Military Debate: Is Conscription Moral?

[Abhorsen]

Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin.

Do I have a right to use that sidewalk? Yes. Do I have a responsibility to not leave trash or damage in my wake? Also yes.

That's just a simple example of how rights come with responsibilities.

No, they aren't. Those are both rights, specifically property rights. Do you have the right to use that sidewalk? Depends, did the owner of the sidewalk give you permission (possibly implicit)? Then yes. Frequently, that permission limits how one can use the sidewalk: for example, you can use the sidewalk as long as you do not litter. This is private property rights in action.

Note, there is no responsibilities here, just observing other's rights.

A responsibility, meanwhile, is a positive duty owed. For example, if you have consensual sex, and there is a birth (deliberately avoiding the abortion question here as beyond the scope of the thread), you now have a responsibility to that baby to raise it. But again, note that you consensually entered into this by taking the risk of sex.

 

[bintananth]

No, they aren't. Those are both rights, specifically property rights. Do you have the right to use that sidewalk? Depends, did the owner of the sidewalk give you permission (possibly implicit)? Then yes. Frequently, that permission limits how one can use the sidewalk: for example, you can use the sidewalk as long as you do not litter. This is private property rights in action.

Note, there is no responsibilities here, just observing other's rights.

A responsibility, meanwhile, is a positive duty owed. For example, if you have consensual sex, and there is a birth (deliberately avoiding the abortion question here as beyond the scope of the thread), you now have a responsibility to that baby to raise it. But again, note that you consensually entered into this by taking the risk of sex.

You are tapdancing around the fact that every right comes with responsibilities.

"Respecting other's rights" is a responsibilty which gets dragged along for the ride when you are excercising your rights.

 

[Abhorsen]

You are tapdancing around the fact that every right comes with responsibilities.

"Respecting other's rights" is a responsibilty which gets dragged along for the ride when you are excercising your rights.

No. You are seeking to turn a positive 'right' into a duty. There are what are called negative rights and positive 'rights'. Negative rights are things which others may not to do to you (aggress upon you, take your stuff). Positive 'rights' are things you are owed by others, things they must do for you. Such as a 'right' to food/housing/healthcare/defense.

Duties arise out of positive 'rights', and they lead to all kinds of problems. It's wrong to put a gun to someone's head to force them to provide food for another. It's wrong to put a gun to someone's head to force them to cure another. And it's wrong to put a gun to someone's head to force them to defend another.

It's the difference between forbidden to do something specific, and being forced to do something specific. These are very different things, and the bar to justify the second is far higher than the first, as being forced to do something specific is far more limiting than being prevented from something.

 

[Cherico]

I consider conscription one of the shitty sides of the deal that come with the right to vote.

If you have the right to decide how a country should be run then you have to accept the risk of being sent to fight for it. That means that yes I think women should be subject to the draft too. That said I'm not unreasonable, and am willing to have a second lesser level of citizenship.

In this state your not allowed to vote, hold any political office or have any job with the government but your not subject to the draft.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Some people just can't accept the fact that living in society brings duties and responsibilities, not just benefits and privileges.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I've got a lot of thoughts on subjects like this but saying them out loud (or even in type is likely to get me placed on a watchlist) I can safely say out loud I wonder sometimes what the point of a society truly is.

 

[Aldarion]

If you live in a society, you have duty to that society. This includes defending it from aggression. That being said, I am on the fence regarding conscription as such. Unlike say Territorial Defense, conscripts can be sent to offensive wars - which is typically not a defensive and popular war, and thus immediately defeats the entire point of conscription.

And if you want to say "I am an individual and government has no right to ", well then, find the nearest mountain or move to an African or Indonesian jungle. Then you can live as an individual all you like.

 

[Abhorsen]

Again, people trying to dodge the uncomfortable realization that it's slavery by not using the word.

The other thing people seem to be missing here is that conscription is rarely the only option. The US works fine with it's all volunteer army. So does the UK, so do other countries. If we accept that a State exists to protect people's rights, then a state should protect it's people's rights in the least bad way. Conscription, government enforced slavery of a huge chunk of your country's population, is a drastic, crazy measure that requires a huge counterweight to justify, one that frequently you can solve by simply... running an all volunteer force combined with an armed population.

But governments don't like the idea of an armed population. They want something they can control. They also don't want to spend money (sometimes). So they won't choose that, and instead present the populace with only two choices: a bad/no army, or a conscript centered army. Then they act like it's the lesser of two evils, or worse, a positive good that everyone goes through with it. No, it's mass slavery.

