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Sweden brings back military conscription

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#311

Post by Strom »

vidarh wrote: post #284
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

How do you motivate a conscript? When I was in the British Army, which is volunteer only, commanding a basic training troop if someone was wanted to give up we could say to them 'if this isn't for you then you can go home' (of course we did coach and mentor people to help them, I mean in cases where people just give up and stop soldiering when an exercise gets tough). They usually worked extremely hard to get into th…

Norway has conscription, and the threat is a prison sentence. Usually a total of up to 7 months spread over two sentences. If you get convicted a second time, you generally also lose the right to serve in the Norwegian military as a means to avoid having to go through the whole thing over and over - before that was introduced in the 70's, Norway started facing comparisons to the Franco regime (which had people stuck…

That's a pretty nice story. In Estonia the burden of suing is on the individual. We have a really streamlined system where if you don't show up to some event you were called for you get a fine and a new date. [1] If you don't pay it in time then they will deduct it from your bank account. It's possible to avoid the fines if you don't hold a local bank account, but then life gets a bit more inconvenient if you actually live here.

I view conscription as slavery and so I had to pay these fines for years, waiting for my age to go over the limit. Just as I was about to hit the limit, they changed the law to add 3 years. The fines were increasing in frequency & size. Near the end I had to pay around 300 euros per month with constant threats of 2 year prison. Eventually I got myself diagnosed with enough defects to be unfit for service.

--

[1] There's a law that if the demand is less than 6400 euros then you can get a court order for this payment without an actual trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You have to sue yourself if you think it's unjustified.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#312

Post by johan_larson »

BurningFrog wrote: post #169
johan_larson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, 4,000 out of a cohort of 13,000 means you can be very selective. Easy enough to get rid of the real fuckups and the hell-no-way refuseniks. Give the rest some real choice in what they'll be trained for, and you might only have to say no to those with a clear mismatch between their hopes and what they are fit for. It's interesting that they are choosing to draft both men and women. Not a lot of places draft wome…

That's out of ~100,000 kids per year.

Oh. So they can probably just take volunteers, then. And they don't even need to take all of them.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#313

Post by dropit_sphere »

Arizhel wrote: post #281
dropit_sphere wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute, but the tragedy of the commons means that you still might not get enough. The people allow the government a monopoly on violence in expectation that it will use it for their benefit. Putting the ultimate responsibility for national defense back on them is a betrayal of that trust.

No, it's not. It is utterly impossible for the government to defend the nation without soldiers. It's also impossible for the government to create soldiers out of thin air; they have to come from the populace (or hire foreign mercenaries perhaps, but that has its own ethical problems). If the populace isn't willing to serve as soldiers in sufficient numbers, then it's impossible for the government to satisfy its resp…

>The people cannot blame the government...If the people are not willing to be part of that defense.

What about a person who would fight and not desert if conscripted, but would not volunteer?

Are they "willing to be part of that defense," or not?

I submit that most people fall in that category, and that conscription is aimed at them.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#314

Post by dragonwriter »

mrob wrote: post #147
zmb_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200k dudes with guns Conscript military doesn't mean that you just teach everyone to dig a hole and sit in it with a rifle. You train conscripts into every role you need in a 200k strong modern military. Including operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers of all kinds, and yes, the guys that dig holes and sit in them with rifles…

Conscription is slavery, and many conscripts will consider themselves to have a moral obligation to resist slavery. If you give them access to the whole military machine you greatly increase the opportunities for sabotage. With the traditional rifles in trenches style each individual conscript has very limited chance to fight back, and you can always call them traitors and murder them if they try.

> Conscription is slavery

In much the same sense as jury duty is slavery.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#315

Post by javier2 »

phicoh wrote: post #179
pilsetnieks wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally cannot use conscripts for anything of "operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers." First of all, most of them take at least a year to get up to speed, if not more, and they have to maintain their competence. You cannot just release a conscript after his year long stint, and call him up ten years later - the ten year…

This anecdotal, but it was suggested that after the Dutch government suspended conscription, the military lost easy access to lots of highly educated people. There is quite a large group of people with a university degree who can very quickly pick up the theory behind complex systems. The same group group will not sign up voluntarily.

