Prince Harry calls for the return of slavery. Time for the tumbrels to start rolling methinks.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Prince Harry calls for the return of slaveryMay 17th, 2015 |
 59 comments to Prince Harry calls for the return of slavery |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
National Service didn’t do me any harm, but only because I didn’t do it, having been born after it was scrapped, and I would have failed the medical anyway. My father was in the RAF, he seems to have enjoyed it in retrospect. My uncle called his 2 years in the Army the biggest waste of his life. It strikes me that Prince Harry is implying that he would be a total degenerate if he hadn’t been in the Army, but that is his issue not anyone else’s.
Anyway, surely National Service (aka conscription, the draft) is a Napoleonic (yes I know I simplify) hangover, ill-beffiting a Prince, amd more akin to Serfdom? Anyway, we have selective re-education in the UK, aka the Universities, and Equality laws might require women to be conscripted too. We have an Army with harldy any tanks, scarely bigger than Italy’s militarised Tax Police*, an Air Force with few ‘planes, and a Navy with no working aircraft carriers or proper aircraft for them, so what would they all do?
*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_di_Finanza
“I dread to think where I’d be without the army…And more importantly to me, what I’ve seen the army do to other young guys.” , says the prince
Is this the blowing the bits off of them part, or some other aspect I’m unaware of.
Considering the entire military establishment is totally unfit for purpose, other than providing a lucrative cash cow for the UK defense industry & a big boy’s toy for its politicians, not an option I’d particularly value.
There are worse things the state can do than teach all its citizens how to use firearms and defend themselves. There are worse places people in their late teens can be obliged to spend time than a military whose reality offers a bit more resistance to PC indoctrination than, say, a school classroom. There are worse places for girls to learn how things really get done. There are worse places for boys to escape being regarded as defective girls.
There is also the simple fact that in a world of wars and rumours of wars, it’s desirable that voters know something about it. Natalie and I spent time in the same TA unit in our youth. We both talk more sensibly about violent incidents, battle events and war in general than if we had not.
As against that, Natalie and I both _chose_ to be in that unit. Harry maybe had less choice. Regarding the title of this post, some say the monarchy _is_ slavery. That;s an exaggeration, just as it’s an exaggeration to call national service ‘slavery’, but I’d say Harry was born to expectations that it must not have been easy to evade. Clearly, he’s looking back on that and seeing that it matured him in ways he could not have predicted.
‘Starship Troopers’ makes national service the price for having a vote. In today;s Britain, it would be nice if any price were demanded for being eligible for benefits, for getting your vote counted along with those who pay for those benefits, or indeed for anything at all.
In short, I’m not motivated to pick on Harry. On any possible view, there are people (and ideas) far, far, _far_ further up the queue of those deserving a one-way ride in a tumbril.
(BTW, do we really want to use terms from the French revolution? “First up against the wall when the counter-revolution comes”, anyone? 🙂 )
Well, since everyone’s sharing their personal experiences, I’ll share that I worked (I won’t say “served”) in the USAF for 8yrs, did 3 4-month tours to Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Southern Watch. So I have no animosity towards the military at all.
In Harry’s case, I think it’s completely pathetic that a 30yr old man feels that he needed other people to provide structure and purpose to 1/3 of his life, and worse, that he assumes others are as pathetic in exactly the same way.
We who love and understand freedom are all familiar with the pattern; we try to explain to a statist that one of the primary wrongs with statism is compulsion vs free choice…and they continue to, just, not get it, or care.
…or perhaps it’s we who just don’t get the fact that they PREFER forcing others and don’t really give a damn about freedom of choice and individual rights, and that certain people are just built that way.
National Service is effectively making people slaves of the state. It is the kind of thing Fascist and Communist states love.
Its also a great way to bully the introverted and shy even more after the ritual humiliation of that other Communist compulsion, “school”.
Its bad enough that hard-pressed young people will have to pay for the pensions and bus passes of fat feckless Boomers.
