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Make an experiment and try to predict what would happen otherwise. Or just read my prediction below. Countries who don't force people to fight are: - much wea

Make an experiment and try to predict what would happen otherwise. Or just read my prediction below. Countries who don't force people to fight are: - much weaker in the case of war, - with such policies not being (a well hidden) secret, an attractive target for a hostile country. So such countries are going to statistically be attacked more often, and statistically lose more often. So if you don't counter those statistical downsides somehow, you should expect such human-rights-respecting countries to eventually be displaced by less human-righty countries. With NATO, advanced technology and enough people willing to fight you indeed might not need to force a draft; but clearly not the case for Ukraine.

garaetjjte 3y ago
I don't have perfect solution, but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point. There are things that are lose-lose, making war worse for both sides. For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it, while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights.
- Etherlord87 3y ago
  I'd say balance is important. You can't just say: "I'll start a company, where if a consumer reports he's unhappy with a product, service, I'll just refund his money unconditionally, because that's the world I'd like to live in." Maybe such approach is achievable in the far future, but you can't ignore the harsh environment of your competition and go straight for the ideal approach. And yes, I know you might not consider my example of an ideal approach, but there's plenty similar examples to make, like a sports team being completely fair: recognizing their errors when even the judge doesn't, recognize negative errors of the judge against their opponents (and e.g. allow the opponent to easily get a point to cancel out unfair judge's ruling), never pretend an injury even though an opponent does it etc. Such a team would quickly become irrelevant. In other words, your attitude is naive and it stems from a false dilemma that you can be either good or evil, disregarding the smooth gradient, where you can try to climb up reasonably high - higher than average - and pull the rest up.
  - throwaway655368 3y ago
    You can't say "How am I supposed to run a company if I can't catch random people on the street and force them to work at gunpoint?" either. There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. It is pure evil, there isn't exactly a lot of room for shades of grey. To be honest, when I see the sophistry designed to justify the relegating of citizens to the role of an animal in the butchery by their own state, it looks like a classic horror material. Scarier than the descriptions of atrocities in the warzone. It's like a a cabal of cannibalistic cultists trying to gaslight normal people into thinking that killing those people is (and always was) absolutely normal and it is their very purpose to be slaughtered and it is you a weird freak for pretending that you have some rights and can decide whether you want to die for something or not.
    - Etherlord87 3y ago
      > There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both. (Not that it can't work in some circumstances) > Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. No, and I already explained why not: if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom, but the alternative is to either: - be perfect and never make mistakes: here's the naivety and idealism again - resign from the justice system and have anarchy (that's not an improvement by any stretch of imagination) Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall. Guess who defeats those states? Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights. So Ukraine could just allow everyone to run away and let russia win. I can see some hypothetical back and forth between us, where we would eventually agree on a scenario where russia takes Ukraine and maybe some more states outside of NATO but eventually the NATO border stops the advances, and so I won't make an argument that people will eventually no longer have a place to escape to. Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war. By staying in the country, they agreed to the rules: everyone knew, that in case of war (that was looming for quite a long while) conscription will happen.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  > but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point Well the world is not black and white. > For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it There was a treaty Russia signed (along with US, UK etc.) which guaranteed Ukrainian Independance back in the 90s. All treaties are less than worthless if you can't enforce them. > while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights. Would you rather have conscription and not live in Russia? Or have conscription and live in Russia? Realistically these are basically the only options some people have.

garaetjjte 3y ago

I don't have perfect solution, but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point. There are things that are lose-lose, making war worse for both sides. For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it, while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights.

Etherlord87 3y ago
I'd say balance is important. You can't just say: "I'll start a company, where if a consumer reports he's unhappy with a product, service, I'll just refund his money unconditionally, because that's the world I'd like to live in." Maybe such approach is achievable in the far future, but you can't ignore the harsh environment of your competition and go straight for the ideal approach. And yes, I know you might not consider my example of an ideal approach, but there's plenty similar examples to make, like a sports team being completely fair: recognizing their errors when even the judge doesn't, recognize negative errors of the judge against their opponents (and e.g. allow the opponent to easily get a point to cancel out unfair judge's ruling), never pretend an injury even though an opponent does it etc. Such a team would quickly become irrelevant. In other words, your attitude is naive and it stems from a false dilemma that you can be either good or evil, disregarding the smooth gradient, where you can try to climb up reasonably high - higher than average - and pull the rest up.
- throwaway655368 3y ago
  You can't say "How am I supposed to run a company if I can't catch random people on the street and force them to work at gunpoint?" either. There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. It is pure evil, there isn't exactly a lot of room for shades of grey. To be honest, when I see the sophistry designed to justify the relegating of citizens to the role of an animal in the butchery by their own state, it looks like a classic horror material. Scarier than the descriptions of atrocities in the warzone. It's like a a cabal of cannibalistic cultists trying to gaslight normal people into thinking that killing those people is (and always was) absolutely normal and it is their very purpose to be slaughtered and it is you a weird freak for pretending that you have some rights and can decide whether you want to die for something or not.
  - Etherlord87 3y ago
    > There is nothing naive or idealistic about his position. Assuming you can just ask people to risk their lives to defend the state is both. (Not that it can't work in some circumstances) > Forcefully catching unwilling civilians and sending to slaughter is a human sacrifice going against the very idea of human rights. No, and I already explained why not: if you arrest an innocent person (or even sentence an innocent person to life in prison), you're obviously harming that person's freedom, but the alternative is to either: - be perfect and never make mistakes: here's the naivety and idealism again - resign from the justice system and have anarchy (that's not an improvement by any stretch of imagination) Similarly with wars and conscription: without it, most (all?) states are too weak to defend and fall. Guess who defeats those states? Competing states with worse human rights (forced draft) or perhaps much worse human rights. So Ukraine could just allow everyone to run away and let russia win. I can see some hypothetical back and forth between us, where we would eventually agree on a scenario where russia takes Ukraine and maybe some more states outside of NATO but eventually the NATO border stops the advances, and so I won't make an argument that people will eventually no longer have a place to escape to. Here's the thing, however: people could easily escape before the war. By staying in the country, they agreed to the rules: everyone knew, that in case of war (that was looming for quite a long while) conscription will happen.
Wytwwww 3y ago
> but "to avoid being defeated by evil we must become evil ourselves" is not really the point Well the world is not black and white. > For things like chemical weapons we have treaties banning it There was a treaty Russia signed (along with US, UK etc.) which guaranteed Ukrainian Independance back in the 90s. All treaties are less than worthless if you can't enforce them. > while for conscription all politicians are quiet about while pretending to care about human rights. Would you rather have conscription and not live in Russia? Or have conscription and live in Russia? Realistically these are basically the only options some people have.