That's how it worked in Starship Troopers, although not exactly conscription -- while the protagonist characters were Mobile Infantry, it's explicitly mentioned that only a *minority* of citizens completed their Federal Service in the military.
Military Debate: Is Conscription Moral?
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
That's how it worked in Starship Troopers, although not exactly conscription -- while the protagonist characters were Mobile Infantry, it's explicitly mentioned that only a *minority* of citizens completed their Federal Service in the military.
I think that if you have a free society and want to bother with justifying conscription (as opposed to some totalitarian shithole where the government does it because it can, it's cheap, and it works, like the levies of old, simple as that) it pretty much requires an invocation of nationalism or something related, based on the idea of the population's insistence on being independent, sovereign and self-governing, in turn implying basically a modern variation on the ancient idea of defending one's tribe. And in that tradition, there was no obsession about *everyone* taking part, more everyone capable of doing it.
What's outside of the tradition is the nature of modern warfare - requiring fairly expensive and long training, that can vary massively in cost. requirements and time depending on the position. Something like England's longbow training mandate is the closest i think, but even that works for something like territorial defense more than typical conscription.
As for exchangeable civil service, it's a rather mediocre solution without a problem, in fact communist countries practiced a lot of similar things for various reasons, but the obvious problem is that it gives the state a shitload of free manpower with limited motivation (everyone doing the bare minimum for the service to count, why bother with trying anything beyond that, service done is service done) and varying but generally not great skills, which means "lowest common denominator" work, make-work, favor trading...
Or in other words, it promotes corruption, waste and inefficiency in functioning of the state, as if we didn't have enough of such problems without this.
Not to mention that even then, in terms of sacrifice and risk that compares only to peacetime training, wartime service as a conscript doesn't really compare properly, which would raise an issue of unfairness.
What's outside of the tradition is the nature of modern warfare - requiring fairly expensive and long training, that can vary massively in cost. requirements and time depending on the position. Something like England's longbow training mandate is the closest i think, but even that works for something like territorial defense more than typical conscription.
As for exchangeable civil service, it's a rather mediocre solution without a problem, in fact communist countries practiced a lot of similar things for various reasons, but the obvious problem is that it gives the state a shitload of free manpower with limited motivation (everyone doing the bare minimum for the service to count, why bother with trying anything beyond that, service done is service done) and varying but generally not great skills, which means "lowest common denominator" work, make-work, favor trading...
Or in other words, it promotes corruption, waste and inefficiency in functioning of the state, as if we didn't have enough of such problems without this.
Not to mention that even then, in terms of sacrifice and risk that compares only to peacetime training, wartime service as a conscript doesn't really compare properly, which would raise an issue of unfairness.
That's just payment with extra confusion, bureaucracy and room for political shenanigans. I think most of soldiers getting those benefits, if they had the option that at the end instead of these benefits they will get a lump sum of money equivalent to their value, they would rather have that.
Yes, but there's two points against that, one practical and one more philosophical. The practical one is that it's a lot easier to "sell" an education benefit to Congress and the general public than a cash lump sum. The philosophical one is that higher education benefits not only the recipient, but all of society.
So political obfuscation it is, something that ideally should be avoided, rather than pursued.
Varies greatly, depending on the type of education and what is it used for. Which funny enough, is already better reflected in the beneficiary's later earnings and taxes paid.
The same could be said for, say, investing the money in a business, or thermal insulation of one's house, but no one cares about those options.
On more skeptical side, it's a dirty favor for the educational institutions at the expense of the beneficiary's ability to choose how to spend own pay. "You get an extra bonus to your pay, but you have to spend it on a certain kind of a thing". It's more obfuscated and excused variation of paying people in Amazon gift cards as part of their salary, or back in the day, company scrip. Except worse, because you can sell Amazon gift cards for almost their full value, while higher education benefits are "use it or lose it", with no guarantee of return on using it either.
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I'm going to point out that pay in company scrip or limited benefits is completely legal as long as minimum wage is met with legal tender. Relatively few places do it because mixed pay is harder to sort out in payroll and you'd have to pay significantly more in scrip to compete with rival employers that pay in all legal tender, but it is absolutely legal and IMO, ethical as well.
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KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
Why is being killed by another human being any more or than death by disease or starvation? Animals kill each other all the time. Some even with sticks. The only difference is our sticks go boom.
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Because humans are moral actors, animals are not.
@ShadowArxxy said it much more concisely than I, but I'll post what I had.
First, "any more" what "than death by disease or starvation"? I'm not critiquing grammar, it just matters for this discussion here.
Second, I'm claiming it's not morally evil. Someone dying of starvation on a deserted island didn't die because she was morally wronged, she died because there wasn't enough food. Someone dying because a tornado hit them isn't a moral evil either, as a tornado does not have moral agency. Only a human does, because only humans really think. You don't rage at the sea for being badly raised in a broken home when a man drowns, not since we stopped ascribing gods to things like that.
When cancer takes your grandfather, you hate cancer, but it's not like those cells consciously decided one day to just keep reproducing without end. They made no moral decision. A more moral and just society would not have prevented the death... unless a person got in the way of the healthcare. And then that person could be called out for some moral evil because they chose to do something. And even then, only if they knew what they were doing and did it consciously.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
But What is thinking? What is choice? Who is to say it's not just more complicated electrical signals?
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
What is morality?
Differs based on civilization and time
Going into a deep dive on that is beyond the scope of this thread, I'd say. For the purpose of this thread, dealing with conscription by humans, humans are thinking and the concept of starvation or dying of exposure does not. Humans are the only things that can make conscious choices. If you want to go "everything's determined, so nothing's my fault", fine, but I'm not going to engage with that cause there's no point.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
It does when you are trying to justify something one way or the other in the name of morality.
"When I steal I am branded a criminal. When you steal you are branded a god."
No, it really doesn't. When I'm talking about throwing a football, I don't need to know, let alone talk about, how electrical signals to the muscles to control the throw. Humans are the only moral actors. This means that however you want to define morality, the only things that can obey or disobey, follow or not follow a given morality are humans. Because they are the only ones who can chose.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
I disagree but fair enough.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Anarchy would have no social mobility at all because you wouldn't have society.
Anyway, point is that feudalism was heavily decentralized. In fact, early feudalism was precisely what you described: a bunch of small warlords. Ironically, in many ways they had more freedom than people today - but only after things got kinda-sorta sorted out, and particularly after independent cities and towns started appearing.
Agreed.
it was an attempt at feudalism with out the traditions that held back the local lords, and alot of the recipical relationships and balance of power that was developed over centuries.
ParadiseLost
Well-known member
Whether or not humans have free will is largely irrelevant because all humans experience life as though they have free will, and avoiding this is impossible. This was pointed out over a century ago.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
Conscription is wrong. Of course, I’m sure people can come up with scenarios where conscription is the lesser evil. That attitude, though, is that the ends justify the means. Do the ends justify the means? That is a difficult question, though if that is an attitude that is embraced, then we will constantly find ends to justify any means.
The simple answer is that conscription is wrong and shouldn’t be practiced.
The simple answer is that conscription is wrong and shouldn’t be practiced.