But that is not what conscription is about at all. Indeed if the UK conscripts you, it will teach you how to take orders from the state and when then it is done with you, you will still not be allowed to have a firearm to defend yourself.
How so? Your actually life is literally at the state’s disposal. It is theirs to expend in pursuit of national objectives. So if I did not agree to that state of affairs before hand in a volunteer military, how is that not literal slavery?
I am not a pacifist, I have seen a war up close and have the fragmentation wound to prove it. I am not against volunteer militaries but I really do view conscription as slavery pure and simple. And any amount of violence is justified when facing enslavement.
I’m not talking about conscription per se here, but it has always eluded me as to why “military service” wasn’t an option that was offered – where appropriate, and without any compulsion or unnecessarily restrictive or contractual obligations – in the case of unemployed/unemployable men/women or other people who might be on social welfare benefits for whatever reason. (This might also equally apply, of course, as a useful service in the case of those of us who are/were simply unsure of what career direction to take in life and who needed vocational guidance.)
.
This could give people the opportunity to choose to do something else with their lives – if they wanted – rather than risk the potential to vegetate in the relatively easy trap of social welfare through a simple lack of choice.
It is typical of people who are in poverty or who are unemployed that they really are at a disadvantage, in that they would seem to have a signal lack/constraint that the rest of society arguably is not so burdened by – they have reduced options and a consequently relatively bleak (not very bright) potential future.
.
Why not seek to change this?
.
By offering more options – e.g., as “military service” – you would empower those individuals who chose (self-selected) themselves as candidates by accepting that offer. The empowerment being by way of options – the wide window of opportunity that could open up for them.
So, if they were potential candidates for such an offer and if it was recommended or suggested to them, and if they were interested in the idea and wanted to explore or accept the offer, then a brief psychometric evaluation (including vocational aptitude testing) as to suitability would be easy to arrange, and that would filter out and help to minimise the number of potential drop-outs from training (drop-outs are a wasted but avoidable cost), whilst at the same time leaving it free for people to self-select themselves as drop-outs at a later stage (that would be part of the “no obligations” thing) even though they had passed the initial evaluation stage.
.
If there is one thing that western society (and the army) has become pretty good at, it is psychometric testing for vocational aptitude. In Britain, some of this was arguably spearheaded by the VGA (Vocational Guidance Association) – a charitable organisation that employed several qualified (and sometimes retired) psychologists and which used to operate out of Upper Harley Street in London (whatever happened to that organisation?).
.
I recognise that this idea as stated is simplified, and could, for example, be difficult to implement, as it could indicate a major change to the objectives/purpose of the military, by turning it into some sort of a pseudo-arm of the social services – one that that focused on human resource development for society’s benefit. Change is always likely to be resisted by established social/organisational structures. Furthermore, if the thing was not carefully done, then it could arguably become a potentially very risky threat against freedom for society to in some way conflate in practice the social services with the military…
.
But the idea would seem to have merit, though it would be easy to destroy it by petrifying it with the socialist labeling gun – e.g., persisting in calling it pejorative terms such as “slavery”, or “conscription”, when in fact it was neither thing but something quite different.
There could be worse things in life than taking hold of a genuinely helping hand that offers you a potential and no-strings-attached way out of a trap that would otherwise seem to leave you with few (if any) options to help you dig yourself out. Furthermore, it could benefit (i.e., be quite useful to) society, if that benefit was looked upon as being a major objective.
.
The potential economic waste and social cost in human life and endeavour that is arguably largely brought about by our fixation with religio-political ideology and the welfare state paradigm is/could be staggering. A great deal of it would have to be symptomatic of the welfare state approach. As such, it would thus represent a manmade problem and surely one likely to be amenable to a pro-human solution by Man (i.e., I don’t mean fascist/Nazi Man).
.
From history and from personal experience, I would suggest that this leaves us room to be hopeful – if not optimistic. History shows that, as a species, we can be creative and very good at problem-solving for difficult or intractable problems – when we have the intention and determination – especially where we (say) change the perspective that we might have of a problem and determine to change things for the better – e.g., the abolition of slavery in a free society.