Basically, for those arguing 'duty', the state has an obligation by the purpose of its existence (to ensure freedom for it's citizenry) to violate the freedom of its population as little as possible, and conscription, especially standardized non-wartime conscription, is almost never justified. The only reason a duty to the state exists for anything is to maintain the state, but the only reason the state exists to maximize individual freedom for its members.

 

[Aldarion]

Again, people trying to dodge the uncomfortable realization that it's slavery by not using the word.

You also pay taxes to the state. Meaning you are already enslaved. Hell, by your logic, living in a society is already a form of slavery, because you don't have absolute freedom.

The other thing people seem to be missing here is that conscription is rarely the only option. The US works fine with it's all volunteer army. So does the UK, so do other countries. If we accept that a State exists to protect people's rights, then a state should protect it's people's rights in the least bad way. Conscription, government enforced slavery of a huge chunk of your country's population, is a drastic, crazy measure that requires a huge counterweight to justify, one that frequently you can solve by simply... running an all volunteer force combined with an armed population.

This I actually agree with. Conscription should be the last resort - even if a country has mandatory military training requirement, actual army should be based on voluntary service.

But governments don't like the idea of an armed population. They want something they can control. They also don't want to spend money (sometimes). So they won't choose that, and instead present the populace with only two choices: a bad/no army, or a conscript centered army. Then they act like it's the lesser of two evils, or worse, a positive good that everyone goes through with it. No, it's mass slavery.

Basically, for those arguing 'duty', the state has an obligation by the purpose of its existence (to ensure freedom for it's citizenry) to violate the freedom of its population as little as possible, and conscription, especially standardized non-wartime conscription, is almost never justified. The only reason a duty to the state exists for anything is to maintain the state, but the only reason the state exists to maximize individual freedom for its members.

Agreed, to an extent. As I said, Territorial Defense would be an ideal model, regardless of whether there is conscript training or not... but yeah, government doesn't like that.

 

[Abhorsen]

You also pay taxes to the state. Meaning you are already enslaved. Hell, by your logic, living in a society is already a form of slavery, because you don't have absolute freedom.

Taxes are not slavery. They are theft. And yes, I consider them an evil, but not nearly so bad as slavery. Slavery (for a quick rough definition, not perfect but good enough) is when another holds you in bondage in order to forcibly extract labor from you. Most countries don't obligate one to work: a person who wants to live forces themself to work.

So note that just theft is not slavery: slavery deals with how something is produced, theft is who gets what is produced. Same with obeying laws that tell you not to do something (the vast majority): they don't demand you go out of your way to do stuff, just order you not to do things. And most laws that demand you do X are usually of the form "You can't do Y unless you X", which is still not technically slavery, and usually not even close to slavery unless Y is very, very broad.

Now all of these other options are evils as well, but significantly lesser evils than slavery. And the least of these evils, and probably the most necessary, is theft. And depending on how one steals the tax money (not interested here in going into the specifics), it can be done in ways that minimizes the hit to the personal freedom of the populace. But even a bad taxation scheme is much less bad than conscription.

This I actually agree with. Conscription should be the last resort - even if a country has mandatory military training requirement, actual army should be based on voluntary service.

I'm still against the mandatory part of the mandatory military training, but as long as we have public schools (ugh, but we got em), we might as well teach kids to use rifles during school if needed.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Again, people trying to dodge the uncomfortable realization that it's slavery by not using the word.

No, they're rejecting it as an extremely prejudicial term biased toward your position, and also because it's not the same thing.

The other thing people seem to be missing here is that conscription is rarely the only option. The US works fine with it's all volunteer army. So does the UK, so do other countries. If we accept that a State exists to protect people's rights, then a state should protect it's people's rights in the least bad way. Conscription, government enforced slavery of a huge chunk of your country's population, is a drastic, crazy measure that requires a huge counterweight to justify, one that frequently you can solve by simply... running an all volunteer force combined with an armed population.

We do just fine with an all volunteer army because we've spent the last 50 fighting extremely lopsided wars against technologically inferior and badly run armies, from countries a fraction our size. If it came down to a shooting war with someone in sane league, the a draft is very likely.

But governments don't like the idea of an armed population. They want something they can control. They also don't want to spend money (sometimes). So they won't choose that, and instead present the populace with only two choices: a bad/no army, or a conscript centered army. Then they act like it's the lesser of two evils, or worse, a positive good that everyone goes through with it. No, it's mass slavery.

Right, if there's one simple phrase that can be used to describe the federal government, it's that they hate spending money. That totally sounds accurate.

