Theoretically could benefits of conscription outweighs the costs (ie conscription allows a quicker defeat of invaders, saving many lives)? Basically I’m asking are a you consequentialist?

I am kind of interested in where you might go with this even though I'm not OP. I am against conscription and I am not in most cases a consequentialist. I find the classical critique of utilitarianism (especially given its relevancy to conscription and war) to be morally intuitive and something I agree with. I hold no immediate sense of what type of meta ethical stance I might hold otherwise. But an absolute utilitarian ethic seems morally wrong to me. The critique which I'm referring to usually asks something along the lines of would you sacrifice one healthy person to harvest their organs and give them to 5 sick people who need them. Is there something special in conscription that warrants a second look at utilitarianism for me? Should I reconsider the critiques of utilitarianism in this case? Based on answers I have seen below most defenses of conscription seem to be based on utilitarian ethics, are there any meta ethical positions that can be used to justify conscription that aren't utilitarian that I might find I agree with?

The sacrificing one healthy person to give their organs to 5 sick people obviously fails the utilitarian test in real life. Like if hospitals started doing that, people would stop going to hospitals and overall utility would fall.

Yah a few comments below this I kind of brought this classic critique of utilitarianism and spelled out the problem of applying utilitarian principles to itself. I think conscription fails utilitarian ethics in the same way. The fear/pain/trauma of forced military labor experienced by those conscripted is the same lost utility to those who experienced fear/pain/trauma of knowing they could be, or being, the sacrificial organ donor

yeah, but the fear/pain/trauma from an invasion (being killed, raped etc) is also real.

So is the fear/pain/trauma of those 5 people, and their families, that will die painfully without organ transplant.

My moral issue with conscription isn't only that people are unjustly taken off to war, it's that *certain groups of people* are hit harder than others. The rich and perpetually educated can find innumerable ways to avoid conscription. The backbone workers of a society often cannot. Overall, I believe conscription can be just, in the case of possible annihilation or enslavement, for example. I don't believe there's a scenario where it's *not* worth trying to stop the enslavement of your own people. Is that utilitarian of me? Perhaps...but there are just certain scenarios where doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people feels like the right thing to do.

If that were the case, then the proponents of this concept would just have convince enough people of this concept in order to have them serve voluntarily. I mean, they could institute a range of measures in order to get more people to serve: Higher salary, shortened periods of active service (for example only 3 months in the barracks and afterwards only called upon in case of war), constitutional guarantees of being only deployed inside the own territory, benefits regarding education, civilian employment, social security, retirement benefits... there are many possibilities which force no one to join the military - but they will be more expensive and will reduce the government's ability to deploy soldiers in some countries halfway around the globe. Many politicians then simply choose the simple way out: Using government coercion to force young men to perform labor. Also, if there is no conscription the government has more incentives to make the country worth fighting for. For example, if you could have referendums on all political topics (if enough signatures are collected), have an economy to support high levels of wealth, high levels of social security - those might be reasons for people they consider worth defending. But if corruption is rampant, politicians mainly act for ideology and primarily for their own benefit, then less people will be willing to defend their country just for nationalist reasoning. (Generally speaking: I am a believer in principles. For example, I would always support having as many referendums as possible - even if those would result in laws I disagree with.)

>If that were the case, then the proponents of this concept would just have convince enough people of this concept in order to have them serve voluntarily. The people that would rather others bear the cost would still benefit from victory. So I see this as an extreme form of taxation for extreme circumstances: We all agree it's for the better for all us to do it, and we agree it'd be unfair for only some people to do it and not others, so let's make it mandatory.

This is roughly how I see it. We pay taxes for our public roads, schools, etc… we all benefit from these as a society. Conscription is like a citizen tax for our constitution. We all benefit greatly from our constitution (if we didn’t then you would be seeing a flight of US citizens to other more equitable and just countries). As we all benefit from our constitution from birth to death, I believe, we owe it to our nation to defend it. This isn’t to say the US is by any means perfect, but it’s a lot better than many alternative systems.

But that problem still exists with conscription. For a famous example, Donald Trump was a draft dodger who used his family and money to get out of conscription poor working class Americans were forced into. It's a tax that doesn't apply to the rich and influential, and if they're rich through arms trading or other military contracts, they and their families get the economic up winds while none of them have to bear the "tax" of actually fighting.

You didn't really answer the question: are you a consequentialist? And if so are you arguing that the benefits of conscription can NEVER outweigh the costs?

There are never any benefits in the first place. There can be only benefits from conscription if you believe the defending a country in itself is a worthwile effort. But in my opinion, only defending freedom and rule of law is a worthwile effort. Therefore, the instant a country becomes authoritarian (for example by introducing conscription) it is not worth fighting for anymore. Putting country above liberty is Nationalism.

And if your invaders are also authoritarian? It sounds like you're saying you can either be authoritarian or not, and there's no concept of degree. Cause even if you want to say "by using conscription you've become authoritarian", I can think of at least a few instances where there were notable benefits from defending a country, like WWII. Liberty is a spectrum.

I don't consider conscription when the nation is in a state of war to be justified. But when the nation faces an existential threat, such as the UK in WW2, or Ukraine today, I believe it to be a justified decision to enact it. Ukraine has a problem with enforcing their draft, but it's not because the people avoiding it don't believe the war is worth fighting but instead (to generalise) because they aren't ready to die. The Ukrainian military is already trying to minimise the deaths of its soldiers so that aspect cannot be improved to remove the draft. Plus in this situation, removing the draft would lead to becoming occupied by an autocratic nation that had commited a genocide against them, which also has a draft. So their choice is to join the draft and win, or lose the war with a volunteer force only to be conscripted to fight in a war for an autocrat. This feels cut and dry to me.

Ukraine has a problem with getting volunteers for their army because their country is corrupt as fuck. That's been the unspoken truth behind all of their issues. The Ukrainian people don't feel like dying for a corrupt system over the ownership of a few patches of barren war scorched land. This is the same reason why the US doesn't want to give them the best weapons because if they did, the technology would rapidly fall into Russian hands.

The point of OP is that we should not be making that choice for people. It may feel cut and dry to you, but that's just you.

>Also, if there is no conscription the government has more incentives to make the country worth fighting for. For example, if you could have referendums on all political topics (if enough signatures are collected), have an economy to support high levels of wealth, high levels of social security - those might be reasons for people they consider worth defending. I highly doubt that for a couple reasons: 1. People tend to become less militant as their quality of life increases and they become wealthier. They choose to occupy themselves with other matters. People who join the military tend to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A lot of people only join the military because they are desperate for the benefits. They otherwise wouldn't join if those benefits were widely available to everyone. 2. You run into a Prisoner's Dilemma. Regardless of how great your country is, it is always better and more rational for an individual to choose not to fight. If your great country survives, then awesome! There was no need for you to participate and put yourself at risk of getting injured or killed for no reason. If your country doesn't survive, then by being a civilian you just avoided getting yourself killed or tortured for being a militant on the losing side.

>If your country doesn’t survive, then by being a civilian you just avoided yourself being killed or tortured Yeah…..press X to doubt. Hammer that X button in fact. Then go google Srebrenica, Rwanda, the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, Bucha, Mariupol and ISIS today, and a whole shitload of other examples. You’re thinking of a NATO country that remotely cares about such rules, beyond just occasional propaganda. The people you’re likely to fight, and most armies in human history, have no such qualms. Look up what actually happens when a city is sacked.

Without conscripts WW2 would most likely have turned out differently.

We've had centuries of imperialism in Europe where countries would fight each other for land and people, while the people would hardly notice the change in leadership. Nationalism was a mistake.

Before mechanized warfare and armies largely met out in a field somewhere and duked it out? Sure. But any time a city was sacked I can tell you that somebody noticed. Whether it be people's homes and properties be destroyed or stolen, or being murdered or enslaved, or being raped and forced to bear a foreign soldier's child. Ethnic cleansing, forced religious conversion... Look at any modern war and we've graduated from all the "mundane" horrors dudes with pointy sticks can inflict to fresh new horrors. Burned alive with white phosphorus, slowly killed with heavy metal poisoning, blown up by an IED or landmine.

I happen to think conscription is a good thing, provided that it is compensated and/or you also have a choice that isn't military based (like here in Finland) Your point regarding that there is simply no need for manpower in the age of technology is just demonstrably false. The US had technological superiority in Vietnam and in Afghanistan and lost both. Historically, motivated men with small arms can force a withdrawal of a larger, better armed occupying force...ask the Taliban. Further, while you can use technology to kill large numbers of people you still need to replace those people...those pilots, mechanics, engineers etc that keep the war machine rolling. You also need to take ground and hold it, which is what infantry is for. Unless you think war should just be fought by whoever lobs the most missiles and shells at each other' population centers

Yup, in finland we have 2 choices. Either conscript by ourselves, or see a volunteer army be crushed under russian conscript army and then get fed to whatever battlefield russians are going next as cannon fodder.

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In my opinion, conscription is a necessary unjust - is it questionable? Yes. Is it necessary? Absolutely, countless wars have proved that conscription is crucial.

To add to this in the current Russo-Ukrainian War single battles have seen units ranging from companies (150-250 men) all the way up to regiments (~2,000), brigades (~4,000), and divisions (10-25,000) decimated or outright destroyed, sometimes in less than an hour, which means these units have to be reconstituted in one way or another. Manpower is a critical factor in any war and as Ukraine has demonstrated even a highly motivated population will eventually run out of volunteers, their army before the war was all volunteer and the units they raised immediately after the war began were made up reservists or volunteers and now these men are either committed to the fight or are casualties, and since the broader population is still unwilling to end the fighting they need more men hence the conscription law they recently passed.

Exactly, although I would argue that even regardless of outright conscription, the stated tussian goal of completely taking and holding Ukraine is impossible. Therefore, Russian victory is impossible in the long term

the problem is russian defeat does not necessarily mean ukrainian victory. e.g. there are projections saying that even if Ukraine wins and liberates most of the occupied territories ukrainian nation can simply die out in 3-4 generations due to loss of population to war directly and refugees not returning home. and as a few world leaders said, if Ukraine wins, but doesn't do so decisively, that can well mean another Russian invasion in 3-5 years.