.
For example, just look at our potential. If we can:
* drag ourselves out of barbarism (the Middle East excepted) and
* come up with something like the Magna Carta, and
* develop that into the American Constitution and the Amendments thereto, and
* put men on the moon etc., or
* avoid the potential risk of nuclear self-annihilation (so far), or
* fabricate the design of an entirely new religio-political ideology – a system of World Government and re-distribution of wealth based on a purely hypothesised (imaginary) enemy called “Climate Change™ and an entirely newly-imagined financial instrument and market for Carbon Credit trading (a tax on CO2 and thereby on life itself) to fund it all (suspending all laws of reason and economics in the process), or
* elect a Conservative government (only joking),
– then WE (in a trans-gender sense) can do anything. 🙂
Perry, one chuckles at your naivety. Slaves don’t get paid, soldiers get money! Not that I recommend either, but there is a difference.
Conscripted soldiers can very well be paid below market rates, so isn’t that slavery of some sort as well?
I can attest to that from personal experience. In Singapore, we sacrifice two years of our lives for poor pay, high risk of injuries, and a slower education and job progression than female citizens and non-foreigners. After that, we still have constant reservist training, which irks some employers and makes them less willing to hire local men in favor of foreigners.
The current gripe of ‘National Service for Singaporeans, Jobs and scholarships for foreigners’ has never hit so hard.
And yet… a volunteer military just won’t cut it in our region.
Oops…
Change ‘non-foreigners’ to ‘non-citizens’ in the 2nd para.
Wobbly Guy, change it yourself! We’re not your slaves!
“I really do view conscription as slavery pure and simple.”
That seems rather over-the-top, as if you see the world in black and white with no grays, no shades, no gradations.
This is all based on the notion that there can be no real wars again. Yet gunfire can be heard all over the world.
Pardon me Niall, but what happens if you refuse to do national service? Fines, then jail, then killed?
It may not be as brutal as other forms of slavery, but *compulsory service* is what defines slavery, not how unpleasant a condition the slaves are kept.
National service *is* slavery.
National defense, instilling virtues, etc – these are all simply excuses to ease the mind of the slaver that they really aren’t evil people wanting to force others to work for them.
Regarding’s Perry’s view of military conscription as slavery, I find that it’s harsh, but accurate. But people don’t always get what they want.
Can Israel, for example, get away with a volunteer military? I feel the answer is obviously not, and so there are some very good reasons for this form of slavery. Because if you don’t serve as a slave for those two years, your entire family and tribe will be dead.
It is offered. go down to your local recruiting office, no one is going to turn you away because you’re poor.
OTOH, why would you do that when you can get your check and subsidized housing and you don’t have to deal with a loud man loudly yelling at you all day long?
For the most part, those that are mentally suitable for military service have mostly already gone by and either are in or are physically unsuited. The rest aren’t interested in touching real work with a ten foot pole.
If your nation and your family aren’t worth fighting for *voluntarily*, then you’re going to get what you deserve.
You can say its an answer to the ‘free-rider problem’ – and it is.
You just don’t get to pretend to be virtuous while enslaving others to fight for you – even if you’re on the front line right next to them.
Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray
May 18, 2015 at 12:54 am
Perry, one chuckles at your naivety. Slaves don’t get paid, soldiers get money! Not that I recommend either, but there is a difference.
Slaves get paid.
They get food, clothing, housing. Some benevolent masters would even allow high-end slaves to travel alone to their work unsupervised and might even give them a small stipend as reward.
The difference is still – a slave does not have any say in what he does or how much compensation he receives for it. Same as a conscript.
Like a couple other posters here, I’ve done a bit of (American) military service–Marines, National Guard and Air Force Reserves (glutton for punishmnet).
Philosophically I *generally* agree with where Mr. Havilland (oddly enough when I lived in Australia I lived on a street called De Havilland Drive), but I also see the Prince’s point.