But let's actually run with your idea here. Let's say you're a country that's embroiled in a tense standoff with a neighbor, and they use conscription to bulk up thier army, and you can't afford to raise army pay enough to reach numerical parity with them, and if you can't maintain that parity they may very well invade you, which would be enormously destructive even if you managed to win (and being outnumbered, you don't know if you can). How do you justify not using conscription to even the odds?

And don't give me some BS about slavery. Explain why exposing the citizens you have a duty to protect and defend to extreme risk of death and destruction in a war is the correct choice here.

Basically, for those arguing 'duty', the state has an obligation by the purpose of its existence (to ensure freedom for it's citizenry) to violate the freedom of its population as little as possible, and conscription, especially standardized non-wartime conscription, is almost never justified. The only reason a duty to the state exists for anything is to maintain the state, but the only reason the state exists to maximize individual freedom for its members.

"Conscription is almost never justified" is a bit of a shift from "it's a bunch of slaves being ordered around at gunpoint, nothing good can come of it". Argung that conscription is frequently abused and misused is a different claim from it being immoral.

 

[Abhorsen]

No, they're rejecting it as an extremely prejudicial term biased toward your position, and also because it's not the sane thing.

No, it is the same thing. How is it not a person holding another in bondage, in order to force them to do a job (i.e. the definition of slavery)? Seriously, I've heard little argument against this, instead just arguments that it is necessary, as if that somehow removes the evil. It can necessitate it, but not remove it.

We do just fine with an all volunteer army because we've spent the last 50 fighting extremely lopsided wars against technologically inferior and badly run armies, from countries a fraction our size. If it came down to a shooting war with someone in sane league, the a draft is very likely.

More argument about whether or not it is necessary. Nothing about whether it is a moral evil to put a gun to someone's head.

Right, if there's one simple phrase that can be used to describe the federal government, it's that they hate spending money. That totally sounds accurate.

But let's actually run with your idea here. Let's say you're a country that's embroiled in a tense standoff with a neighbor, and they use conscription to bulk up thier army, and you can't afford to raise army pay enough to reach numerical parity with them, and if you can't maintain that parity they may very well invade you, which would be enormously destructive even if you managed to win (and being outnumbered, you don't know if you can). How do you justify not using conscription to even the odds?

Again, I'm saying that even if it is justified, it's evil. It might be a necessary evil, but still evil. Call it what it is, so when that country stops pressuring you, you haven't glorified the draft in your head enough that it is kept because it is 'good'. It isn't good. It must be tossed as soon as is possible.

As for whether it is necessary, look at your other options first, and find the one that is the least onerous to the individual freedom of the people. Perhaps your country is so shit that surrender would be the moral choice. Perhaps there are ways to ease tensions. There are a ton of options. The idea that slavery is somehow the only option is just dumb.

"Conscription is almost never justified" is a bit of a shift from "it's a bunch of slaves being ordered around at gunpoint, nothing good can come of it". Argung that conscription is frequently abused and misused is a different claim from it being immoral.

Again, did you even read my original position? It was "Maybe you can justify slaves being ordered around at gunpoint, maybe you can't. It's still slaves being ordered around at gunpoint." I've always left open the possibility for necessary evil. I just want it acknowledged as evil.

Evidence:

It's slavery. It's forced labor, also known as slavery. You can say it's necessary slavery, but it is still slavery. The 'simple', moral, but expensive solution is a volunteer force instead or just increase funding for hiring/recruiting.

At best, one could give an argument that the slavery is a necessary evil (I don't buy it here, a volunteer force would work fine), but never forget that it is evil.

All you wrote were a bunch of justifications for slavery. You tried to justify it in various ways. I didn't even bother disputing that, all I wanted was for you to call a spade a spade: conscription is slavery. Maybe it's 'justified' slavery, but please accept that it is slavery.

No, you aren't just paying for the army. You are enslaving a large part of it. And the slavery is wrong. Maybe it's a necessary evil, but still acknowledge it as evil.

Forced labor is commonly known as slavery. You can say it is necessary, fine, just never forget that it is an evil.

Okay. Let's accept for sake of argument that it is necessary. Can you still call it slavery and acknowledge it as a necessary evil? That's what I've been arguing for. It's important to recognize evil comes not just from outside forces but also from your own government.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Again, people trying to dodge the uncomfortable realization that it's slavery by not using the word.

They're not, and that's not the definition of Slavery. You're just trying to redefine something by using the wrong word and mistaking pedantry for real argument. Slavery where you get paid wages for your work, have a set retirement, and get a pension for your service is a hella weird definition of slavery.

Fundamentally one of the issues that tends to twist your logic so badly is that property rights are positive rights. You try to reverse it to a negative right by saying it's "the right not to have your stuff taken" but that makes no sense without the positive right to own stuff in the first place. Because you're basing your entire stance on a positive right, your arguments against other positive rights fall flat.