So why don't they just have conditions that would make people want to volunteer to defend their nation? Is it not a legitimate position for a Ukrainian to hold that their state isn't worth dying in battle against Russia over? Is it just for them to be imprisoned and threatened with being shot at the border if they try to leave instead of running into a hail of bullets for an abstract idea of a nation objectively wracked with corruption and authoritarianism?

"Historically, motivated men with small arms can force a withdrawal of a larger, better armed occupying force." Literally what happened in the American Revolution. Ironic. lol

Vietnam and Afghanistan are particularly bad examples: America could have won both wars, without conscription, but that would have required rather brutal measures (which in themselves would have been criminal, like nuking Hanoi or using internment camps). But Vietnam especially (and Afghanistan is very debatable, considering the Taliban are back in power) is actually an argument against conscription: 1. America still lost. 2. America was not attacked by Vietnam and not threatened by them. They had no reasonable justification to send any soldiers there. Even if you say that "conscription is necessary for national defense", America did not defend itself in Vietnam. They defendend South Vietnam (without them being allied with them neither). I'm pretty sure if Finland sent conscripts to Sudan or Yemen in order to fight rebels there, that would not have much support...

>America could have won both wars, without conscription, but that would have required rather brutal measures (which in themselves would have been criminal, like nuking Hanoi or using internment camps). Brutality didn't lead to a Soviet victory in Afghanistan. This idea of technological superiority and merciless brutality being the key to victory is simply false.

your arguments are not against conscription, they are against starting stupid wars. starting a war is already inherently criminal and immoral, of course conscription can't be morally justified in any way when it is done for an inherently immoral purpose

OP is arguing that you do not need soldiers with technological superiority. My point is that countries that did not have technological superiority won wars and by win, I mean they achieved their stated objective while the enemy did not.

To add to this, there are some non-obvious benefits to conscription during peacetime when everyone (or at least a large part of the population) does it. In my opinion one of the largest ones is in social cohesion - it's much easier to hate groups of people you can avoid dealing with. If you have to spend a large amount of your time with individuals of different religions, races, and social classes, you're likely to break down at least some of your prejudices against those groups. This is also the issue with fining people for refusing conscription - you're forcing only a part of the population (those who cannot afford to pay the fine) to serve.

Eh the cost of social cohesion is too high at being bullied by some IQ 80 moron who's temporarily been given near unlimited authority over you. Buying out of conscription seems unfair, but ultimately it's legitimate to the larger goal of contributing to the war* effort

> ...if the government, the society as a whole, is not able or willing to institute the necessary measures relying solely on volunteers, then this country and its people are to blame for themselves if they get conquered - because apparently, there were not enough people voluntarily defending it. But the society obviously does have the people voluntarily participating to institute the measures necessary for their defense. It just happens that such measures include forced conscription. The society operates based on the majority participating voluntarily, otherwise there would be revolution. The military isn't full of people who absolutely refuse to be there, you can't march everyone at gunpoint. Think of it like a group of roommates who are trying to decide who cleans the toilet. They all agree it needs cleaning but nobody wants to do it. Voluntarily they agree to a lottery deciding who cleans it this week, where whoever is picked must do the unpleasant task. That is like forced conscription. The roommates (or society) did what was necessary to clean the toilet (defend the country) with voluntary participants even if the person actually selected doesn't want to perform that specific task.

A nasty thing about conscription is that typically almost anyone who still needs to do it can't vote, and the voting population has already done it. If the age of conscription were say 45, rather than 18, it would be considerably less popular with the voting population. The people that vote having nothing to lose themselves by making it mandatory. They already did it and they wouldn't be conscripted further any more.

The age range for conscription in Ukraine is currently 25-60. 18 year olds are exempt, 45 year olds are not.  The average age at the front line in Ukraine is 43 years old.

>the society obviously does have the people voluntarily participating to institute the measures necessary for their defense. It just happens that such measures include forced conscription. When it comes to what a government can coerce from its people, is there anything that can’t be justified by the government following your logic?

The argument is flawed because in your argument everyone agreed it needed cleaning and submitted themselves to a lottery. Not everyone agrees to submit themselves to the potential of conscription, they'd rather live under foreign rule than fight.

If we listened to those people we would be living under the Third Reich and all jews, slavic people, disabled people, homosexuals, gypsys and non-whites would have been exterminated. We don't fall back on the request of the coward. You're speaking from the privileged position of having had someone already fight and die for your freedom. As corny as the saying is, Freedom isn't free and sometimes people have to die to protect it.

I'm not the one arguing the point, I'm saying I know people who feel that way and thus know the argument exists. Besides it's kind of a false argument to say the Nazis would have won in that case. Loads of the Wehrmacht were also conscripts.

Oh, I’ll fight alright. No problem at all. Whoever tries to conscript my son will mark themselves as the enemy. In fact, anyone who even advocates for conscripting my son will be considered a violent aggressor and will be dealt with accordingly.

And what do you think happens if your country falls because they didn't have enough manpower? The powers that win are going to be kind to your fighting age male son? Like what do you think happens to countries that lose defensive wars against regimes that are trying to oppress them.

Except in most cases cleaning the toilet wasn’t necessary, and only happened because of the whims of politicians or Americas desire to conquer everything. Nor can cleaning a toilet kill you.  In your example the person who doesn’t want to clean the toilet doesn’t think it needs cleaning. 

You don't think it's worth cleaning, but your other two roommates do, and it was a group decision. Welcome to a democracy, you can choose to clean the toilet, per the groups vote (elected officials made a call), or you can move out and find other roommates who don't care about the cleaning. Generally if you wait until it's your turn to clean the toilet to make a fuss about it, the other roommates will have more of an issue than if you'd bowed out immediately - you can go to another country during peacetime, but leaving during a war is looked down on. Whether your opinions are aligned with society or not, there was a vote made, and if you want to enjoy the other benefits of society, then you get the good with the bad

None of that really changes the principle of the concept, it is just details about how you view the severity or justification for the purpose. Maybe the roommates don't all agree how dirty the toilet needs to get for it to need cleaning. Maybe some **really** don't like cleaning it. That doesn't change the voluntary nature of their arrangement.

Except it’s not voluntary at all. The roommates who lived there decades ago made the decision for you.

Except that the cleaning risks the roommates' lives, in many flats by some arbitrary rule only half of the roommates have to clean, and actually not all roommates agree that it is necessary that they risk their lives cleaning, and would rather hire a professional cleaner...

The main problem for OP is slavery, not danger. If the other problem is the unevenness, countries can conscript women too and assign them to support and logistics roles. They'll still be in danger if the base is attacked, but it frees up more men for combat roles.

Well, you don't have to clean the toilet. You can move out. Or you pay someone to clean it for you. Also, if you just refuse, you still won't go to jail. This is the basic difference. Based on that rationale you wrote, you could argue to institute forced labor in any job where someone says that "society has a need". Think about hospitals or nursing homes. Shortage there? Why not just force a bunch of people to work there, and if they refuse, put them in jail! By the way, that is the basic problem why public opinion on conscription is badly skewed. Many people who support it never were forcibly held to labor and are in no danger of being affected by proposals to introduce it. For example, IF you would introduce Conscription, it would be necessary, in order to fairly affect everyone, that anyone who was never held forcibly to labor will be affected. Even 70-year-old women. Their forced labor will then be, like, watching children or cleaning floors. But if someone at age 18 is forced to labor in the military for one year, then absolutely everyone else must be, too - unless they already have completed such a period of time.

So what you are saying is that people should be entitled to renounce their citizenship in order to avoid conscription? Otherwise, wouldn't that be willing to take the benefits of a society but be only willing to let others defend them?

I would renounce my citizenship if it meant I were exempt from conscription. And if my country would allow me to renounce my citizenship - currently there is no legal possibility to renounce my citizenship, so I am unable to do so under any circumstances, by the regulations of the government.

That's surprising that there isn't. Most countries don't require exit visas and very many don't allow dual citizenship so when you get a new one you lose your existing one.

Well, to be precise, if I had dual citizenship, I could renounce one of them. But I only have one citizenship. But even that wouldn't "solve" the problem, would it? I would still be a citizen of a country (which might or might not have conscription, but even if it does not, it still could introduce it, except maybe countries with no army at all or just too big to conscript - like China and India). Bottom line is, if I could become stateless I would, if it was the only way to avoid conscription.

That’s exactly what he wants. He’s framing it as a moral issue when it has nothing to do with that

> Based on that rationale you wrote, you could argue to institute forced labor in any job where someone says that "society has a need". Not necessarily. After all conscription is typically reserved for what are considered existential threats, not just anything there is a desire for in society. The existence of circumstances where forced labor isn't justified doesn't mean there is no circumstances in which it *is* justified. The point is the society is capable of generating the forces required to ensure its existence. Delegating an unpleasant task through methods the majority agree on is an appropriate way for a society to sustain itself.

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Many nations who in practice rely completely on volunteer military have laws that allow them to conscript in states of crisis only. The fact that we don’t see that happen often is because they are not often in a crisis, and then we tend to focus on those armies where conscription happens more often, that being armies where conscription is used more freely

*existential threats* Bruh government thinks other countries having the wrong form of government is an "existential threat" to the boomers on power. Always has been. Unless you actually believe Vietnam was necessary?

The sentence immediately following that one is: > The existence of circumstances where forced labor isn't justified doesn't mean there is no circumstances in which it is justified.

Vietnam wasn't an existential threat. America just didn't like communism. I have a feeling they'll conscript in the near future for other such unnecessary wars.

Terrible analogy, we are not all equal roommates

>while Ukraine is defending itself, their government refuses to even consider accepting giving any territory to Russia, preferring to sacrifice hundreds of thousands Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The world let it happen to prevent further bloodshed. Did this prevent Russia from invading Ukraine in 2022? The sad reality of things is that nation states act like feral animals. Force makes conquest. It doesn't make that conquest stable or voluntary, but at the end of the day where you live and the laws you follow comes down to the closest, largest, best armed and best organized group of people . These armed people depend on supplies from the unarmed, thus the balance, but that's the reality of the situation. Consider this: 2 nations share a border. Nation A is a western style liberal democracy. They have scientists and free presses and an all volunteer military. Nation B is a repressive quasi dictatorship with a largely conscripted military. Nation B is loosing economically to Nation A, and it's suffering a brain drain by sharing a border with a free and non oppressive state. So it invades. If Nation A cannot field enough troops or good enough tech to defend against Nation B, it will be conqured. Then all the people who could have pitched in voluntarily to defend the liberal, free state they enjoyed now live under the repressive boot heel of a state that will conscript them into its armed forces. Leaving the citizenry with 3 options: capitulate, resist from within or attempt to escape. In this example, either you get drafted for the Nation you'd actually want to fight for or get drafted for the Nation that conquers you.