Conscription isn’t *exactly* slavery by most historical practices and understandings. You get paid (yes, often below market, but how many entry level jobs give you food, clothing, transportation, housing, and 100 percent medical care?), and the length of service is generally bounded (2 years, or “2 years or the duration” seems to be most common).
It *is* involuntary servitude, and that is horribly wrong.
On the other hand there is a *lot* that you learn when someone shaves your head and throws you into a squad bay with 120 other people from random parts of your culture/society and you *have* to get along with that hick from the sticks and the thug from inner city Detroit. You *have* to. You *have* to perform, you have to to work together, you have to function as a team. You learn the things you share, and you learn the things you don’t–at least if you’re the sort to learn. Generally (at least in the US) your daddy and mommy can’t help you, it doesn’t matter how much money you had or didn’t (within limits)–you all wear exactly the same clothes, the exact same haircuts, and the DIs treat you based on who/what you are. At least in boot camp and your first school(s).
On the gripping hand, conscripts make crap soldiers. My biggest concern for the US military is that it be an aggressive, scary as fighting force. The sort of thing people don’t *want* to tangle with[1]. A conscript military doesn’t produce this, and most of *our* generals don’t want the draft restarted right now.
[1] I don’t necessarily want it to get used a lot–just enough to convince people that yeah, better to trade and talk that fight.
I spent 3 years in the US Army, and it was a very good thing for me. I was just out of high school and had no clue what I wanted to do. Those years exposed me to a much wider world than I had theretofore experienced and permitted a certain amount of maturation. After that I was ready for college (I was, to be charitable, a mediocre high school student) and, eventually, a few graduate degrees as well.
Perry complains that military service “will teach you how to take orders from the state“, which I suppose is true, but in many cases it also teaches you a useful skill. Furthermore, the sad fact is that most people will spend their working lives taking orders from somebody (unless you start your own business), and it’s best to learn early how to do that. So I would encourage anybody who doesn’t have a definite plan already in mind to do a few years of some form of service and grow up a little.
That said, I absolutely oppose the draft or any other form of mandatory public service. I agree with Perry: it is slavery, and it has no place in a free society. If a country can’t convince enough people to volunteer for military service it’s doing something very wrong.
I would argue that the US Military (at least) doesn’t teach you to “take orders from the state”, that is basically wired in to about 93% of the population at birth, and *re-inforced* for the next 18 years (Well, it used to be. Now it’s take orders from the state, but only when $PARTY is in power).
The Military, at least the parts I was in, taught instant obedience to *certain* kinds of orders (look, when someone yells GAS GAS GAS you can argue if you want. Me, I’m putting on my gas mask first) but also talked at least twice a year about the difference between lawful and unlawful orders. It’s a blurry line, but it’s there.
And not all orders were unquestionable. Yes, a great many were “Here is the instruction, execute”, but a good leader, when there is time, will allow discussion and “questioning” of orders. I served in a firefighting role at one point. Whether military or civilian there are times you EXECUTE on command because otherwise you (or someone else) could die. However when the orders were of a different nature questions got asked and were explained.
This is much like the Corporate world.
I think much gets made about obedience in the military by people who never served, or who have political axes to grind. It’s really no different than many other places where lives are at stake. The biggest difference in the military is that you can’t quit any time you want.
Whereas once an effective army could be quickly created from a conscripted levy on the able population, Napoleon’s legion’s for examples, the modern era tends to favour a voluntary core backed up by a trained reserve primarily because of the complexity of the latest weaponry. Some of this stuff takes years to master well enough to be operationally competent, although once a decent level is reached it become easier to sustain. That said however, some nations simply lack the manpower and financial resources to keep fully professional forces in being all the time if that is a necessary requirement. Here I think of Israel, whose very survival is in question should it lapse its guard, in this instance a necessary conscription sits alongside the voluntary to provide a viable military able to defend as necessary. Most western aligned nations do not face anything like the level of threat, so their is little need to consider conscription. Instead by employing a reasonably well paid fully professional army it is possible to project formidable force using expensive effective weapons. Should it become impossible to raise enough volunteers to staff our shrinking military then I think it can be said that Britain’s decline has reached the point of no return. As for Prince Harry, well I think he spoke from the heart, after all for him as for others service in this way answered a deep inner calling, but I feel sure that if he examines his inner self he will come to realise that conscription is not an answer to the social desolation experienced by so many citizens here.