This is actually true. When we took 100% of all able men in Norway, the got the top guys as well as the lump. Now, when it's gotten a lot easier to get out of conscription, a lot of the well people with other ambitions skip this.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#316

Post by icambron »

mikeash wrote: post #236
icambron wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that the goal is to not get invaded. That's why a country that has been recently invaded by two different countries is a poor example of someone for whom deterrence worked. Perhaps the threat of a war of attrition is an effective way to do this in general, but supporting that argument requires identifying countries for whom it worked, not a country for whom it failed spectacularly.

Afghanistan succeeded in getting the Soviets out in the end. With the US they made the mistake of badly provoking a powerful nation. It may not be the best example, but it works.

I'm having difficulty reconciling this statement

> The goal is not to get invaded in the first place

with this one

> Afghanistan succeeded in getting the Soviets out in the end.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#317

Post by dropit_sphere »

entropyneur wrote: post #269
dropit_sphere wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the difference if you speak Swedish, Finnish or Russian? None. What's the difference if you're Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim? None. You may see yourself as a non-1% with no particular ethnicity or religion, but there are poor Muslims who would rather die than be rich Catholics, and there are poor Finns who would rather die than be rich Russians. I understand that you don't fit in those categories. But there ar…

Then let them volunteer to die for it! But the existence (or even plurality) of poor Finns preferring death over becoming Russians doesn't justify forcing those who don't share their sentiment to die with them.

There are two things, one proveable and one unproveable, that I don't think you understand:

1. You are very much in the minority. The vast majority of people have some amount of ethnic, religious, or nationalist pride. They want to be ruled by one of their own. They are not eager to die for this, but are often willing to do so, as long as they're not being made chumps of.

2. They're right, and you're wrong. Or, to put it another way, their way promotes the success of their civilization, and yours does not. This seems fairly intuitive, as what we're discussing here is the willingness to die for one's civilization. Should it surprise anyone that the willingness to die for a civilization helps that civilization?

I really need to make some sort of Selfish Gene type simulator for these conversations.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#318

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

mrob wrote: post #298
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conscription is slavery I abhor hyperbole. Slavery is the legal ownership of one person over another person and their progeny. Since they are property, slaves have absolutely no rights or any access to the legal system. You commanding officer cannot rape or kill you with impunity. He/She cannot force you to do fight with another conscript to the death. Conscripts also get paid, while slaves do not and are well fed…

There are multiple degrees of slavery. Eg. The Roman emperor Antoninus Pius forbade the killing of slaves without good reason, but they were still slaves. Slave does not have to mean literally zero rights.

Any citizen of any modern state, is at least, to some extent, a slave.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#319

Post by Strom »

Nokinside wrote: post #165
literallycancer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When there is a war, you conscript everything, people and profits. Wouldn't you have issues with the most capable people just leaving?

I don't think you realize how everything changes when nation is mobilized and war powers step in. People can't just step in a plane and leave the country, or move large amounts of money.

Everything doesn't change overnight. There are plenty of warnings beforehand, and plenty of opportunity even during war. It takes quite a bit of time to lock everything down.

Re: Sweden brings back military conscription

#320

Post by maus42 »

billpg wrote: post #146
iamatworknow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"killer slaves" is a bit dramatic.

But is it unfair?

The traditional definition for a slave is a human who is treated as (usually tradable) property for their labor.

I always like to point out that the predecessor to the Western civilization, the ancient Mediterranean, including Greek city states and then later on Rome, was famously built upon slave labor. Even the democratic Athens had a large slave population. However, in a Greek city state like Athens (or the earliest form of Roman legions) the free men -- the slaveowners of the society -- were also the hoplites fighting the wars the city would be involved in. Being a citizen of such a city-state is one the origins of the Western concept of citizenship.

The distinction if you are able to view your community as "us", towards whom you have obligations and duties, not as "them" who rule over you.

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