> kind of a fringe take (PS: I just finished watching the movie Her and am in a weird place)
I thought we are closer to robot soldiers, Geoffrey Hinton said US army wants to have 50% robots by 2030, seems strange to invest in human soldiers when they are gonna have T-800 fairly soon. Is there some populist reason for conscription, or perhaps a weird twist to get into UBI?
are you worried about the raising crime amongst teenagers, do you think there is a lack of discipline in schools, do you think our young people lack authority and leadership in their lives, would you be in favor of introducing national service?
are you worried about the danger of war, are you worried about the growth of armaments, do you think there is danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill, do you think its wrong to force people to take up arms against their will? would you oppose the reintroduction of national service?
I thought Germany already had conscription, AKA mandatory service. Does this eliminate the conscientious objector alternatives like hospital volunteering?
Conscription in Germany is technically there, but was "paused" in 2011. It could be re-activated, or "un-paused" with less red tape than introducing it from scratch.
If re-introduced, there would likely be the same procedure in place for conscientious objectors that existed in the past (I am one, and declined military service in Germany at the time, opting for 15 months of community service instead of then 12 months of miltary service), namely stating your objection in writing when you are called to report for your conscription related health check.
lol no idea, I wanted to type “classical liberals”.
But no, they are not at all libertarians. They are pro-western, pro-EU, no Russia-simping and no brain-deadness.
What I find interesting in modern techowars, especially one with a declining demographics situation as Germany is ... draft older people!
From a policy standpoint, it means less "lost productive years".
I get that historically grabbing dumb and easily inspired disposable males was the way because there was almost always disposable males in the old demographics for the last 10,000 years.
But modern urbanized society isn't like that. Children are precious, old retired people are disposable.
The West is being far to passive on Ukraine. There should be large amounts of European forces in Ukraine right now. I'm talking 100,000 minimum.
Russia has openly stated its goals to attack NATO if/when it gets Ukraine. Putin views Europe as a fat pig ripe for conquest, full of weak and cowardly leaders.
Total population mobilization has to be planned now. The Polish and Balkans, the most willing fighters in NATO in the next line of countries, should likely be actively mobilized for total conventional war.
We can look at what's happening in Ukraine right now to see how well that's working. The truth of it is that no matter how much technology is deployed land can only be held with infantry.
Being infantry is still physically demanding and cannot be usefully replaced by technology. Maybe they aren't marching hundreds of kilometres on foot anymore, but they still need to endure the weather, minor injuries, and move through forests carrying heavy packs.
Physically, being infantry is beyond most people in their sixties.
That’s all true, except that something like 2/3 to 3/4 of most armies are not front line troops (support, logistics, intelligence, admin, etc.) it seems many if not most of those roles could be adequately fulfilled by people that are not particularly fit (e.g. you don’t need a 28yo doing aircraft maintenance or driving a truck)
Ukraine seems to be trying to find a middle ground here. Until recently, they only drafted men over the age of 27 (last month it was lowered to 25). Of course, even that age is still going to wreck your demographics. On the other hand, I'm not sure that retired old people have enough stamina to last long on the battlefield. Many of Ukraine's units have been fighting for over a year with no R&R.
All Soviet countries fell into sharp demographic/fertility collapse in the 90s when the USSR collapsed, and most never entirely pulled out of it, including Ukraine. So most have severe demographic issues in the ~20-30 year old range. Conscripting this group is reckless for these nations, because not only are there not many of them, but they're who should be creating the next generations. Here is Ukraine's population pyramid [1]. For contrast this is what an extremely healthy population pyramid looks like. [2]
Depends on the type of fighting being done, especially if there's a confrontation with an enemy filled with younger soldiers. You do lose agility and speed as you age.
Additionally, there's the matter of obedience. If you're being conscripted because you're "disposable" and closer to death anyway, you're more likely to ignore orders you disagree with. Even incarceration carries less of a threat.
On the obedience front I’m inclined to disagree, if you tell a 19yo private to go scale a wall and clear a house you don’t get a lot of questions, if you tell a senior NCO to do that, you get all sorts of questions (most very pertinent) and may likely get told to sod off unless you have good answers!
There have been plenty of moments in history where if a country doesn't resort to conscription then it won't continue to exist. If a country exists in a rough neighborhood, then its people must, unfortunately, expect to be enslaved for a few years of their life. In some ways, humanity has made little progress in the last hundred years. It's a shame that some large countries continue to have leaders that are so determined to expand the size of their country no matter the cost. It's also a shame that so many countries continue to trade with such tyrants.
This is why it's so important to have a nuclear deterrent. If Russia were to invade the UK, and there was no hope of a volunteer military defending us, I strongly hope our politicians would have the courage to use our entire nuclear arsenal. Regardless of death toll, this is morally superior to enslaving people.
I agree. The average person is so removed from violence and conflict so they feel no moral or survivalist need to fight; thus, governments step in and force them--or should I say, politicians. Let's have politicians' own children go to war first and then conscript people.