There is, I know, an argument that says in small countries (Israel, Switzerland, etc) that some kind of draft has a place given the sheer threats involved; ultimately, if a person in these places doesn’t want to serve they can emigrate, but that is a big cost to take.
For most people today, the nearest they get to compulsory service (besides compulsory attendance at school) is jury service; unless one can provide a decent excuse, one can get lumbered with sitting for months in a trial about fraud, for example. Most of us liberals/libertarians in my experience laud jury service, but are usually dead against military conscription. I find that slightly odd.
Thoughts?
The fact you get paid changed nothing, because unless you can say “nope, keep your money and shove your job”, you are still a slave. If your life can be expended by your owner without prior consent, you are a slave. Indeed you are more a slave than, say, a Roman pedagogus, who were often paid even though they were slaves, as a pedagogus would not be handed a sword and told to hold the line whilst his betters bugged out.
As I said earlier, I have nothing against the profession of arms and indeed it can be a very honourable calling, provided one never forgets that taking the Queen’s shilling does not cancel moral choice. But it does have to be an option, a choice to undertake that you will accept orders that might get you killed, or it really is no different to slavery. I am very much with Heinlein on this.
Jury service is at least a chance to be a check on the abuse of the prosecutorial power of the State, Lord Denning called every jury a ‘mini-Parliament’. However, it would be far better if, say, being called for 2 weeks jury service led to a year’s exemption from the income tax. Now that would (for now) make it worthwhile. Trials should not take more than 2 weeks. If you cannot explain a fraud in 10 minutes, get out of court.
Laud? It is intolerable. I regard it as conscription and for that reason, refuse to register to vote in order to not get conscripted for jury service.
I also think professional jurists would be better from a utilitarian position as well. Alternatively I also like the idea of treating it like a volunteer militia, where people agree to make themselves available and are then selected at random from a pool of willing jurists (indeed I would happily join such as I think it would be interesting, but I’ll be damned if I will be conscripted into it).
Which is another strike against compulsory national service – in ‘all-volunteer’ regimes you can check the abuse of military power by simply not enlisting.
I know lots of Europeans and a handful of Asians who did national service, and the common refrain is that it was a colossal waste of time. In Norway, their armed forces are so small that they cannot cope with the number being conscripted for national service. Hence a mate of mine found himself looking after a gymnasium for the bulk of his national service. What a waste of time, effort, and money.
I think you’ve misunderstood him.
He credits the services with making him the man he is. He notes that he doesn’t have a girlfriend and is happy. He regrets being caught with a naked woman in Las Vegas.
The only difference between Harry and the Village People is in which branch of the forces they were served
No, the only difference between Harry and the Village People is NOT in which branch of the forces they were served, as I very much doubt the Village People would ever be caught with a naked woman in Las Vegas 😉
Well this is as good a point as any to ask Sir Humphrey Appleby for his view on National Service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
And I’ve also found this, with a rather telling foretaste of the Crimean situation probably from the same episode, with the plan for National Service being formulated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmAyNvl1imw
Indeed.
I feel the answer is obviously yes – and not only that it can, it must. Some of us here are actively working towards precisely that end.
IDF as it is today is devouring its own host body, which is the country and the society themselves. It is too big and bloated, and the fact that service is compulsory serves as convenient pretext for politicians to pitch the serving segments of society against the non-serving ones (the latter being the Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews).
In practice, the combat units of IDF are recruiting on a voluntary basis in all but name, with the elite ones being very difficult to get into. The same applies more or less to high-tech units. All the rest could be easily dismantled, and the guys and gals who volunteer as things stand even now, could get paid real wages, and not the insulting pocket change they are being paid now.
