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| Thread: Conscription |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted August 07, 2014 09:17 PM |
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Steyn said:
mvassilev said:
Joonas:
You have four options: conscription, taxes and a professional military, a nuclear arsenal, or giving up on national defense.
I think you should make this five options by splitting conscription into active and passive conscription.
Active conscription: the thing that is discussed here as conscription. You have to serve in the army for a period of time.
Passive conscription: in times of emergency (an invasion, WW3) you will be called upon to fight for your country.
That's called something else (seferberlik in Turkish but the dictionary translates that as mobilization or rally, not sure if it fits). The point of conscription, at least in terms of basic training, is to make sure you are not completely useless if an emergency comes up in the future, anyway. That's why I mentioned that conjunctures dont change in days but decades, earlier. If you are in a danger zone, one can argue that you should be already fit to serve before that emergency hits, because you cant learn to be a soldier in 3 days.
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Geny
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted August 08, 2014 05:12 PM |
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Quote:
I know for a fact that not every person is cut out to be a soldier
Actually, the vast majority of people are cut out for it, just not necessarily as combatants.
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kipshasz
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posted August 08, 2014 05:16 PM |
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those are the brave wielders of the potato peeler. 
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 09, 2014 02:30 AM |
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Minion said:
As a wealthy man you certainly understand why you would rather pay money than sign up for a possible death warrant, don't you????
Sure, but what I prefer doesn't have anything to do with it. Ultimately, taxation and conscription is the government taking something from me (time and money, respectively) in the name of civic duty. What's the difference, fundamentally?
@artu
Quote:
It all depends on how necessary conscription actually is. Taxing can not be avoided in an urban civilization, there is quite a consensus on that. Not so, when it comes to conscription.
Does it? We collect a lot more taxes than is probably "necessary" because a lot of things we use those taxes to pay for are luxuries... at least arguably so. What is necessary? Is it necessary to fund the humanities? Is it necessary to give the unemployed a monthly paycheck? Is it necessary to subsidize corn? And on and on. For that matter, isn't national defense necessary? So we use taxes for it, but who is to say that's any better (morally, if you want) than using human man-hours/labor... which can be expressed as a unit of currency anyway.
(I admit to playing devil's advocate here. I don't necessarily believe conscription is the same as taxation. But it's a fun exercise...)
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted August 09, 2014 03:24 AM |
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Edited by artu at 17:30, 09 Aug 2014.
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The difference is this. If what is governed is a population of millions, you can never determine where your tax dollars will be spent like a sharpshooter. You can not reasonably say things like "I don't drive, why should I pay for a highway, I don't have kids, how can the government fund education with my money, I am immune to most diseases and come from a very healthy bloodline, I don't have to pay for hospitals (I know the system in US is very different about healthcare but let's not get into that, right now), I live by a lake, I don't have to pay for tap water, etc etc..." Overall, you would admit that a system that has to take care of such things on such a scale will eventually have to calculate budgets on some level of generalization based on statistics. When you debate taxes, what you debate will be the quantity and specifics. Conscription can be completely abandoned though, if you can afford it. And when I say afford, I mean both in terms of economics and safety.
Do you feel less safe in USA because there is no conscription? Do you think anything would be better if military service was obligatory? You have an alternative that functions (with its price for sure). Can you think of an alternative to taxes that is not quantitative but qualitative? (Other than communism, of course  )
Edit:
Rolling this through my head, I felt the need to add this, conscription or not, I think soldiers are always seen as some kind of "currency" anyway. There are moral dilemmas in both cases. With a professional army, the concept of calculating the risk becomes significantly about expenses, so human life is evaluated like cattle. It turns into a dehumanizing process of economical cost. On the other hand, conscription results in quite a similar mentality, this time, it becomes not about the monetary cost but about numbers. I remember, there was some crisis about Cyprus during the late 90's and one of the "big shots" felt like saying something like this:
- 250.000 died for this country without a blink, if necessary, 500.000 thousand more will gladly join them.
Professional armies use the same rhetorical devices, too. They also need to motivate their soldiers. But in conscription, the need to persuade someone that he will be sacrificing himself for a greater good is more of a necessity. And the fact is, it is rarely true. One of the important things to remember is, as more people get educated, more people realize that's just empty rhetoric and you are not, in most cases, dying for an ideal, you are dying so that some people can preserve a system that fits them perfectly.
So, the "human life as currency" part of the issue can not be debated within the limits of pro-army versus conscription. Warfare itself must be put on the table for that. Yet, whenever you do that, you either end up suggesting wars must be put to an end, singing "imagine there are no countries" which is dreaming, or you end up in analyzing why they will never end in the foreseeable future.
I will go to sleep now, it's too hot for both anyway.
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kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted August 09, 2014 11:29 PM |
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artu said:
@kayna
Yes but living in a country that would only do that under very extraordinary circumstances and living in one where it's routine practice and traditional law is not the same.