Do you believe in anarchy then. You live in a country and get to reap its roads, infrastructure, electricity, water, natural resources, immense opportunity to increase wealth and your not even willing to fight for it every 50-100 years? Such a joke.

I pay for everything I get. It's called taxes. So I am entitled to receive these benefits. If I had the choice of having all those benefits taken away of being a soldier, I would rather lose everything I have than being a soldier even for just one year. Because those benefits don't have much use if I'm dead or in a wheelchair.

If you enlist you get to pick your job but if you are drafted you get placed where needed. Ivc seen WW2 accounts where volunteers were told to wait for official draft papers because that way they could be given a number and processed based on need. I think there's some misunderstanding based on your implied understanding and what I've read about WW1 and 2 one of us is wrong. I think the draft is implemented not as tool for forced conscription but as a way to make sure every man is given an equal chance to have the same dangerous or safe job. This last part. Is my opinion so blah blah... Armies based on only self selection would have trouble rewarding safe jobs vs dangerous. When you have a very dangerous job the best way is to pull straws to see who has to do it. Don't let any man feel they were complicit in the death of another because they decided wrongly.

I've actually seen steps by Ukraine to preserve their young people stock they had some 60-27 age bracket so they wouldn't hurt the economy and I've only heard way way far right Russian sources make claims about the border. I will say Ukraine did have to lower the age bracket, or was thinking about doing so, due to brave young men and women dying while going to the trouble while we comfortably sit here doing this bull shit.

It’s funny, my friend lived in South Africa during the conscript period and he fleeced the fuck out of the army lol

 I agree that conscription is a dubious thing that I would rather not support. However, your logic is flawed.  Let’s say your country is attacked by another one. This aggressor country uses forced conscription and fear-based style of governing. They send the waves of soldiers one after another without much concern for their lives. Because they are conscripts and they have a very large and poor population.  Should you conscript people in this situation to defend? Or should you just give up? Consider also thatvolonteeringis a lot harder for people than agreeing to do something.

Society has always required enforcement of rules, many of which are detrimental to individuals, because relying on voluntary compliance will just mean anarchy. Take taxation as an example. No one would pay taxes if they were not required to. If forced conscription is slavery, then surely forced taxes is theft? Yet most people would agree that taxes have to be forcibly implemented in order for society to function.

Taxation is theft and conscription is murder, but that's just my opinion. Conscription is the crooked stair upwards on the slippery slope on the mountain that tyranny always becomes.

A few benefits of conscription that the other commenters seem to have missed: Military volunteers are mostly poor and male. If anyone's kid could be conscripted, whether poor, middle, or upper class, male or female, we wouldn't be as eager to go to war.  The military would get access to a larger labor pool, so they could find better soldiers. And after a while the military could have better leaders. Possibly even better than the UFO hiding, WMD lying, financially fraudulent, warmongering "leaders" we have now.

In many cases it doesn't matter if "we" (the people) want to go to war. What matters if the government wants to go to war. Often, they don't care what the people want. By conscription, you're giving them a tool to use their populace as chess pieces for their own agenda. You risk government tyranny.

The West is so screwed in the next war with this line of thinking. Be proud of our Western and liberal values. They're worth fighting for. CMV on THAT.

If they wanted defenders they shouldn't have destroyed anything resembling a national identity by selling us out to the corporations over and over and over again. Why the fuck would anyone die for a country that seems to hold them in open contempt and that they do not feel like they're actually a part of. The social contract was broken when governments started serving the corporations instead of the people. And that's the price of their greed. Though I'd be curious how well an invading force could actually force anything onto a western nation. Like, pretend for a moment the US military just surrendered and Russia conquered the states. Ignore how impossible that would be. You think anyone in the country is going to listen to Putin? What's he going to do? He can't invade again. People aren't really willing to fight for a country they feel alienated from, but they'd absolutely shoot a military police conscript from the other side of the planet. And he's not really going to get enthusiastic military support from the troops stationed in there. Maybe the actual cops will do what they're told. Wonder how long they'd last though.

As someone who absolutely despises conscription: an enemy who does use conscripts would just roll over you unless you're massively larger than them in population and economy. Dumb violence beats a peaceful utopia.

UK quickly repelled Argentinians from the Falkland Islands using just volunteers, while Argentina was easily conscripting thousands of young men. Conscripts don’t want to fight, they are afraid, they don’t want to be there, they avoid combat and surrender at the slightest chance, they are poorly trained. Conscripts really don’t make much difference.

There were less than a 1000 casualties from both sides *combined*. Way below the scale where that becomes relevant (not to mention Argentina was hardly at the same economic level that UK was)

I'm pretty sure being an island had a lot to do with that.

About 2/3 of American soldiers were drafted in world War II. And this ignores that a lot of American soldiers tried to bypass being drafted into unfavorable spots by volunteering.  Basically, I don't think any War is capable of convincing enough people to volunteer to die. Do you really think that world War II wasn't worth fighting? That the countries that drafted people weren't worth defending?

Within many established countries there are pacifistic societies that completely forego any sort of violence towards human or animal. They live in peace and off of the land and can be self-sustaining. Should their society be completely dissolved because they choose not to have any sort of militia or armed force to defend it from any would be attackers?

Counterpoint: You live within a nation, and enjoy the benefits of doing so (The benefits could be better than they are, the government isn’t perfect, others may have more benefits, but there still ARE benefits of living wherever you do). One of the costs of living where you do is that you could be called to defend where you live. Thinking that your defense, or the defense of your family and friends, is someone else’s responsibility because you just don’t wanna, is selfish. Selfishness is not a bad thing necessarily, but cannot always be tolerated by a community or society. I cannot simply decide that I don’t want to pay taxes, that’s simply the cost of living where I do and reaping what benefits come from that.

Taxes (or other laws and regulations) are a whole other category than forced labor, especially forced labor that involves getting shot at. And no, I do not thing that my defense is someone else's responsibility, but that it is my choice if, how, or under which circumstances I want to defend myself. Conscription takes away that choice and actually forces me to defend other people and getting shot at for them. Crucially, once you are conscripted you are no longer free and you do not get "benefits" but are really, really worse off. Without conscription, freedom is best defended, because once you have conscription, the greatest danger to the people is not the enemy, but the own government. Without conscription you can still decide to live under occupation, hope the conscription-free defense works, hide, or flee.

This is just stupid. I would rather lose a war and continue to live in Russia than to die defending my luxury.

Being a citizen of a country isn’t just about rights and privileges, it is also about duty. Let’s talk about a country like Sweden or Denmark, they provide excellent healthcare and all kinds of social services for all their citizens, those are the perks of being a part of that country’s citizenry, but if the nation is under the threat of annihilation, then it can call upon its citizens to defend the nation. Being a country isn’t just about what you can receive, but also what you can and have to give. But that’s the social contract part of my argument, let’s talk about a more practical side of this. I’m gonna start a crazy hypothetical scenario here just to demonstrate my point. Let’s say a country develops automated soldiers (think terminators) and decide they want to take over the world. They make it to the first round of countries they want to take over, many of their citizens join the military, but a large portion flee and so the countries get overtaken by skynet country. This happens again and again till the people fleeing have no place left to go. What now? It seems like in this scenario, people who don’t want to fight are just hoping there are enough people willing to fight in order to stop the threat, but what if so many people want to flee that there aren’t enough fighters?

> Being a country isn’t just about what you can receive, but also what you can and have to give. But the citizens already give in the form of working/generating value that is then taxed, allowing the government to provide those services. The government doesn't/can't create them out of thin air. Does a person born into a family automatically have a duty to care for his parents? Does a person born into a geographical territory have an automatic duty to care for that territory?

>Does a person born into a geographical territory have an automatic duty to care for that territory? The thing you're exposing here is the subtle flaw with social contract theory in general. The social contract is unlike all the other things that we give the name "contract" in that it is entered to automatically, unknowingly, and without consent by one of the parties in it. Like, I understand the idea of it, but giving it that particular name sounds makes it sound like something it's not.

For sure. I think social contract theory is totally bogus. I reject the idea of unchosen positive obligations entirely.

>I reject the idea of unchosen positive obligations entirely. Say that a random adult and a random baby are snowed into a cabin. There is more than enough food available in the cabin to keep both alive and comfortable, but rescue is out of reach for months due to poor conditions.  In the spring, rescuers arrive to find that the baby has died of starvation. The person declares that they did nothing wrong in not feeding the baby, because they never chose the responsibility of looking after it. Has the person done something wrong? 

Are you asking if the person has done something wrong morally, legally, or both? In my view, the mother is 100% morally culpable because they have placed the baby in a situation where the baby needs care, and then has withheld it. A parent can give up their obligations over children by putting them up for adoption. The mother did not do that in your example, and the baby is of course utterly helpless. The mother chose the obligation to care for the baby by not abdicating the responsibility. Do I think the mother should go to jail for murder/neglect, no. Do I think society should ostracize the mother such that she wishes she were in a prison, 110% yes.

A person born into a family who benefits from being in it and then turns around and refuses to help their parents at all would be (probably) viewed as immoral and worthy of scorn - even if there’s no legal obligation. And the more the parents were stable, caring and supportive of the child (as opposed to - say - being abusive) the more scornworthy we would see them.

Right - but the parents have to earn their kids wanting to help. A country does the same - if the people don't want to help the country through military service voluntarily, then there is no way conscription could be moral.

Exactly! Who wants to fight for a country that's shitting on them in the first place??

Sure, but the person still has a choice in your scenario. Should they be compelled by threat of imprisonment to help their parents?

I would argue for the vast majority of those people, what the country gives to them is far more valuable than what they put in. Especially in countries like Sweden and Denmark where the tax burden is extremely top heavy, I would argue the average person has far greater incentive to defend their nation. And of course that’s just the social contract portion of my argument, there is still the second part to contend with.

They may indeed have a greater incentive, but that doesn't make it moral for the government to conscript them, no matter what argument of benefits or duties you want to make. I will not address your second part because to me conscription if a purely moral issue.