It follows then logically that without a government granting you the right to own stuff, you have no right to anything. So taxation isn't theft because the government is charging you basically a transaction feed in order to guarantee your right to own stuff, without that taxation you would own nothing. Similarly, a government grants numerous benefits to its citizens and conscription may, at times, be the fee it charges to hold the state together and continue to do so.

But again, people do in fact have duties to society. I've seen you in this thread edging towards that edgiest of teenage melodrama, beloved of those with too much eyeliner who've been told to turn on Linkin Park for two minutes to take out the trash, "I didn't ask to be born." I personally didn't ask to be an orphan, but I was. And then I didn't die in a ditch because society took care of me. I signed no contract but I'm aware that I'm implicitly part of the social contract because I'm not the kind of person that thinks they can take and take and take from society and then screech that it's theft or slavery when the debt of the social contract is called in. Nobody who considers property rights the foundation of their philosophy should ever object to the paying of debts owed.

 

[Abhorsen]

They're not, and that's not the definition of Slavery. You're just trying to redefine something by using the wrong word and mistaking pedantry for real argument. Slavery where you get paid wages for your work, have a set retirement, and get a pension for your service is a hella weird definition of slavery.

Slavery is forced labor. It's a pretty simple definition. For wages, are sex slaves controlled by a pimp, who can't leave, but are given cash not slaves because of the cash? No. And the rest of the features similarly fail, as they do not hit makes slavery wrong. If the slaver only held his slaves for a limited time period, that does not make him somehow moral. The payment after the fact could be reparations for the wrong he did, but again, does not justify doing the wrong in the first place.

The key feature of slavery is being held in forced servitude to another who holds you in bondage. Again, what feature of slavery do you see that conscription does not meet? You cannot leave. You must work. This isn't pedantry, this is uncomfortable.

Fundamentally one of the issues that tends to twist your logic so badly is that property rights are positive rights. You try to reverse it to a negative right by saying it's "the right not to have your stuff taken" but that makes no sense without the positive right to own stuff in the first place. Because you're basing your entire stance on a positive right, your arguments against other positive rights fall flat.

That's not how positive rights work. At all. A positive right is one that requires action: the right to education, healthcare, social security, etc.

A negative right is one that requires inaction: the right to speech, property, bodily autonomy, etc.

The 'right to own stuff', even if we accept your weird phrasing, is still a negative right. It requires others to not do stuff.

For example, the Wikipedia page lists property rights as a negative right:

Negative and positive rights - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now the right to "have the state enforce your property rights" (or other negative rights)? That's a positive 'right'. It's the reason we have a state, and clearly, it would require a cost to maintain it, so we violate negative rights a little (a little evil called taxes) in order to prevent more violations.

Nobody who considers property rights the foundation of their philosophy should ever object to the paying of debts owed.

Yeah. But debts are entered into consensually. What we described above (the taxes but more importantly the conscription) is not a debt. It is an evil. I want as little of it as possible in people's lives, as each instance is an injustice. I still acknowledge it as necessary, I just want it to do evil less because stopping evil is the entire point of government.

Also, your comparison of a family to a government is completely wrongheaded, again. Again, grounding for naughty words is fine in a family, but censorship is not. Forcing a kid to go to a church is fine for a family, not for government. And I could go on. These are not similar things.

 

[Aldarion]

Taxes are not slavery. They are theft. And yes, I consider them an evil, but not nearly so bad as slavery. Slavery (for a quick rough definition, not perfect but good enough) is when another holds you in bondage in order to forcibly extract labor from you. Most countries don't obligate one to work: a person who wants to live forces themself to work.

So note that just theft is not slavery: slavery deals with how something is produced, theft is who gets what is produced. Same with obeying laws that tell you not to do something (the vast majority): they don't demand you go out of your way to do stuff, just order you not to do things. And most laws that demand you do X are usually of the form "You can't do Y unless you X", which is still not technically slavery, and usually not even close to slavery unless Y is very, very broad.

Now all of these other options are evils as well, but significantly lesser evils than slavery. And the least of these evils, and probably the most necessary, is theft. And depending on how one steals the tax money (not interested here in going into the specifics), it can be done in ways that minimizes the hit to the personal freedom of the populace. But even a bad taxation scheme is much less bad than conscription.

Problem with this is that as I have said, humans are social animals and live in groups. And this means rights and responsibilities, of which common defense is probably the most basic one. If you do not organize for defense - which means state because anything else is simply not viable - somebody else is going to come and take everything you have. Waving a Declaration of Rights or whatever is not going to do anything if other guy's got a gun in your face. So as nice as your model of society is, it is completely devoid of reality.