Add to that a short basic training to all able young adults, plus a reserve-service system, and the IDF should be no less effective in providing national defense than it is now, and possibly more so.
You are not the first Israeli I have heard that from and I wish your campaign the best of fortunes!
Thanks, Perry.
And that basic training is still going to be compulsory, isn’t it? Same goes for the reserve-service, doesn’t it? Your answer shortens and reduces the length of service, and not the nature of compulsory service itself. It’s still slavery, albeit for a shorter period of time.
Nothing wrong with that, a faster training cycle with a short ‘operational experience’ stage would be optimal. I think my country’s two years of National Service, with another 10 years of 1-2 weeks annual training, to be a bit much.
Also, there will always be a fraction of people opposed to compulsory conscription. From the looks of things, it’s a small proportion at the moment.
I guess politicians and the state feel it’s too risky to abandon, particularly in the case of small states surrounded by belligerent neighbours. How much defense is enough defense? Would you err on the side of caution? When the shit hits the fan, are the measures you’ve proposed sufficient?
No, not necessarily.
It is a small proportion at this point (and it’s not necessarily the politicians who want to maintain the status quo – it’s the majority of the population) – but so what?
You will note that I made a number of suggestions that can be implemented separately and gradually. So with any luck convincing enough people, both politicians and regular voters, we will take it one step at a time and see what happens.
Political types in this country have been arguing about Trident for a very long time…
I can imagine agreeing with Alisa as regards voluntary service in Israel (not the same as saying I currently do). The situation there is longstanding and will continue for many years yet; the growth of rational political understanding and commitment in the electorate is imaginable. However I can’t imagine such voluntary military service surviving the soldiers’ having to obey a government equally voted for by those who choose not to serve. A Heinlein-style only-soldiers-vote arrangement might survive. Without it, and assuming the level of threat persists, I think either the government will sooner or later fail the Israeli army and the nation, or the soldiers will break with a government whose majority comes from non-serving voters.
If I lived in Israel today, I would probably not support any such proposal right away. I suspect I’d have to observe for myself what Alisa suggests – that the compulsoriness of the IDF is somehow actually weakening its effectiveness – before my alarm for the safety of people there would support rather than oppose my preference for voluntarism. It’s fair to say this means that my preference is not quite as fearless as it could be.
By contrast, I can’t imagine opposing Britain’s unprecedented decision in spring 1939 to introduce conscription in peacetime. There were many ways in which Adolf could have been stopped with some foresight. By spring 1939, it was politically as well as militarily impossible to oppose the nazis without it. Again, this means there are limits to my libertarian courage, that I’ll settle for half-a-loaf when my fear that the only actual alternative is no-bread becomes high enough.
Just my 0.02p.
On the particular subject of Harry Boy, I’m beginning to wonder what benefit he derived from military service.
I thought they were supposed to be getting away from the all-purpose grunt, put on the battlefield as bullet magnets. The modern army’s supposed to be becoming the preserve of the highly trained techno-warrior, master of a range of sophisticated battle management kit etc. You don’t train them in 2 years.
Harry seems more wedded to over-the-top, never mind the machine guns style of warfare. Couldn’t somebody’ve fragged him before he did any harm?
Niall, as I explained, when it comes to the “real” parts of the IDF – i.e. units that actually do the fighting, either direct physical kind or the remote electronic kind, the IDF is already voluntary in practice, as no one in their right mind is going to spend money, time and effort on modern training of combat soldiers/computer geeks who simply don’t want to be there. These kids are eager to get in, because not serving while being able still carries a social stigma here, but mostly because they just want to do it, for all kinds of reasons. Same goes for reservists, because they are the ones who did the 3-year compulsory service, and so they carry the same kind of motivation. Motivation to defend our country is never going to be a problem here (and in any case if or when that happens, then there is nothing left to defend anyway).
The minorities who currently are not willing to serve will remain minorities, as their birth rates are constantly dropping due in large part to modernization – which may well also become the factor that will compel them to consider serving in the more distant future.