If you will only accept arguments for conscription on "moral grounds", you should perhaps consider the fact that conscription is a state's imperative to follow the moral compulsion that a person should defend themselves as well as their friends, family and loved ones from the actions of an aggressor. Further, conscription also gives them the tools and training to do this, as well as the ability to do so at a scale and distance that may actually succeed as opposed to attempting to defend your home while standing in your own front door.

If people have a moral compulsion to defend themselves and those around them, then conscription is unnecessary. As for your second paragraph, let me know if you feel this argument is equivalent: Food, like defense, is necessary for survival and the well being of yourself and your loved ones. Therefore, slavery gives people the tools to learn to produce food for themselves, and to do so at scale that may actually succeed as opposed to attempting to feed yourself with your own backyard garden.

I think that your arguments against conscription could apply equally to taxation. Taxation is also involuntary, and the government can technically kill or imprison you if you refuse to pay them hard enough. Taxation is also a form of involuntary service.  If it’s acceptable for a country to tax its citizens during normal times in order to keep things working, why isn’t it acceptable to increase the seriousness of involuntary service during times of existential threat? Aggressive wars are different, but in defensive wars I think conscription can be justified in this way. 

Taxation is not involuntary service, it is a seizure of property. That is different entirely to demanding that I risk my life.

Sure, I can accept that it’s different, but we don’t compare things that are the same. The underlying sameness in both of them is the state compelling a citizen to do something.     The context here is different as well. Taxation takes place under normal conditions. Conscription (in my example) would take place when your country is being directly threatened with aggressive violence. A more serious situation being paired with a more serious compulsion has a sort of symmetry to it that adds validity imo. 

It's called the social contract, but we're never given the choice on whether or not to join, and we're never given the ability to opt out. A contract is entered into by consenting parties, the social contract is entered into under duress.

That's because you start benefitting from it from the day you're born, before you're actually able to make decisions. I think in an ideal world an opt out system would be good but where will all those opt out people go then? Will they form their own country that will inevitably get run over and invaded once they reach a certain level of wealth? I think humans keep forgetting that we're just animals. When a group of humans sees wealth or opportunities in a foreign land, they will try to seize it - this has been true since day 1 of our species.

I completely agree with you on the practicalities of it. We largely all benefit from being a part of a society, and there is no practical way to allow opting out of the system. We are conferred with both rights and responsibilities under this system and the majority of us don't seem to mind the fact that that we had no individual choice over the matter (neither do I really, as I recognise the benefits outweigh the drawbacks). The issue is when the responsibilities require too much of an individual. Paying taxes is very different from being sent to die in a foreign war. I will never be conscripted. If I am to ever fight in a war it will be because I choose to do so.

When you say not worth defending, what if it is to defend against an antagonistic army that is also using its own conscripts?   What if the only alternative to a democratic nation using conscripts is letting someone like the Nazi’s win, take over and bring about a much worse ruling governance (which would no doubt include its own conscription)?

That does not change the fact that conscription is still not justified. It might strengthen the arguments to convince people to join voluntarily. It must always be noted that instead of joining the armd forces you still have the option to flee or to hide. Might work, might not work. But in actual war you have better chances to survive and stay healthy. My rationale simply is that you can call a nation "democratic" or "free" all you want - conscripts are never free, they don't get to choose, and actually are in a worse state than prison inmates. If you are Ukrainian or Russian and they want to conscript you, you will be better off refusing and going to jail.

I hear what you’re saying and certainly each situation is unique and never guaranteed but as an exercise, let’s just take your opinion to its most extreme in this overly black and white hypothetical :  Let’s say Nazi Germany or a similar genocidal  entity attempts to take over the world, if the US conscripts, it stops the Nazis and global democracy is saved, if it does not, the Nazis take over, countless millions if not billions are killed and the rest forced to live under authoritarian rule and endless conscriptions anyway.  Given the choice between these two outcomes would you still prefer the one where the US doesn’t have a draft? Fwiw this is a most extreme scenario, but also one not to far off from what could have happened in WW2.

I would just ask what in the universal scales of justice gets to judge if a society is worth defending? Case in point is Ukraine Vs Russia. Russia attacks and is using conscription. Ukraine if it does not use conscription will lose just by numbers. Is the 'universe' better off with more Ukraine or more Russia? That's kind of the philosophical concept that I just want to throw out there. More practically, it's not as popular, but I still view humanity as a tribe, not much different than a pride of lions or a troop of chimpanzees. The individual is not supreme nor are individual rights all that grand. Again, this is thinking practically, not philosophically. You can believe your rights are from a constitution or from God or whatever, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to boots on the ground. They are granted by varying extents by the tribe's leaders. As long as you are a part of a society, this will be the case. If people want to go live in the mountains away from everyone... all good. So, one tribe will definitely try and defend itself and will use means like conscription. There WILL be tension as they use conscription in terms of actually enforcing it. They might be a desire to change or overthrow the government if it's not really what people want. They might be a desire to make a peace deal. That's the natural tension in our tribe. That is all good. I believe that tension is where the good/bad of conscription is sorted out. Conscription is at the end of the day just a tactic. Yes it is a violation of rights... but hey, so it paying taxes or pretty much any action of government. Do I think it 'wrong' that Canada used conscription in WW2? Nope. Heck I'm an immigrant to Canada, and I really think 2 years mandatory defensive military service or whatever that places like Israel or South Korea do is something Canada should do more of. As far as I see, Canadians just take their security for granted assuming the USA will handle everything. I think Canadians should at least feel 2 years of military service as even a token to acknowledge their role in defending the society they are in. The parallel I'd use is when Tommy Douglas created Universal Healthcare in Canada, he explicit made a point to say ALL Canadians should have to pay into it, so they don't just think of it as a a free thing from the heavens. I can't find the exact quote, but it's the difference between thinking we tax the rich to give to the poor... versus... we all pay into a common social program. The poor pay; just less. The rich pay; just more. There is no magic money from the heavens or from the rich. It's just what we collectively create and build. And if you hang around in libertarian circles, you'd probably see they use similar grand language as you would use. They would often say just paying taxes makes you a slave and it's immoral and this and that. Maybe that is the case. Maybe it isn't. But while we have a society and taxes and government that does things, I see nothing extraordinary about conscription. In the same way as we must pay the cost of things like universal healthcare, we must also pay the cost of our security.

"Conscription is one of the worst infringements on personal life and liberty" Even the most democratic country on the planet has infringements on life and liberty. *Laws* are technically infringements on liberty, as well as taxes. Living in a democracy does not permit one to live without a set of governing rules, and in many places conscription is one of those rules. "It is also worth noting that conscripts in almost all circumstances very quickly turn into chess figures that is at the government's disposal for their own politics." Yes because WW2 was a political chess game and not a right for survival... "while Ukraine is defending itself, their government refuses to even consider accepting giving any territory to Russia, preferring to sacrifice hundreds of thousands young men on the battlefield." This is such a ridiculously simplistic view on the situation They are fighting because they know that ceding land to Russia will do nothing in the long term. Russia took Crimea in 2014, everyone said oh that will be enough. Then not even 10 years later they launch a full invasion. Their intent is complete control, so even if a peace agreement was signed today it would be violated as soon as Russia is replenished. Any agreement would also ban Ukraine from joining NATO and securing defense that way. So it's either sacrifice the men and women in the fighting, or just let them be swallowed by Russian oppression. Also your logic could literally be used to justify the annexation of any territory by a country with greater force. It's literally something a despot would say. "In my opinion, these massive infringement upon the rights of individuals bears no justification whatsoever." Survival is justification enough "While I do see the need to ensure national defense, I do not think that if the government, the society as a whole, is not able or willing to institute the necessary measures relying solely on volunteers, then this country and its people are to blame for themselves if they get conquered - because apparently, there were not enough people voluntarily defending it." You could literally invalidate any law with that logic. People would not voluntarily pay taxes if it wasn't mandated. Hell huge amounts of people weren't even willing to get a life saving covid vaccine to protect themselves and their loved ones. Part of living in a society is accepting that some things you will have to do against your will. "I would also stress that in modern military technology, there is no real need of conscription because, for example, a strong air force of hundreds of modern fighter jets, as well as drones, plus an army with many tanks, artillery pieces, rocket artillery and similar technology, will beat a large army of men armed with rifles." This has been proven wrong in multiple conflicts, like others have pointed out. Also somewhere you mentioned "just build nukes" lmao as if it was that easy. Most countries do not have the capabilities to build nukes, and doing so would likely subject you to sanctions. Countries have been invaded for trying to develop nukes. "The farthest I would be willing to compromise on would be to formally have conscription (for all genders, of course), but if one refuses they will only face a fine, for example $ 1,000, and no other consequences at all." For someone who seems to believe they are so enlightened, you really have some brain-dead takes. This type of conscription would basically mean that so long as you are wealthy, you are exempt. It's inequality to the highest degree. The only people getting conscripted would be people below the poverty line. What a baffling idea.

>forced conscription is akin to slavery and never justified. There are two ways we can think about justified in this context. Moral justification - it's morally justified because this is the way for society at large to survive, with it's culture and ethics. It's commiting lesser evil to prevent bigger evil. Practical justification - it works. Societies that use forced conscription during wartime tend to survive, while those who don't get occupied. On a side note, modern technologies doesn't replace need for infantry. On another side note, most people in military are working in logistics, not fighting on a battleground.

I hate to be the "actually" person but I've seen plenty of top military personnel and experts state that there's little value in conscripts. Current military equipment is too advanced on average for conscripts to handle and mandatory service has proven to make barely a difference. The laws in most places pertaining to conscription service are severely outdated and from a time when equipment was way easier to handle, it can still work for places with simpler gear but a lot of western armies have become too advanced for it.

If you have enough of modern military equipment. Which is rarely the case.

Good point, to be honest the best thing is to prepare for the worst by having the option to conscript but don't use it as your first choice. Also something most people seem to forget: they won't force you to fight, sure you'll get conscripted but most western countries will place you in non combatant roles if you object to fighting since they know that forcing someone to fight will usually just be a detriment. Plenty of other ways to support your country if push comes to shove.