They're not the same but they're related ; it's one or the other.
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 10, 2014 07:25 AM |
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artu said:
Do you feel less safe in USA because there is no conscription? Do you think anything would be better if military service was obligatory?
No, and no, but that could be a product of the times. I might feel differently if I lived in Israel, or if there weren't enough people who volunteered for military service in this country. I mean, supposing nobody actually volunteered to serve in the military. Shall the state forsake its own defense then? Isn't protecting the community one of the fundamental services provided by that community's government?
Besides, you still haven't explained how compulsory military service is any different from compulsory taxation. Isn't it a community's right to determine how its members provide service to the community as compensation for enjoying the benefits of being part of said community? Ultimately, if you don't like what the community decides is the requisite cost of membership, you are always free to find another community.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted August 10, 2014 07:53 AM |
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Quote:
I mean, supposing nobody actually volunteered to serve in the military. Shall the state forsake its own defense then?
That's actually a very intriguing question, what if nobody really needed the money? I don't know. How would capitalism work if everybody were just okay and they didn't need to earn?
Quote:
Besides, you still haven't explained how compulsory military service is any different from compulsory taxation.
I just did that above.
artu said:
When you debate taxes, what you debate will be the quantity and specifics. Conscription can be completely abandoned though
Why is that distinction not specific enough for you?
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mvassilev
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posted August 11, 2014 02:23 AM |
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One difference between taxation and conscription is that taxation gives people more choices. For example, you can change how much income tax you pay by changing your job, you can change how much sales tax you pay by buying less stuff, etc. The government doesn't impose a set tax that you have to pay no matter what (though this was briefly tried in the UK). Also, the government doesn't care how you get the money with which you pay taxes (as long as you don't do anything illegal) - you're not required to perform any specific task, you just have to pay a certain amount, and how you get that money is up to you. In contrast, there's much less room for personal choice when it comes to conscription. You have to go where they tell you to go, do what they tell you to do, etc. It's much more restrictive.
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Baklava
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posted August 11, 2014 09:42 AM |
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MVass explained it pretty well methinks. If we grant that both taxes and conscription are means of paying the state for its set of services, that's where the similarities end. This is, of course, a coercive transaction - although someone could argue freedom of association via the ability of moving elsewhere, following a logic akin to claiming that paying tribute to the Mongols wasn't coercive due to your ability to run until you reach the Holy Roman Empire.
But, while both taxation and conscription are coercive as hell, the main difference to me is that the former is forcing you to pay for a service monetarily, while the latter forces you into a kind of thinly veiled debt slavery of very questionable profitability for anyone. In addition to paying for it monetarily.
Serbia followed the curve of lowering the required conscription time, then introducing civilian service instead of service at arms, and finally, a few years ago, cutting mandatory service entirely. Frankly, I'm glad it did. Feels like I've been granted an additional year (or three) of life.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted August 11, 2014 01:15 PM |
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Edited by artu at 13:33, 11 Aug 2014.
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Yes, Bak, needless to say, there are many practical differences between taxation and conscription. However, all of those points would be moot if there was no feasible way to abandone it, wouldn't they? We can not give up on taxation without radically transforming the system, while on the other hand, conscription can be and actually is in many places, replaced with functioning alternatives.
I dont suggest that defenders of conscription are totally off base, but the debate revolves around reality, where as debating taxes (to remove them completely) would be debating something extremely theoretical.
If you dont like it, you can move is almost never a good argument, btw. Why are we against dictatorships then, why fight for any kind of rights at all? And who's to say which ones are supposed to move when everybody is born to the same country? Your homeland is nobody's private property.
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kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted August 11, 2014 04:37 PM |
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Edited by kayna at 16:38, 11 Aug 2014.
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I think the best would be a 3 month summer military camp, obligatory for all citizens without health problems, around 18 years old. At least, when the conscription happens, those conscripted wouldn't be considered the lowest of soldiers, and thus often commanded to hold the most dangerous positions like the front line, leading to a high death rate. It would also do wonders to people's health in general. And increase their survival rate if they do end up conscripted.
But then again, most higher up would rather have harmless sheeps than citizens knowing in use of firearms, because, well, all governments are control freaks aren't they.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted August 11, 2014 04:43 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:44, 11 Aug 2014.
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Picking the summer season is not a good idea. The worst memory about military according to many of my friends was keeping post in that heat with a helmet and boots. In colder climates summer maybe a preferable idea.
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Atronach
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Fired Hero
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posted August 21, 2014 02:05 AM |
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I think there are many strong arguments against conscription, and it doesn't make much sense in the current era anyway, when everyone either has nuclear weapons or is allied with someone who has nuclear weapons. On the other hand, conscription shouldn't be rejected categorically. To use an extreme example, imagine aliens were invading the Earth, and a large army were required to fight them off, and people would be so scared of dying that manning an army by paying for it wouldn't be feasible. In such a situation, it would be good to press people into service, for the good of humanity.
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