This is the reality, and the sooner we face it, the better off all of us will be. Maintaining the pretense of the outdated IDF ethos is not it.
Forgot to add a question with regard to your “1939” remark: how certain can we be that absent the draft Britain would have failed to recruit the same number of similarly motivated soldiers it did back then?
I dread to think where I’d be without the army.
Am I the only one who thinks that such a remark is a remarkable slur on his upbringing, and by implication, his family?
I do not understand all the libertarian fuss about this. For instance: I am under the impression that until recently (for some value of “recently”–I think I remember 1995, not all that recent of course) the Swiss system did not have compulsory military service; it’s just that if you wanted to VOTE you had to have done military service. At the time I believe that 95% of the (male) populace DID elect to serve; to be a full citizen with voting rights AND to have done service gave one status, among other things. Or perhaps better, not to have done this made one somewhat of a nebbisch in the eyes of one’s countrymen. Which, or both, I don’t know; but I have read reports of the factual results of the system.
Am I wrong about this?
(I also think that the only “free-rider” problem worth discussing occurs when people for whatever reason refuse to help defend their natural-rights-respecting country, performing whatever tasks are assigned to them. Of course with qualifiers, blah blah blah. Because as viewed by the rest of us, they enjoy the respect of their rights at our specific expense, which expense they claim they should not have to help to pay. But this implies that they don’t care all that much about the respect of their own rights, or they don’t understand the issue, in which case telling them to move on out is a natural and healthy response. With that exception, it seems to me that most of us are free riders in some manner, and provide others with the free ride in other ways; all as fallout from our being who we are as individual persons.)
This is exactly the same system as my (and not only my) solution to the problem of taxation. People who wish to, may purchase the vote, ONE VOTE ONLY, before each election — those who want to and can afford it, that is. (There ought to be a very strict constitution laying oiut the Rules here; in particular, just now I am thinking of the problem of keeping the vote sufficiently cheap that most people can afford it, if they really want to vote. This would already put a huge obstacle in the way of the Growth of the State.)
Much less problem with the “low-information voter,” and possibly much less “herd voting” I would think. Along with being a moral system of funding government, if one thinks that government itself is a legitimate institution.
A people could decide that to be a citizen one must have done military service AND one must purchase his vote each time.
Some people would like to substitute some sort of Community Service for those who want to be citizens with voting privileges/rights, but who do not want to do military service.
Absolutely not. There is no form of “Community Service” that is a proper function of government; the failure to understand this is what enables the Great State of Shelob in the “free world.” One might say that elected functionaries such as dogcatchers and Presidents or Chancellors or PM’s or the City Council chairman would be performing Community Service by doing the jobs they were elected to do, but there are arguments against that as well as for it.
Mr Ed, I haven’t watched the second video yet, but the first one is surely a doozy! Makes me go, “Oh, you noticed that, did you.” *grin*
Alisa:
The minorities who currently are not willing to serve will remain minorities, as their birth rates are constantly dropping due in large part to modernization
I was under the impression that the ultra-Orthodox who didn’t want to serve were also the ones breeding like rabbits and putting a strain on the Israeli welfare system with their giant families.
Of course, I’d tell the distant (ie. not in the Jerusalem area) settlements to defend themselves, and cut funding for the Shas schools (although a Google search implies the Israeli government has already done the latter?)
Ted, your impression is not entirely wrong, more like a bit outdated. As you correctly imply, it will be mostly the welfare policies (including those dealing with education, as you alluded) that will determine the demographics, and these policies are currently going through a prolonged, slow, but unmistakable transition period, with things being very much in flux, back-and-forth, etc. That is also the reason why I’m not sure that I can answer your specific question without distorting the facts, as the facts change all the time, especially now that we have just had a new cabinet sworn in. We’ll see. And in any case, I probably don’t need to explain it here that the situation as it was until fairly recently was unsustainable, no matter what the policies are.
BTW, I’m not familiar enough with the breeding patterns of the Leporidae family, but I’m fairly positive that the ultra-Orthodox (as well as the Arabs) are breeding in ways quite similar to the rest of the human race.