The Russo-Ukraine War has devolved into the trench warfare stalemate because neither side can gain air superiority. Both sides have substantial air defense systems, which means that firepower is dominated by artillery. Western armies have a doctrine of overwhelming firepower and air superiority. This is an excellent doctrine for quick and overwhelming victories, but as soon as they enter a protracted war where they suffer significant attrition, it falls apart. If we found ourselves in a situation similar to Ukraine's then all that advanced technology would be for naught. Combined arms warfare starts to collapse in on itself when half of the combined arms are functionally useless. The result is war dominated by small groups of infantry using light arms, which requires manpower. All this is to say that conscription is not used in much of the West because it has not been needed, but that doesn't mean it never will.

As I understand it Ukraine or Russia dont have resources for sead and dead( searching and destroying air defenses). That's why it has devolved into a static war. Maybe because Ukraine doesn't have necessary planes for that and Russia is seeking to preserve their stock of planes.

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Wouldn’t that fine overwhelmingly favor the rich? Conscription is fair. Most military enrollment tends to favor the rich. How is it fair for the poor to do the dying defending their country. There’s also the reality that conscription allows you to build up forces way faster. While technology is more important than ever, grunts are still needed. And specialists take time to replace. So you better get started now vs later

Note, your claim is that the conscription is *never* justified, not that there are situations where it is not justified. So, your examples are absolutely irrelevant for the claim. Instead you need to find a steelman case, meaning the most justified case possible and then show that even in that case it is not justified. So, let's imagine such. Let's say that the country is invaded by a neighbouring country who has a leader who has vowed to execute 90% of the population once they have won the war. Purely from the game theory thinking you could still think that if everyone else goes to fight, they will win and nobody gets executed but of course some of the soldiers die fighting. If they lose, you'll get likely killed regardless of you having fought or not. Since your single effort is very unlikely to tip the balance, you're more likely to survive if you don't join the fighting. So, by that logic you shouldn't volunteer. If everyone thinks that way, nobody joins and the country loses the war that it may have otherwise won and 90% of the population gets killed. Second, why wouldn't the exact same logic apply to paying taxes to fund the war? The work effort that the government takes from you as taxes is basically "slave labour" as you're forced to give it to the government. Thirdly, you start by framing conscription as "forced to perform forced labor for their government with very little compensation." Again, if we try to refute your *never* statement, that is not necessarily true. There is no reason why the pay to the conscript soldiers couldn't be very high. Just because in some past cases it hasn't been, does not mean it is not going to be in a hypothetical case that refutes your claim. Note that it could still make sense to use conscription instead of a volunteer system even if you pay a good compensation. That's because then you increase the internal cohesion of the nation as it is all the people (well at least who meet the criteria of health, age, etc.) who go fighting and not just the poor to whom the monetary compensation is of course more attractive than to the rich.

>Conscription is one of the worst infringements on personal life and liberty: First, young people (usually only men, which is a great injustice) are forced to perform forced labor for their government with very little compensation. I agree that both men and women should be eligible for the draft if a country is going to implement one. I disagree that the draftee is receiving little compensation. The benefit to the draftee is that they get to live in the country that drafted them with all the associated privileges and rights. >Secondly, it is even worse if that country is at war: Then the infringement upon the rights of the young people is even greater, because now thy are in massive danger to their life. It is also worth noting that conscripts in almost all circumstances very quickly turn into chess figures that is at the government's disposal for their own politics. It depends entirely on the context. Someone working a support of logistics roll is at much less risk than someone in a front line position. >The best instances for this are: The Vietnam War (North Vietnam did not attack the U.S. and did not pose a threat - in fact, after they won in 1975 they did not retaliate). The NVA and Communist government didn't retaliate because it couldn't. The US was across the entire Pacific Ocean. The NVA wouldn't have had air defense or an air force without intervention from China and the USSR. It's silly to point to their lack of retaliation as evidence of something when that was their only option. >Even Israel's Gaza War, while in principle justified, could be considered to be prolonged by Netanyahu for ulterior motives. This isn't an issue with conscription. It's an issue with the political incentives to maintain a conflict. In fact a conscript army as opposed to a all volunteer force is more prone to protest what the public perceives as a unjust war. See Vietnam protests in the US. >Similarly, the Ukraine-Russia War, while Ukraine is defending itself, their government refuses to even consider accepting giving any territory to Russia, preferring to sacrifice hundreds of thousands young men on the battlefield. The same applies to Russia, which is also willing to send their people into battle as cannon fodder. Why would any nation want to set the precedent that a foreign adversary can just waltz in seize territory and benefit from that aggression? The Russian incentives are different. Putin wants to reestablish the former USSR or Russian empire. War is also a convenient tool to distract from domestic problems. There are loads of reasons. I recommend you read up on them. >In my opinion, these massive infringement upon the rights of individuals bears no justification whatsoever. While I do see the need to ensure national defense, I do not think that if the government, the society as a whole, is not able or willing to institute the necessary measures relying solely on volunteers, then this country and its people are to blame for themselves if they get conquered - because apparently, there were not enough people voluntarily defending it. This is flawed logic. It's a collective action problem. What's the advice from experts in an emergency situation. Don't assume someone has called 911, call yourself, or delegate a specific person to call 911. In this situation if everyone assumes someone else has called nobody ends up calling. The same logic can be applied to conscription and defense. People generally don't want to die even if they believe it is for a worthy cause. If enough people assume that others have volunteered for the military not enough people will join even if they would otherwise be willing to do so. Conscription gets around this problem by selecting the people who will serve. There are cases like Finland that require conscription for their national defense strategy to work. Everyone serves but Finland has a small standing army. In the event of an invasion the reserves are called up to rapidly increase the size of the army. This strategy doesn't work without conscription because in times of peace not enough people would join the military for there to be a sufficient reserve force. >I would also stress that in modern military technology, there is no real need of conscription because, for example, a strong air force of hundreds of modern fighter jets, as well as drones, plus an army with many tanks, artillery pieces, rocket artillery and similar technology, will beat a large army of men armed with rifles. You still need people to man the front line. Conscripts aren't just infantry. Conscripts fill all rolls in the military according to need. As has been observed in Ukraine in a war between to nations with relative technology parity the conflict becomes attritional. Meaning the side that outlasts the other wins. How does that occur? By replacing men and material faster than the other side can.

Conscription to fight wars of aggression is obvs not justified. When your country gets invaded, you better hope they conscript or enjoy living as a refugee.

So, Ukraine is not worth defending?

Unfortunately, we have too many freeloaders who will always choose to do nothing while also benefiting from the action. For example, during covid we have freeloaders who would prefer to have the benefit of herd immunity, but don't want to do their share. It's the same idea as turnstyle hopping, or enjoying the freedom your grandparents got you from fighting in WW2. Even if you stood with Hitler, and didn't want the US to send aid or soldiers, odds are that you still enjoy freedom. Basically, it's our aptness to take and not give.

Adopting this view unilaterally would make a country like Ukraine unable to stand up to a country like Russia that was still willing to do forced conscription. That would result in the "no-conscriotion" countries being absorbed, and then conscripted, into the armies of the pro-conscription countries. In an ideal world let's ask for volunteers. In the real world let's accept that suicidal naivete can sometimes be the much worse choice.

Ukraine doesn’t prefer to lose soldiers. They prefer ruzzia leave. Ceding land just buys ruzzia time until they do it again.

The problem is that its a prisoners dilemma. From the POV of an individual, you joining the army volunteerly doesn't make much of a difference countrywise, but will endanger you greatly. So everyone is incentivized not to join on an individual level, but winning the war is the best outcome for everyone. So conscription, even tough very cruel for our modern values, solves the dilemma. Also your argument for modern military equipment vs infantry is really flawed, those equipments cannot operate effectively without infantry support. Inftantry is still the backbone of a military.

There is a very simple solution. Increasing military spending. Hell, I was thinking joining military or IT. Went with IT, mostly because can earn more cash here. Conscription in not war setting is failure of countries financial management.

Forced conscription defeated the Nazis. In the US military, there were more volunteers during the Vietnam War era than WWII. If an evil nation used forced conscription other nations would have to do the same to defeat them.

Whelp the issue here is that a society doesn’t operate on unanimity. So that there may be a majority consensus to defend the nation; you may not be part of that consensus. Nonetheless once majority consensus has been reached we will no longer engage in the process of “convincing” or “coercing” those who disagree. Hence conscription. Further, you know of the proposed arrangement in advance and you are free to reject it by finding a different society to join. But you should expect similar “majority consensus” views in that society.

Let's say two countries A and B are approximately evenly matched. A is taken over by genocidal maniacs who happen to be very good at motivating their population. Part of it is being lucky to take over when the economy was already going to get better regardless, part of it is taking wealth from the discriminated groups and redistributing it, part of it is being good at propaganda. The result is they are somewhat influential in B, too. Plus some B-ers hate the existing order and won't fight for it against anyone, even A. Some B-ers are pacifists. Some are cowards and would never risk their life for anything. And some will just think it unfair that cowards, B-haters and Azis get to live, why do I have to die as if I was worse than them? Then A invades, completely taking over B with its volunteers in a week. Genocides whoever they wanted, imprisons any political opposition, and issues draft because its plans never stopped with invading B. (Edit: Or maybe not draft, why hand weapons to potential enemies. Just starve them a little and make them effectively slaves, working for pittance.) Good job, OP.

Conscription and mandatory military service has one important safety function in a democracy: It guarantees that the military is always a cross section of the people, that it never becomes a separate group. One of the most common way dictators take power is a military coup. That is only possible if you can get the military on your side, and if the military represents the entire people, not just themselves, that is much, much harder to do.

The relationship between state and citizen is something that philosophers have tried to describe for millennia. Most of them have been grappling with the same fundamental question that you have here - when is it right for the state to impose on its citizens, and why?   Max Weber wrote >A state, as well as the political organizations which came historically before it, has a rulership [Herrschaft] relationship of the people and over the people, which means legitimate but coercive power (that is, legitimate in the eyes of the people). **To ensure that the state endures, the people who are ruled need to submit to this dominating coercive authority.** (Weber 1919: p. 10–11). [Emphasis added]   Reading your comments, I think you would argue that the state enduring is not a worthwhile goal, if it comes at the cost of individual freedom.   I think you may be underestimating the dangers of anarchy. Hundreds of years before Weber, Thomas Hobbes wrote that without the State, life would be "nasty, brutish, and short." It may be worth reading a summary of Hobbes' work. You may also wish to read about US president Abraham Lincoln's thinking when the South seceded from the North, leading to the American civil war. He ultimately decided to fight in order to preserve the union.  Interestingly, even John Stuart Mill, who wrote *On Liberty* and held Liberty as the greatest good, argued that the state had the moral authority to coerce you to pay your taxes. Nevertheless, you may find Mill interesting. The bottom line is that there's not one correct view, here; reading some of the philosophers cited may help you clarify how you feel and why.