Putin wants war, he doesn't care if your head of government/country has children or not. He just wants to expand his soviet union or to gain more influence or whatever the current reason for his invasions is.
This "let the politicians fight it out" would only make sense if there was a real disagreement between two countries, not just one guy saying "I want your land and your people" and the other one going "fuck now, I don't want anything to do with you".
Imagine the conditions for German 18 year olds if a country like Russia, which has no qualms about conscription, or forced labor for non-Russians starts to take European countries.
Required military service sucks, but so does Putin.
> Conscription is slavery and slavery is evil. If a country has to resort to slavery then it doesn't deserve to exist.
Come on, that's nonsense logic. "Lets' make sloppy comparisons and reason from them," is never goes anywhere good. It's the same way you get to other nonsense like "taxation is theft."
If you live in a community, that means sometimes the community makes decisions for you. That's not slavery, or theft, or any inflammatory word you care to choose to describe it.
> Come on, that's nonsense logic. "Lets' make sloppy comparisons and reason from them," is never goes anywhere good.
Be kind. Edit out swipes. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.[1]
Conscription is slavery is not a comparison. Conscription satisfies any definition of slavery not designed to exclude conscription. Is it justifiable is a different question. Is taxation theft is a different question.
>If you live in a community, that means sometimes the community makes decisions for you.
Your logic is the nonsense logic used by every evil man to justify whatever atrocity they feel necessary, responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century alone. If every human being in the world stood up and said no to taxation and no to conscription, there wouldn't have been any world wars or genocides.
It's not the "community" that decides to war, in almost all cases politicians who have a vested financial interest in war and nothing to lose, sending common people to die who have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Readit News
Army recruitment is when the fun is over.
I thought we are closer to robot soldiers, Geoffrey Hinton said US army wants to have 50% robots by 2030, seems strange to invest in human soldiers when they are gonna have T-800 fairly soon. Is there some populist reason for conscription, or perhaps a weird twist to get into UBI?
Reminded me of this episode of Yes, Prime Minister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks
If re-introduced, there would likely be the same procedure in place for conscientious objectors that existed in the past (I am one, and declined military service in Germany at the time, opting for 15 months of community service instead of then 12 months of miltary service), namely stating your objection in writing when you are called to report for your conscription related health check.
EDIT: typo fixed.
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/von-optimierungen-bis-hi...
^According to that article, they want to consider extending conscription to other essential services, like fire departments.
Dead Comment
From a policy standpoint, it means less "lost productive years".
I get that historically grabbing dumb and easily inspired disposable males was the way because there was almost always disposable males in the old demographics for the last 10,000 years.
But modern urbanized society isn't like that. Children are precious, old retired people are disposable.
The West is being far to passive on Ukraine. There should be large amounts of European forces in Ukraine right now. I'm talking 100,000 minimum.
Russia has openly stated its goals to attack NATO if/when it gets Ukraine. Putin views Europe as a fat pig ripe for conquest, full of weak and cowardly leaders.
Total population mobilization has to be planned now. The Polish and Balkans, the most willing fighters in NATO in the next line of countries, should likely be actively mobilized for total conventional war.
Being infantry is still physically demanding and cannot be usefully replaced by technology. Maybe they aren't marching hundreds of kilometres on foot anymore, but they still need to endure the weather, minor injuries, and move through forests carrying heavy packs.
Physically, being infantry is beyond most people in their sixties.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_population_pyrami...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#/media/...
Additionally, there's the matter of obedience. If you're being conscripted because you're "disposable" and closer to death anyway, you're more likely to ignore orders you disagree with. Even incarceration carries less of a threat.
Putin wants war, he doesn't care if your head of government/country has children or not. He just wants to expand his soviet union or to gain more influence or whatever the current reason for his invasions is.
This "let the politicians fight it out" would only make sense if there was a real disagreement between two countries, not just one guy saying "I want your land and your people" and the other one going "fuck now, I don't want anything to do with you".
Required military service sucks, but so does Putin.
Come on, that's nonsense logic. "Lets' make sloppy comparisons and reason from them," is never goes anywhere good. It's the same way you get to other nonsense like "taxation is theft."
If you live in a community, that means sometimes the community makes decisions for you. That's not slavery, or theft, or any inflammatory word you care to choose to describe it.
Be kind. Edit out swipes. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.[1]
Conscription is slavery is not a comparison. Conscription satisfies any definition of slavery not designed to exclude conscription. Is it justifiable is a different question. Is taxation theft is a different question.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your logic is the nonsense logic used by every evil man to justify whatever atrocity they feel necessary, responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century alone. If every human being in the world stood up and said no to taxation and no to conscription, there wouldn't have been any world wars or genocides.
It's not the "community" that decides to war, in almost all cases politicians who have a vested financial interest in war and nothing to lose, sending common people to die who have everything to lose and nothing to gain.