Alisa asked: “How certain can we be that absent the draft Britain would have failed to recruit the same number of similarly motivated soldiers it did back then?”
The short answer is ‘very’: at a time of high unemployment, the government had difficulty keeping the ranks of the small regular army filled. In WWI, a million soldiers volunteered to join the British army (one may note they still had to bring in conscription to keep the ranks filled through late 1917 and 1918) . Post-war attitudes meant that at the time of Munich , ‘Peace in our time’ was much more fashionable than volunteering. Attitudes then began to change, but slowly. Given that soldiers need time to train, and Hitler, having completed his own rearmament, was not eager to give his intended enemies time to catch up, I agree with the assessment made at the time: either bring in conscription immediately and vigorously, or have no strategy that could be taken seriously by military experts, or by allies you hoped to engage, or by enemies you hoped to deter.
Organising an alliance was part of the conscription decision. It was the panic in Paris (when it became clear France could no longer hide behind Britain’s alleged unwillingness to fight) that sent Chamberlain to Munich for the first time in 1938. In 1939, it was very clear to the British government that screwing France’s courage to the sticking place meant assuring her that a sizeable British army would be deployed alongside her conscript one a lot faster than in WWI. And French participation was essential to getting any other allies. (By late 1940, Britain was alone again, but in 1939 no-one could plan for that – and it made the large army even more essential.)
(Just my assessment of a much-discussed period of history; obviously, I think it’s a robust assessment. The path of wisdom is not to find yourself in the situation of spring 1939. If you suddenly notice that’s where you are, the path of wisdom is to choose the lesser evil.)
The Israeli situation is different. There’s a lot of time for an electorate to understand a long-running situation, not great need to reassess absurd beliefs on a very tight deadline. There a lot of incentive to understand the consequences of wishful thinking, not a terrifyingly short time to prepare people ho were willing to do anything to stop Hitler – except, of course, fight him. This does not mean enough Israeli voters will so decide, but I (with my _very_ limited and distant understanding of Israeli politics) don’t think it’s immediately and obviously impossible – hardly a ringing endorsement, but the best my cautious mind will do at the moment FWIW.
(On Alisa’s other point) it is one thing for teeth-army IDF units to stay up to strength with volunteers when everyone has to do military service in some unit. It is one thing for them to accept the orders of a government when all voters must serve somewhere. These facts will not necessarily stay the same if the background compulsion is removed; they may, or they may not. I think the voluntary principle entails rights for the volunteers, not as in “Let’s be fair to these heroes” but as in “This is how things work in the real world – and if you ignore it then they stop working”. Again, it’s just an opinion FWIW.
Thanks Niall, food for thought.
A lot of our confusion comes from different definitions. I think of slavery as an absolute, and can’t think of paid conscription in the same way. I think of them more as serfs, who were not full-time slaves, and did not wear chains. Soldiers as serfs seems a better fit.
Singapore, Israel and Switzerland require national service. They are far better places than the UK unless of course you like Cultural and Economic Marxist politicians turning your people into eloi in which case don’t have national service and continue down the path your are going.
John Galt II is not in Galt’s Gulch, it is in a padded cell somewhere. Clearly a tin foil hat number.
It could be great if people refrained from commenting on things they know very little about – but hey, freedom of speech and all that…
Serfs could be ordered to work, but not be ordered to die, which is only slightly better. Conscription quite literally makes your life expendable to the orders of your owner without prior consent. That is slavery. And unless you can refuse the token ‘payment’ and not take the job, it is meaningless.
Meanwhile, Finland has written to all its reservists to tell them what they will do in the event of war.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/11621512/Finland-tells-900000-reservists-their-roles-in-the-event-of-war.html
Let’s hope Putin doesn’t decide to invade Finland, claiming this is provocative! He might wait until after Neurovision, so as not to spoil Russia’s chances.
The Finnish entry to Neurovision has been, eliminated.
The Finns had better switch to this song, White Death by Sabaton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5CaQ37VYvw