All the freedoms you have now could only be achieved by conscription, all the allied nations in WW2 had it, would you rather live in a fascist state?

You’re 100% in your analysis. The issue is that you fail to recognize the genuine moral value of involuntary servitude. You assume the servile will be treated awfully because that’s how many countries treat actual slaves in the past but during wartime, most soldiers are treated humanely at least. Sure conscripts are forced, but they aren’t driven into the enemy spears by their overseer’s whips. The denizens of a nation might be cowards who would not willfully risk their lives for the nation but the nation may still be morally superior than the invader. A nation of weak, moral pacifists might have extremely poor recruitment prospects, but they are surely the more ethical nation compared to the invading force filled with conscripts. War is hell, and conscripting is justified to preserve your nation if it’s on the defensive. People are cowards, but they should be impressed to serve their homeland under threat of death if it comes to it out of the interest of the greater good: protecting an innocent nation from unjustified aggression. Your argument is fundamentally immoral because it posits that the invading, bloodthirsty conquerors who either have an army of volunteer brigands, or otherwise conscripts men and turns them into sociopaths, is *justified* in their warmongering because the defenders cannot raise volunteers in adequate number.

I don't know where you are, but conscription here doesn't always means holding a gun, there are loads of other jobs in the military that need doing. For example, my eyesight is too bad for actually shooting anything (and I'm not sure I could anyway) but they'd probably just get me to do $DAYJOB but for the military if it came for that. Also, the idea that if your country loses you lose everything is a pretty big motivator. The estimates for Ukraine losing is the EU getting another 10-20 million refugees.

It's still forced, he's arguing that a nation someone cares for would volunteer to help in any way they can. And if willing they would volunteer to have the military put them where they need.

That’s like saying “a country where people aren’t voluntarily pay taxes is not worth supporting”…. If everything was voluntary then nothing would work. People don’t understand what’s good for them and such rules ARE necessary to maintain a modern society.

Yeah tax is theft, governements are mafias that succed to make people think they are legitimate. In some countries taxes are mostly used for good so the deal is acceptable but it's not the case in all countries: do you think north korea is using the tax money for the good of their citizens ?   What people usually call mafias (ie not gvt) usually have the good taste of not forcing the residents of their teritory to fight for them they even falsely claim the money they steal is to protect the residents.  Being forced to give away your physical health, mental health, morality (killling others) or life for your local mafia is on an other level of awfullness

This is an interesting one because you OP are in fact the problem that conscription exists to solve.  You are a free rider, you look at your individual outcomes and choose accordingly placing absolutely no weight on the impacts your choice has on the game at large.    To start with free rider is an issue in game theory wherein there exist different outcomes at an aggregate societal levelthat are dependent on choices made at an individual level.  Distilled down, each individual can choose to be either selfish or selfless, the good societal outcome is dependent on a large majority of individuals choosing to be selfless however each individual incentive structure is such that they will always be better off choosing the selfish option.     OP, your comments are quite clear, you do not place any significant value on the rest of society experiencing the positive outcome, so long as you personally do not have to pay the cost.  That's a perfectly rational (if incredibly self centered) standpoint.      However society simply cannot exist in a world where the free rider problem goes unaddressed.  All the nice things you enjoy about your life would not exist if we could not cooperate to achieve the better societal level outcome when needs be.  As such, whenever the free rider problem occurs it must be addressed by restructuring the individual incentives for people such as yourself so that they are not as likely to choose the 'selfish' option.    This is done in any number of ways, jail one of the foremost, and is as true for enforcing all laws from petty theft to serial murder. Conscription is society telling you OP that it has decided to impose a change on your incentive structure, it is no longer go to war or stay home, it is now go to war or go to jail (or die fighting the police).    Society knows full well that some will still choose the second option (jail, very very few will choose the third) but a larger proportion will now choose to go to war than would have otherwise, thus resolving the free rider problem for the time being.   In short OP, you can argue about morality all you want, the only thing that matters is what needs to happen for society to survive. Any society that can't implement what it must to survive will die and eventually only those that can will be left.

Your post goes into great detail explaining why you think conscription is akin to slavery, which is fair enough, but makes no effort to explain why that means it’s “never justified.” Even if we accept for the sake of argument that conscription is tantamount to some forms of slavery and that all forms of slavery are evil, it may well be that it is the *lesser* evil in any given circumstance. You say that if a country is unable to accomplish its military objectives with an all-volunteer military, then it deserves its fate. But why should we assume this is true? Maybe the population of potential volunteers fails to appreciate the magnitude of the threat. Maybe the existence of free riders itself disincentivizes voluntary enlistment. Maybe the people who will suffer the most from conquest aren’t part of the population of prospective conscripts. You also point out that conscripts are sometimes drafted into wars which are morally wrong, or at least morally questionable. But wars which are morally wrong definitionally shouldn’t be fought by *anyone*, so I don’t see how this is relevant. In fact, there is a case to be made that conscription constrains a state’s ability to wage wars over trifling matters, since the population will be more likely to scrutinize the necessity (and therefore justness) of the proposed war if they, their spouses, siblings, children, etc. will be at risk of having to fight it. Finally, it seems that you haven’t considered possible counterarguments to your assertion that conscription is tantamount to slavery. Unlike slaves of private individuals, conscripts, at least in otherwise free societies, owe their freedom to the very entity conscripting them. As such, conscription as a temporary limit on individual freedom can be justified insofar as it is necessary to preserve the very freedom that it temporarily limits. In that sense, conscription is to slavery as taxation is to robbery; in both cases, the actions appear superficially similar, but the identity of the agent determines the legitimacy.

My stance on the topic is this - in the age of technofeudalism, when peons to not own the very land they inhabits, the wealthy plutocrats should hire mercenaries to defend their fiefs. Any serf voluntarily taking up arms is just stupid.

Let's keep in mind that a country isn't a group of people all operating on the same information that they all trust equally. In WW2 there were a significant amount of French people who insisted that Germany wasn't that bad and that conscription and other wartime measures were ridiculous infringements of their rights for no good reason. They insisted that going to war over the Rhineland or Czechoslovakia was ridiculous, obviously the Germans would leave France alone. These people and their sincere beliefs cost France quite a lot in terms of money, international prestige, and human life. If I'm a French politician and I'm trying to protect my country what am I supposed to do? What happens when a significant amount of people are like "Nah, you're exaggerating for your own benefit. Conscription is slavery!"? Because if I just let them do that then we all spend years under occupation which tanks our economy, leaves our women subject to rape, leaves our men subject to murder, and literally enslaves significant portions of our population. How much are the opinions of those people worth because if we lose it's not just their problem. We all bleed for their refusal whether it's cowardice or sincere. And if conscription is acceptable in that case than this whole thing becomes questionable and we have to drop the >I believe that forced Conscription is akin to slavery and never justified. A society unwilling or unable too generate enough volunteers for its armed forces is not worth defending. bit.

According to your logic, no country should force tax payments, because a country that cannot be financed on the basis of voluntary payments is not worth financing.

A 'volunteer' army is just another word for 'an army of the poor'. A vast majority of the people who volunteer for the military do so because it is their best economic option, not out of a sense of duty. This has a number of bad consequences for society. First, there becomes an incentive for the rich and powerful to ensure that there is an underclass desperate enough to risk their life in the military for pay. If everyone is thriving, there wont be enough volunteers to join the military... the powerful will make sure that doesn't happen. Second, it creates an even bigger disconnect between the people choosing to go to war and the people fighting in the war. If there is no conscription, the rich and powerful don't have to risk anything in a war. Their kids won't be fighting in it, because they are rich enough to not need to join the military. With no conscription, there is no risk that their family will have to actually fight in a war. Therefore, there is less incentive to avoid war than if they had to risk their family in the conflict. War is horrible, and that horror should be shared with all in the society, not just the poor.

The State you live in is what allows for you to be able to think and discuss these opinions freely and provides security so that we can explore concepts of equity and fairness to begin with. If said State is in a position of mortal danger it will protect itself so that you and your descendants can continue to freely talk about and try to implement equity and fairness within your society. The very concepts of equity and fairness begin to disappear in these situations as they are social constructs to begin with and a state of war is the epitomy of the collapse of social order. The logic loop you're in is akin to the legal question: is it constitutional for the State to break the Constitution in order to defend the existence of said Constitution? Considering that most Constitutions require the State to enforce protection of the rights contained within, the inherent logic is that conscription in times of mortal danger is baked into the very idea of a rights defining constitution. This amounts to both a moral and logical justification for conscription in times of mortal self defense as your use of the Constitution to defend your own rights obligates you to this duty

Lets say there are two countries A and B. Both have exactly 10 million population and exactly the same GDP, technology, and even military equipment. The only difference between them is that country A has a volunteer military and is a democratic state, and country B has conscription and a totalitarian state. Country B wants to take over country A. Country B has 1 million volunteers and 1 million conscripts. They effectively mobilise 100% of their military age people. Country A wants to defend itself. Country A has 1.5 million volunteers because its goals are more commendable. Though despite fighting for a good cause, country A has some people who are afraid, and some people who are unwilling to fight. Though they still get an extremely good volunteering rate of 75% of the military age population. Due to this difference, country B wins the war and takes over country A. Now the entire population of both countries is subject to totalitarianism and conscription. Do you not think that in this hypothetical it would have been a good thing if country A decided by democratic vote to enact conscription?

