4 ms·
If there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it.
by crote 4mo ago
If there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it.
- p-e-w 4mo agoIndeed, and there are many historical examples of this. Today’s average Western nation-state tends to be a rathole that spits into the faces of its citizens every single day, until the moment the state is under attack, at which point everyone is told that they owe their lives to their sacred motherland that has done so much for them.
- esafak 4mo agoWhat if people do but not in enough numbers? Farewell, sweet country!
- WJW 4mo agoIf the country doesn't have enough people to defend it, perhaps it's good and just that some other community gets to control the territory? A country isn't really anything except for its people, after all.
- esafak 4mo agoThe occupying power may be interested in your country's resources rather than its people.
- WJW 4mo agoHow does that change matters? If anything that makes it even worse. If not enough of your people can't be bothered to join the military even when an enemy army is invading, perhaps the country in question should draw the conclusion it's not viable as an independent nation.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Jensson 4mo agoWhat happens in those cases is that the majority vote to force everyone to defend the country. Its just easier that way since it means you wont be defending alone, if everyone defends together then its very unlikely the country will fall while if just volunteers does it then almost any country will fall. Thinking you can defend a country just via volunteers is like thinking you can pay for a country just via charity, we vote to tax everyone for a reason. And people do that voluntarily afterwards, they are fine paying taxes as long as everyone is required to pay, same with defending the country.
- mitthrowaway2 4mo agoSeems like there's a clear free-rider problem, the volunteers make the sacrifice and the non-volunteers reap the benefits.
- dctoedt 4mo ago> If there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it. That's a pretty binary view of the situation. It's not enough for something to be worth defending: People have to recognize that it's worth defending — and that might not happen instantaneously, because "people" come to appreciate things at very different rates.