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Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

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Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#201

Post by rich_sasha »

I never liked activist for-profit companies. Not "woke SV", not the new "anti-woke", well, everything in the US.

IMO companies should focus on profits and activing within the law, and we shouldn't expect them to go beyond that. If their behaviour seems socially net negative then the law, or it's enforcement should change.

But activist corporations, especially big ones, are a weird chimera where they have a loudspeaker for opinions that are neither representative (it's an owners/C-suite persons PoV, or marketing) nor high quality from a journalistic PoV, yet somehow dressed up as a noble civic duty. SV was so big on allyship and diversity, until Trump said too much woke, and they put it all in the bin, alongside their crumpled backbone. There is no virtue in corporate activism and hypocritical opportunism only.

It feels so off that late-middle-age CEO Karp and his military contractor AI company should be even taking a side in a debate about the state compelling young people (men?) to do something they wouldn't do of their own volition.

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#202

Post by lokar »

teeray wrote: post #51
lokar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Enforce the war powers of congress and require a non-delegatable per-war approval. Hell, require the approval of 3/4 of governors as well.

How about a random sample of registered voters too? It would be nice to have a cohort that cannot be bought and paid for.

At some level you have to trust a sustained strong majority of elected officials.

You could imagine requiring a referendum if the war goes past N years or something.

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#203

Post by mindslight »

mrhottakes wrote: post #118
sph wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest thing of our age is that "reactionary" and "individual freedom" is equated to authoritarian movements that are anything but. The hacker aesthetic has always been anarchist in nature, until the rich Californians decided that a hacker is an entrepreneur that participates into the game of capitalism. To be fair, even the concept of libertarianism was an offshoot of anarchism, until the Americans decided that…

"Right wing politics dominated by the rich" is the natural endpoint of libertarianism, so that makes sense. Whether they're "real" libertarians or not, the elite techies leading the charge are people with politics like Karp, Andreessen, Musk, etc.

Libertarianism is abused by capital in the same exact way that conservatism and progressivism are - by getting primed with easy feel-good answers that are ultimately disempowering and self-defeating. In the case of libertarianism, this is so-called "right-" libertarianism that actively rejects qualitative judgements of freedom and coercion while hyper-emphasizing an axiomatic framework that can be used to justify authoritarianism as long as the logical preconditions have been met.

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#204

Post by Teever »

mold_aid wrote: post #166
Teever wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it didn't delay your education? In some countries an undergrad degree is only three years. I'd take a person with 1 year of civil service + 3 years of a degree over someone with 4 years of a degree any day. Somebody who is confident enough to handle a rifle and throw a hand grenade is way more useful to me than someone who was forced to another literature or geology course. Have someone demonstrate a command…

I'd prefer someone who is confident enough to take another geology or literature course over the gun-handler. I'd make sure that person is in a supervisory position over welfare-state products of our armed forces, certainly.

If you were presented with three options for hiring, each with identical professional experience, but the first has a four year degree, while the second has a three year degree, and the third has a three year degree plus + year of national service in a country with an effective military which one would you pick and why?

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#205

Post by outlore »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #155

I've read their tweet: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312 It's hard to take them seriously given the omission of the biggest catastrophe of the 2000s-2020s that underlies everything they do, i.e., wealth inequality, the creation of a parasitic ruling class that uses propaganda to control the political narrative (and seeking AI for even greater control with less support), and the destitution of the…

What even is that list lol? So edgy

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#206

Post by zabzonk »

lamasery wrote: post #193
vaylian wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is fragging?

Situation: you are a poor draftee being led by some other kid who happens to have a college degree (an officer). There are several of you, and one of him. Your living conditions are terrible and you're often asked to do things that might get you killed, and all of the reasons you're told you have to do this sure smell like bullshit. Solution: you make your officer (another kid) piss-pants scared that if he doesn't li…

>it turned out to be extremely hard to prove who had committed these murders

Particularly when the troops could say "Charlie must have snuck in and done it".

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#207

Post by _doctor_love »

quantified wrote: post #194
chromacity wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18. Why? I get the warm-and-fuzzy angle of "instilling civic responsibility", but you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this, else you go to prison. Is that really such an enlightened thing to do? It takes away two years of your life, po…

Do you believe that in American civil society there are only privileges and not responsibilities? Government already got the tax dollars to pay for the service at gunpoint. And makes you get a passport to travel internationally or a driver's license to get yourself around at gunpoint.

> Do you believe that in American civil society there are only privileges and not responsibilities?

Funny enough, the only true responsibility I'm aware of is jury duty. And that's only for citizens and everybody tries to get out of it.

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#208

Post by danny_codes »

stronglikedan wrote: post #158
_doctor_love wrote: post #20

Other countries have compulsory military service, for example Finland. Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18. Military service would just be one option, could be other kinds of civic engagement. This can really help people feel connected to their society and understand that there is something to show up for. BUT -…

> what are American soldiers dying for? The American way of life, which is still the most preferred way of life, as evidenced by (a) people wanting to emigrate here more than any other country in the world and (b) more people immigrating here than any other country.

Name one conflict we’ve been in since WW2 that protected the “American way of life”

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#209

Post by _doctor_love »

ourmandave wrote: post #122
_doctor_love wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I believe during WW2 the government put rules in place to prevent companies from making too much profit from the war. From what I recall in history class taxes were raised significantly as well. War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied. But if we take an entire country to war, then it stands to reason that the entire country should benefit from the spoils (to the extent that there are any).

War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied. Isn't that the broken window fallacy writ large?

I may be misunderstanding but I don't think so. War forces people's hand in terms having to make progress. This is because during progress can be measured in number of body bags returning from the front and the reduction thereof.

Our modern world was born out of scientific advancements made during WW2. Could these same achievements have occurred in peace time? Obviously the answer is yes. However during war, everything becomes accelerated and things that normally would take a long time can happen very quickly.

I agree that paying for scientific progress with human lives is a bad thing.

Re: Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

#210

Post by antisthenes »

quantified wrote: post #192
antisthenes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly speaking, 2 years of community service should be worth some % of local & federal taxes. In a developed society, I'm not sure what kind of labor an 18-year old can perform (what I mean is that it would be mostly unskilled labor), that would be better than taxing this same individual later in life, without delaying their education by 2 years. I suppose there would have to be exemptions for college students as t…

Shouldn't be. Just have a more-level playing field, make everyone (college-track or not) participate. You seem to assume that tax dollars are equivalent to labor. A pile of quarters never did anything sitting there, it takes a human to do something for the most part. Money is a tool sitting there, not actual work.

> A pile of quarters never did anything sitting there

Luckily, we don't have a pile of quarters sitting there doing anything, because the US operates at a deficit. So dollars are being borrowed then spent on projects.

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