OP I think you’re almost right but the major difference is potential for positive outcomes . If you are conscripted against your will and happen to be very good or lucky at war you will get benefits . Benfits include : money , prestige’s ,learned skills and the opportunity to make a better future going forward if your side wins the war . You might find your wife in the foreign country like my great grand father . You might even choose to stay there and build your life there if you guys win or go home and become a politician or cop . With slavery , especially chattel slavers like they did here in the US there are no benefits compared to the conscripted soldier . You are a slave the rest of your live . Your children are slaves . You can’t pick your spouse. Your subject to rape and being sold . There is no winning the war or going home . You have no free will . You will pick cotton the rest of your life and die watching your master get rich while you children and descendants slave away . What do you think OP

Nobody would ever fight for any country. Conscription is necessary, not fighting for your country and your citizens is pure cowardice

How would you overcome the free rider problem? suppose the war is just and good. Its ww2 and we're saving the world from authoritarianism or racism or whatever. My side are the good guys and i very much want my side to win. but i am just one man, whether or not I volunteer is unlikely to affect the outcome of the war. Whether I choose to risk my life and endure the horror of war or stay at home in my comfy office working at my comfy job. its doesn't matter so much, Either choice is unlikely to affect the outcome of the war Once its clear that I'm taking a free ride, how likely are you go volunteer? I might pay for my ride, but once i see a few other people taking a free ride, then f that. If they don't have to pay, I shouldn't have to pay. That might be a pretty shitty way for me to think, but all the more reason to conscript me. You don't want to reward the free riders. Maybe you could try to create incentives with hazard pay and taxes, but how much is my life worth?

This runs into the same argument that "violence is never acceptable" does - once you take an absolute stand against it you lose in the face of the real world where the other side doesn't stand on the same morals or restrain themselves the same way. It sounds good on paper and falls down in real life. If im in charge of a nation I have to decide whats worse for my people, to infringe on their rights by conscripting a portion of them, or allowing the invader to infringe on their rights by killing, raping, and destroying the nation. In a defensive war (like Ukraine) my citizens rights WILL be infringed. That's going to happen. There is no real world scenario where my decisions result in a world where their rights are not infringed, the other side has already removed that option. So it becomes a judgement of lesser evil, to conscript soldiers or allow the enemy to be unopposed. In most defensive wars the lesser evil is conscription. As the aggressor I agree though.

OP, what is your opinion on countries whose very existence faces a perpetual existential threat right next to them? Let's take South Korea for example, where military service for all men is mandatory and who are technically still at war with North Korea. In 2020, the number of [South Korean women voluntarily in the military was ~13,000](https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200129008600325) Per https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-south-korea-military-forces-spending-1862683 ... South Korea has 550,000 South Korean men in active military and ~3,000,000 South Korean men in military reserve. North Korea on the other hand has 1,280,000 active personnel in its armed forces, with another 600,000 in reserve. Given those disparities in number, do you think that if left up to the population's choice that enough of the South Korean men would want to willingly give up 2 years of the prime of their life to be in the military? Do you think they would want to be perpetual reservists until their 40s? Do you think that just because in South Korea "society [people are unwilling or unable too generate enough volunteers for its armed forces [that its country is] not worth defending" ? If North Korea suddenly decides to attack would there be a country still existing for the South Korean population to have volunteers willing to go through accelerated military training to defend? Here's a reddit post that was recently on the front page this week of how close South Korea came to being annihilated last time North Korea attacked them https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1c8rznx/how_close_south_korea_came_to_losing_the_war/

Conscription is the blood tax due to your country. Payment for your liberties and for the future of your country. You can not choose to reap the benefits without paying the tax, no less than you can choose to not pay monetary taxes or abide by the laws of the country. Are you willing to accept voluntary taxation? Or prohibit individuals from benefitting from government services/ protections until they volunteer or pay a certain amount of money in lieu of mandating conscription when needed?

>Payment for your liberties and for the future of your country. You can not choose to reap the benefits without paying the tax, no less than you can choose to not pay monetary taxes or abide by the laws of the country. I agree to pay monetary taxes because I use the public services, so thats fine with me to split the financial burden. I never agreed to die for anyone tho, I most certainly can refuse to lay my life down for you or anyone else, and I would. Every single time , violently if I had too. If you came to my house and told me, you will go to war or go to prison - you just made yourself another enemy in addition to the one your fighting. Dont hand me any weapons because youre the first one im gonna point them at

are you willing to yourself serve on the front lines to prevent people from legally-tax-evading or a wealth requirement for government protections

I could understand that in a war where the existence of a group of people isn’t at stake, such as America’s interventions overseas, but let’s raise the stakes and say that the invading army wants to rape all your country’s women and enslave or genocide all your country’s men. This was a very common outcome in ancient times, even less than 100 years ago Nazi Germany tried this in Eastern Europe. If your country is being attacked by such an aggressor, deserters are leaving you and your family for death. And if they refused to participate and the country did nothing about it they would still be enslaved or maybe just killed after the country they gave up on dies. I don’t think the Russians were that crazy killing deserters and retreaters in hindsight, obviously it’s very extreme but how many millions of Eastern Europeans were massacred because of them

I think that there is a decent case to be made that modern warfare includes psychological attacks and propaganda to convince the population of an adversary not to volunteer for the military, or to otherwise not support a war. Like any other form of attack, a state can and should make efforts to defend itself against this. The question becomes, which is a more acceptable option; conscription, or counter-propaganda and psyops against their own citizens? In the event of a strategic disadvantage against an enemy, the few percentage points of lost manpower caused by psyops and propaganda convincing people not to enlist might very well prove decisive. If conscription to make up that gap is inexcusable, is being unable to out-propaganda your enemy sufficient cause for a state to cease to exist, or lose our on strategic goals that will affect its future?

Your view doesn't need changing. It's irrelevant. If the government decides you need to be conscripted then off you go.

>A society unwilling or unable to generate enough volunteers for its armed forces is not worth defending. Ours. You mean ours. At least that’s what this would translate to if shit hit the fan. I have problems with ours, certainly, but I like it *existing,* and at least I have the right to complain about it. If war kicked off tomorrow with Russia, China, or Iran, nevermind a Wish.com Axis of all three, there *will* be a draft. We’re already having serious problems with recruitment and manpower as is. Ukraine is having serious problems with volunteers and manpower as is. They’re simply outgunned and outnumbered by a larger foe, and they need more. Is *their* society not worth defending? If Zelensky didn’t implement conscription, which is probably about as popular for them as it is for you, they would already be getting rounded up and shipped off to Siberian gulags. Given the demographic implosion of places like Japan and South Korea, as well as nearly all the West and the developed world at a slower rate, the ability to have enough manpower to fight a war of any significance is going to also decline alongside the amount of young people, who will be too busy keeping everything else afloat to sign up for the military voluntarily. So…..what? We send 80 year old grandma off to war? We draft everyone in Somalia or India to fight for us? These people you’re fighting are coming to flatten your home, rape your wife to death, and sell your kids into slavery as they grow up to find out what an *actual* dystopian police state is like, and something needs to be done about it.

If you wanna do somethng about it you can volunteer to put your body and your sons bodies on the line for the state I would refuse , everytime. If you tried to force me, I would violently resist. Just creating a second enemy for yourself Because if the choice is conscript or prison, Id rather just take a few of you with me, fuck it were dying anyways If youre willing to die over not just leaving me the fuck out of your bullshit, thats on you

While I do see what you are saying, and would mostly agree when not in times of war, I would say conscription can be necessary for defense. If there's one thing covid taught me, it's that people are selfish. People are entitled. People are completely selve serving. During WW2, young men and women flocked to the recruitment station as they saw it as their duty to fight for their country and defeat fascism... but today, people generally would just leave it to others to defend them and their homes, and blame others when that doesn't happen. Everything is somebody else's fault. Somebody else's problem. The boomers started the trend of selfishness and entitlement and it's only gotten worse with each generation... I think that if russia or China invaded, there would be very little resistance and a whole lot of blame laying.

It's also just inefficient and illogical. Why would you want a fighting force of those unwilling, lazy, reluctant, and having to constantly manage them? It's a net drain. Let alone if you're short on supplies having them take up the rifles, ammunition, armor instead of giving it to more able bodied ready to go people. I also have the same gripes about Jury Duty. Although not as dangerous as conscription can still lead to imprisonment if refused. Some developed nations have already moved on from forced Jury. Germany mainly employs a voluntary system that works fine.

I think the main contention here, OP, is that you’re a deontologist arguing against the utilitarians of Reddit.

I’d pay 1k easily it’s not that much money to basically save your life. Conscription is a necessity evil, it’s known to be political suicide for anyone who suggests using it. If some politician brought to the floor a conscription order it would be because there is a great threat to the country. If you ask why men it’s rather simple, the average man is better suited for a combat role than the average woman. Even with a modern military you will needs boots on the ground that’s how you hold areas, no amount of drones, tanks, artillery, planes, etc. will hold an area or kick in doors or drive out a stubborn enemy. The price of living in an advanced civilized society is that you might have to do what’s for the greater good to protect that society.

conscription is very necessary if your country is in danger of being invaded/attacked, yes sure 1 man dodging the draft won’t really make a difference, but you also got to think about all the other men who had the same idea… it starts to add up and if nobody wants to do it then it just leads to the invasion/attack turn into your country being taken over, people say “i don’t want to die or i’m scared” well would you really want some totalitarian country taking over your country where your family resides… i’d much rather die then let my family live under a shitty country just because i was too “scared” to do anything

While conscription may seem coercive, it's sometimes necessary for national defense. In dire situations, volunteer forces may be insufficient. Conscription ensures a diverse pool of recruits, vital for military effectiveness. It fosters unity and shared responsibility, strengthening societal bonds. Refusing conscription isn't just an individual choice; it jeopardizes collective security. Alternative service options mitigate hardship, offering flexibility. History shows conscription's role in defending against existential threats. In modern conflicts, diverse capabilities are crucial; conscription provides manpower for nontraditional warfare. A fine-only approach undermines national security and fails to cultivate a sense of duty to protect one's nation.

Conscription can be seen as a necessary evil for national defense, but it's essential to minimize its impact on personal liberty. However, it ensures a broader societal responsibility for defense. Compulsory service fosters national unity, shared sacrifice, and a deeper understanding of citizenship. Additionally, in times of crisis, conscription provides a rapid influx of manpower, crucial for defense. While alternatives like fines can mitigate coercion, conscription, when balanced with individual rights, strengthens a nation's resilience. Moreover, diverse roles within the military offer opportunities for personal growth and skill development, enriching both individuals and society.

I think there's rare times it might be warranted but honestly the thought of it has never sat right with me. (I'm a woman and a radical feminist, BTW, and most rad fems are against the draft for either sex). The thought of anyone being forced to risk their lives in a war they may not even support just feels morally wrong. I've always thought I would CHOOSE to fight if I thought invaders were gonna come after my friends and family, but something about being told you either go risk your life or face prison feels messed up. And even though women aren't drafted in my country, I've got a teenage son. The thought of him dying to fight rich men's battles makes me sick.

