
- dingaling 8y agoAnd the Soviet Internal Security army was adept at using ethnically-homogenous units to suppress populations for whom they had disdain or antipathy. Siberian units would be used in Georgia for example. But many things about the Soviet forces were utterly broken so I don't know if they serve as useful case studies. Incidentally it'd be good if we could eliminate 'not unlike' as a phrase in favour of 'similar'.
- ShabnamKhaan 8y agoMandatory slavery on cotton farms will alleviate so many social problems in the US. * It will teach people how to take orders from masters. * They will develop a sense of brotherhood and friendship when forced to work in hot sun all day. * Since slaves are chosen randomly it will not be linked to race. * A lot more people would be exposed to real work in the field instead of sitting before TV all day. * America is dying as a result of extreme social fragmentation, ice caps are melting global warming is increasing (put your favourite dooms day prediction here), but moving millions away from consumption to hard work will be great. On a serious note, there is no good reason why a perfectly good human being should join something as ridiculous as American Military. It is large camp where you convert human beings into order taking zombies who then go to godforesaken countries to die for absolutely no good reason other than transferring taxpayer money to defence contractor. (Of course there might be people joining it for personal interests etc. and in that case it is a perfectly good career choice.) In general I think USA should frown upto military and linking military to patriotism or virtue. It is just a goddamn job.
- peterwwillis 8y ago> Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two) And China, and Russia, and Thailand, and North Korea... You really can't simplify something that huge. There are pros and cons. Even Israel's military, often one of the first countries bandied about for compulsory service, has seen negative side-effects from the implications of compulsory service. If you just conscript everybody, often they'll perform poorly because they're not really motivated to make it their career. And often religious or other reasons will cause people to want to find a different way to serve, or they'll end up draft-dodging. With regard to the US, conscripting is a very quick way to make the "undesireable" parts of society "more useful" without actually doing anything to support those populations. The US military often chews up poor people and then doesn't support them once their tour is over. So this policy would have very real oppressive effects on certain populations. Here's a list of all countries and their military service policies: https://www.quora.com/What-countries-presently-require-mandatory-military-service-from-its-male-citizens https://www.quora.com/What-countries-presently-require-manda...
- PopeDotNinja 8y agoI disagree. For me, I'd be a lot more of willing to accept an order that could get me killed if I has signed up voluntarily. If you press me into service & then order to me to charge in the direction from which the bullets are flying, I'm much more likely to tell you to go eff yourself. To look at it a different way, would you rather be shoulder to shoulder with people who had all signed up willingly, or with people who had been drafted against their will?
- mrob 8y ago>I'm much more likely to tell you to go eff yourself. That will probably get you shot for treason, so the smarter thing to do is to take decisive action preemptively. I'm not making any claims as to what that action should be, but I can't think of any reasonable possibilities that would be good for the ones who forced you to be there.
- tejtm 8y agoI am not a fan of draft, never have been but your argument however well intentioned bolsters that of a (VN) vet I know, he was & remains a pacifist, He believed he would be drafted so he signed up just so he could have some choice and became a medic. Bad things(tm) did happen. He supports the draft because in most groups there would be an unwilling participant or two who would function as a tiny shred of moral compass. When you got a group entirely self selected to do bad things(tm), he reports it gets much worse.
- eugeniub 8y ago> (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two) Here's a couple more: North Korea, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia
- sandov 8y ago>Look at how the society is in countries with mandatory military service (S. Korea,Switzerland to name two) I would like to know exactly what you mean by this.
- badrabbit 8y agoSocial unity,a stronger unifying bond between people from different parts of the country.
- gotocake 8y agoBy all means, volunteer if you see so many benefits in it. Try to make my family serve against their will though, and I know who I’d choose to go to war against. If Vietnam and WWI weren’t object lessons enough against a draft, then I guess the simplest solution to an attempt to impose one is to remove the people who want to make such an imposition in the first place. Especially in an era of asymmetric warfare for questionable ends, rather than fighting to survive as a nation or people.
- daviross 8y agoOn the other hand, if someone's enslaved me, handed me weapons, and is pointing me at killing someone who deserves it probably as much/little as I do; then it's weird they'd trust me there since I'd be much more convinced my commanding officers are my enemies. I wonder what the fratricide rate was in times of conscription.
- mnm1 8y agoYou think sending people against their will to fight imperial, immoral, and unjust wars would bring people together? That's ridiculous. It would just make me hate the government more to involve me in its wars for profit. I'd rather go to jail or revoke my citizenship than fight in these disgusting wars (all wars the US has fought since WWII fit this criteria).