 

[Abhorsen]

Problem with this is that as I have said, humans are social animals and live in groups. And this means rights and responsibilities, of which common defense is probably the most basic one. If you do not organize for defense - which means state because anything else is simply not viable - somebody else is going to come and take everything you have. Waving a Declaration of Rights or whatever is not going to do anything if other guy's got a gun in your face. So as nice as your model of society is, it is completely devoid of reality.

Did you see the part about necessity? Look, one starts talking about society by first defining what morality is, then you can go about defining a government to protect morality as best as possible within reality. It ain't perfect, I'm not asking for perfect. I'm asking people to just acknowledge its imperfections and not pretend that the bugs are actually features.

Obviously the morality is pie in the sky idealism, that's the point of a morality system. You gotta have a north star to orientate your self around to find your way north, but it doesn't mean you are expected to actually arrive at the north star or even the north pole. All I'm asking here is a basic acknowledgement that we made a eastward turn. I seem to be standing, pointing right at the north star, and how we aren't headed towards it, while everyone else seems to be insisting that sun rises in the north. Now maybe we have to go east always to get around a mountain or obstacle, but if we keep insisting that the sun rises in the north, then once we are past the obstacle we will just keep heading east.

 

[Aldarion]

Did you see the part about necessity? Look, one starts talking about society by first defining what morality is, then you can go about defining a government to protect morality as best as possible within reality. It ain't perfect, I'm not asking for perfect. I'm asking people to just acknowledge its imperfections and not pretend that the bugs are actually features.

Obviously the morality is pie in the sky idealism, that's the point of a morality system. You gotta have a north star to orientate your self around to find your way north, but it doesn't mean you are expected to actually arrive at the north star or even the north pole. All I'm asking here is a basic acknowledgement that we made a eastward turn. I seem to be standing, pointing right at the north star, and how we aren't headed towards it, while everyone else seems to be insisting that sun rises in the north. Now maybe we have to go east always to get around a mountain or obstacle, but if we keep insisting that the sun rises in the north, then once we are past the obstacle we will just keep heading east.

We haven't made an eastward turn, we have turned south, dug our head into the ground, started digging and kept at it. Right now, we are somewhere north of Hell.

But my point is that any ideal or idealistic society will lead to genocide, because ideals are, by their very nature, removed from reality on the fundamental level. So the end point of everything is necessity: we can agree that conscription is evil, but there may be points when it is necessary. Should we try and avoid it if at all possible? Absolutely. Is conscription immoral? Yes. Can it be necessary? Definitely.

What you end up with the above observations however is that evil is necessity of existence because very existence is evil. I am not actually certain I would agree with that conclusion, but the fact is that humans are fundamentally prone to evil - and that greatest evils are generally a product of stupidity rather than malice. Which means that any sort of ideal or idealistic society is extremely dangerous at the most fundamental level: what we need to do is look at history, see what worked and what didn't, adapt the former and reject the latter. Even just trying to achieve some sort of society centered around unfiltered morality alone (meaning, morality that is not a product of historic tradition) is something I would call idiotic at best and evil at worst, because considering morality without compromise to practicality ends up achieving neither morality nor compromise.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Honestly, the issue I have (and really this is for society in general, not just the draft) is that The biggest dangers to people's security are not external threats, but threats within society itself namely bad leadership. Forces like Gangus Kahn seem to be a once-in-a-legend kind of thing meanwhile a lot of conflicts both historical and especially modern is a result of bears behind the scenes poking each other until the conflicts spew into the people's backyard. (many of Rome's enemies came about because of all the people the roman leadership backstabbed.) and since the worms of society can't or won't fight thier own battles they hide behind meat shields. the phrase I like to use is "the sheep give power to the wolves because they are afraid that a fox might get them."

As for the draft itself, I think that if it gets to the point where the draft is necessary your society is already in a bind and has a bunch of other moldy rot underneath. in short no matter what you are doomed.

Edit: I'm deleating the last part of my comment because I clearly have no understanding of what happened during world war II. A lot of stuff could have been pervented had the rest of the world just accepted the results of the Six Day War

 

[Adjudicator]

Any government worthy of defending will have people signing up to defend it.

A government that has to resort to conscription either lacks the faith and trust of its citizens, is attempting to prosecute an unjust war, or is failing to reward service to the state in appropriate measure.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Any government worthy of defending will have people signing up to defend it.

A government that has to resort to conscription either lacks the faith and trust of its citizens, is attempting to prosecute an unjust war, or is failing to reward service to the state in appropriate measure.

kinda like US the past 100 years or so.