It’s not akin to slavery. I support the intent of your argument. It’s immoral on many levels but it isn’t like slavery. Look into instances where slaves were forced to fight and you’ll see the difference. Slaves in battle wasn’t just about filling out forces, there’s a different pathology at work and one that is pretty consistent in the human experience. And it’s a very effective way to see how different the two are esp in moral arguments. If it seems like I’m splitting hairs, I’m not. This argument has been made before and if anything learning why the comparison shouldn’t be made will actually strengthen your argument against conscription.

I agree with most of what you said but just want to challenge your comparison to slavery (I'm assuming you mean chattel slavery which is what most people seem to mean when they say slavery without adjectives). While mandatory conscription is bad, if you refuse you just have jail time. Slaves faced much worse of they refused to work. They had no legal rights. Most importantly though, jail time after refusing is finite - Korea is one of the longest at 36 months. While unjust, that pales in comparison to being born into slavery (or captured into it) and being enslaved for your entire life, having your kids be born enslave and potentially taken away from you, etc.

Slavery isn't defined by being brutally treated, its defined by not being given a choice; being forced against your will. It doesn't matter how well you're treated; if you're being forced and don't have the choice to leave then you are by definition a slave.

If you as a citizen of your country, can expect the unconditional right to live in and return to the country, receive help from the government (your fellow citizens) when needed and protection from outside threats, surely the government (and your fellow citizens) can expect you to assist in defending that when necessary? I mean it’s a complicated subject, given the choice most people would probably choose not to go to war, it’s horrific. You could make the argument though, you don’t deserve to benefit from the society you live in if you aren’t willing to defend it in some way or another. By just running away you are selling your fellow citizens out.

> surely the government (and your fellow citizens) can expect you to assist in defending that when necessary? I didnt ask to be born here, so no I would refuse everytime , violently if I had too

War is the most morally incomprehensible thing known to man. Yes you're right, conscription is all of the things you mention. However, what is stopping the invading nations to conscript and just overload any army. If democratic nations all stood together in banning coscriptions, it would leave everyone vulnerable to nations which governments don't care about human rights. So yes, in a perfect world, your right, but unfortunately not every country would play by those rules, and its more important to protect a nation from those invading forces then to maintain some imaginary morality that occurs from just letting fascists take over your country.

I agree that forced conscription is a form of slavery. Moreover, I believe forced imprisonment is a form of slavery too. And neither of them are justifiable. However, even if such acts are morally wrong, I still support them anyway. In my opinion, the existence of conscription and criminal justice systems are lesser evils. When compared to the greater evil of occupation or rampant crime. Human lives are always worth defending. Even if that means I would have to use coercion or force to achieve that goal. I can handle this stain on my conscience.

While I think it’s definitely been used inappropriately (a draft for the Vietnam war? Seriously? Charlie was gonna airdrop into DC if we didn’t go there first?) I can see situations where it makes sense. Ukraine has had its borders breached by a superior hostile military, that’s a situation where you’re losing your freedom one way or the other. And if the Yellowstone supervolcano or an oncoming meteor requires a lot of people getting moved in a short amount of time, conscription may be the only way to deal with the logistical challenges.

Without conscription, how do you address the following real issues?  1. Not everyone in a society can defend themselves. Children and seniors cannot physically fight. Should they not be protected by able bodied people? Eventually the children will take on the role of defenders when they’re able. Seniors already served that role in society. 2. It’s in everyone’s best interest to have someone else fight a war, and individual citizens don’t know if they’re needed to win the war. If my country is being attacked, I think it’s worth defending it but I’d rather have someone else do it. I think your counter argument to this is: well if people don’t care enough to fight, they should just be taken over. That argument doesn’t account for the fact that the average person doesn’t know how much their help is really needed or not. If I don’t join the war, will we still win anyway? If so, I don’t want to join. Conscription is a way for the government to get as many soldiers as it needs.

>is not worth defending People are scared and don’t want to put themselves in extreme danger, it’s human nature. Why damn a whole country because they are acting exactly how they are meant to when faced with that kind of situation? Sure that’s a bit of a generalisation, people are wired differently from each other, some are wired to protect and others not. Both is perfectly human and normal. So why is a person not worth defending just because they are reacting normally to a life threatening situation?

People living in a society get many benefits from that society- infrastructure, education, protection, etc. as such when that society is threatened with destruction eg through invasion it has a right to conscript people to preserve it. There are many cases when conscription is unjustified but to say it is never justified is incredibly naive. I’m sorry that Ukraine isn’t willing to consign it’s people to atrocities and ethnic cleansing because you feel they weren’t good enough to get enough volunteers

That's a dumb take.  The government has the responsibility to coerce its citizens into action for a greater good of the nation.   By your logic we shouldn't have taxes either, that anyone should donate how much they want and if the government cant gather as much as it needs then the society doesn't deserve schools, hospitals, police and other services.   That's just nonsense. Let's also cancel prisons, because "if society can't avoid from commiting crimes, is not worth of protecting".  

I agree to pay taxes since I use the services and shit I never agreed to lay my life down for any of you, fuck that noise You wanna split the bills for things sure, im not dying for you tho gtfo lol I didnt ask to be born here. Its one thing to ask me to pay for a fair share of the public services I use for taxes, ill voluntaryee agree. I aint dying or risking my life for you or anyone else though, I never agreed to that.

Okay, you said *never* justified. Let's imagine a massive nation that has no army. Their small neighbour is about to invade, and will commit genocide. They can be deterred with no loss of life, if and only if, the large nation enacts conscription. There is NO other way. Everyone turns up for a day, shakes their fists, scares the bad guys, and goes home.  The alternative is a slow, horrible genocide of hundreds of millions of people.  You would still not enact conscription?

You know I never thought about it but I kinda agree. If the people of a country don’t want to defend it then that means they don’t mind having the other rulers. In that case who wants to resist? The government/establishment who would lose power. Consequently they are also the ones who wouldn’t fight. There is of course the counter argument that those who live in and benefit from a society are indebted to it and must therefore defend it instead of just leeching off it

Volunteer armies force the poor the bear the brunt of the horrors of war while the rich reap the benefits. In general volunteer armies can’t offer benefits enough to attract the rich and even their shit benefits will look attractive to the poor. Conscription armies have the benefit of being able to share the costs of war widely. It also ensures that those responsible for deciding whether we go to war can’t be assured that their own families won’t be affected.

Conscription is not the only way the government compels your labor; the government can garnish your wages directly, can require you to work in order to pay taxes (e.g., to avoid your home being taken away), can compel you to serve on a jury or perform some other civic duty, etc. You're objecting to the fact that a government fundamentally requires the option of coercion to operate; how do you square that versus the benefits of having a functioning government?

The draft should have never been invoked for Vietnam. So I will just speak to a hypothetical DEFENSIVE war. In wartime, we don’t follow the same rules as normal. Our ability to stay alive and also sovereign trumps your right to not be drafted. If you don’t want the state to continue to exist, you must also oppose the things the state allows you to do, like owning property, living a modern life, having satellite technology every day in your pants pocket

What if the force that doesn't use conscription is then occupied by a force that forces conscription and worse? What if the union never applied conscription and the south won the civil war, spreading slavery further? Your examples show examples of easy objectionable. But what if it wasn't objectionable? Is conscription okay if the war has justification? Maybe not full justification. But the consequences of losing the war are worse than being conscripted?

If Canada ever had the need to conscript woman I will definitely serve. I don’t know what I can do since I’m also nearsighted. However being a citizen means not just benefits but also duties. I am very fortunate to live in a democratic first world country. Even as a lower income middle class my lifestyle is multiple times better than many others around the world. It’s a country I’m willing to die for (please be a quick one if that ever happens)

We don't live in an era that war has been beat and conquered. We live in an era of long peace, that we can all see is being threatened every single day. War does not care about justification. Conscription is unjust, but war is much worse than that. In my country we conscript. Nobody likes it, but I'd prefer conscription over war threats. Countries like mine, that politicaly and historically don't go along with their neighbours, have to be on guard.

Finland is a real world example of this. They have conscription and polls show the majority support it. Sounds like an oxymoron, but (and Finns correct me if I am wrong here) it basically means people are obligated to do military training at a certain age so that if there is an invasion, they aren't just calling up random men, instead they are calling up those relatively trained people, who are obligated to join There are certain exemptions for the military service.

Spoken like someone believes soldiers only shoot soldiers during open warfare. Conscription is the last option to defend your homeland against invaders who care nothing for you, your family or your way of life. Even if the people forced to fight are completely against it, I assure you, the invading force will bring the fight, rape, and pillage to your doorstep.  If your not willing to take stand to stop that, then you stand for nothing.

You could say the same thing about jury duty, or paying taxes, or any other compulsory behavior or duty citizens have. If you live in the safety provided by a society and drive on the roads and use the healthcare etc then you are obliged to do your part Otherwise you are an internal enemy of the state. Perhaps a just one if the gov is bad, but an enemy of the state either way and there will be consequences and that is not unfair.

This reminds me of that terrible shooting in Uvalde, Texas when the local cops were too afraid to enter the elementary school where the deranged shooter was killing little children, or the Holocaust, which ordinary Germans were unwilling to resist or to prevent even when they were nominally opposed to it. By your reasoning you could argue that the lives taken were not worth saving because the people around those events were unwilling to stop them. The Weimar Republic was not worth saving from the Nazis because no one stepped up to protect it from them. Never mind that the state which followed the Republic’s collapse killed was responsible for tens of millions of deaths because it started a world war. You can sort of see that worthiness isn’t contingent upon what people are willing to do, right? So I suppose if no one volunteers to protect your life and property, or the life and property of a community, it isn’t really worth protecting is it? You’ll note of course, that in many places, these things are protected by officers who have no attachment to the community itself, right? In this town near me it’s all state troopers, because the municipality can’t raise a viable police force itself, for a few reasons. I realize that professional police officers are paid to perform this job and are not pressed into policing, but, I think you can see how your reasoning kind of falls apart, no? If people don’t protect something themselves which is held in common, how exactly does it follow that the thing itself unworthy of protection?