State mandated military service -

[Marco Fucko]

I've seen the thought on both /pol/ and more mainstream right wing boards (like gun forums) that making people go through a 2-4 year stint in the military would make people less pussified overall. Most normal people I see don't seem that bad, but then there's always the SocJus crowd. Would the military toughen people up, or would the social elements that produce our subgroups just transfer over?

What are your thoughts on forcing adults to enlist or commission for at least one term when they turn 18?

If there are any kiwis where service is mandatory, I would especially love to hear your thoughts.

 

[millais]

It's a waste of money for most governments because every year they are having to train an entire new age-cohort of conscripted intake from scratch and losing all of the previous cycle's cohort as they are released from service. The citizen-soldier ideal is no longer cost effective in the post-Cold War era because it's requiring more and more financial and time investment in training and education to produce competent and effective fighting men who can survive the rigors of the modern battlefield. In spite of the political and societal risks of creating a permanent professional soldiering class/culture, it's the best way to prevent wastage of the investment in experience, training and education of the military servicemen.

The only exception is for those countries that are small enough that they require mass mobilization of all possible manpower in order to be able to fill out the ranks, but for big population countries, it's an inefficient system to do universal conscription.

 

[Marissa Moira]

As long as they keep the Floridians contained to their own unit and just use them for the front lines only, I'm ok with it.

 

[nonperson]

I hate the feminized soyboys just as much as the next guy, but the reality is not everybody makes a good soldier. Smart people will waste good years of their life on something that will never really benefit them. Governments will waste a lot of money trying to turn geeks into soldiers.

Unless you have a real manpower shortage, it makes no sense. Professional armies have always been superior, historically, over vast masses of conscripts. Especially in modern warfare, numbers no longer really matter the same way they did during WW2 for example.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

As long as they keep the Floridians contained to their own unit and just use them for the front lines only, I'm ok with it.

I reckon they'd make good interrogators. You'd show your prisoners the "Squeal Piggy! Squeal!" scene from Deliverance and say "We've got some southerners in our interrogation department. Tell me where the WMD are or I'll hand you over". Jihadis don't like it up 'em and they'd spill the beans then and there.

If the prisoners quibble about Deliverance taking place in Georgia not Florida just shoot 'em. God damn smartasses.

 

[Slap47]

The point of the Civil Service in Starship Troopers was to encourage a culture of self-sacrifice for the greater good of the country. In that system a retarded person could sign up for the service and the govt would have to find a job that they could actually physically do. A retarded person could basically earn citizenship by being a guinea pig for an experiment, etc.

I don't really think society should encourage such values. I believe that people should put their own interests over those of the collective. I don't want to live in a European nanny state.

I've seen the thought on both /pol/ and more mainstream right wing boards (like gun forums) that making people go through a 2-4 year stint in the military would make people less pussified overall. Most normal people I see don't seem that bad, but then there's always the SocJus crowd. Would the military toughen people up, or would the social elements that produce our subgroups just transfer over?

What are your thoughts on forcing adults to enlist or commission for at least one term when they turn 18?

If there are any kiwis where service is mandatory, I would especially love to hear your thoughts.

Dunno, on one hand you're encouraging social responsibility, promoting civic pride and creating a gun culture (Switzerland)

and

on the other hand, look at Israel, Korea and Norway. They have a bureaucratic mess where they have incompetent and unqualified people in their army and civil service to fill a quota. Worse, you take people away from their actual careers and studies to do busywork.


The only benefit I can see is that you get an insanely huge reserve of soldiers and a few potential NEETs getting some well needed experience and socializing. However, that obviously hasn't worked in S.Korea where social isolation and withdrawal have become rampant.

make people less pussified overall.

Military cultures are cultures of compliance, not bravery.

I hate the feminized soyboys just as much as the next guy, but the reality is not everybody makes a good soldier. Smart people will waste good years of their life on something that will never really benefit them. Governments will waste a lot of money trying to turn geeks into soldiers.

Unless you have a real manpower shortage, it makes no sense. Professional armies have always been superior, historically, over vast masses of conscripts. Especially in modern warfare, numbers no longer really matter the same way they did during WW2 for example.

A trained reservist is basically a semi-professional soldier if they're actually trained. Canadian and American reservists have been used extensively to great success in "peacekeeping" and emergency relief efforts.

 

[The Shadow]

Conscription doesn't de-pussify a generation. Let me offer my grandfather, WWII survivor and veteran. The war didn't make him tough. Having a hardscrabble upbringing where if he was a bad shot (often with a slingshot) he didn't eat in Dust Bowl country made him tough.

Inevitably most generations want their offspring to be more comfortable and well off. This has the unintended reselt of more so-called pussification. It's a mixed blessing, for sure, but hey, I've never had to miss a meal or wake up with Monte Cassino flashbacks.

 

[OB 946]

Horrible idea. America's military is so special because it has trillions of dollars in funding because the public thinks so highly of it. If everyone knew the inner workings people would immediately demand a reduction in military spending. Also having signing bonuses and different contract lengths for different MOSes means our military can be more efficient and selective instead of having a few career specialists head up millions of retarded teenagers.

Also look at other countries with conscription, most of them are shitty socialist hellholes. Finland, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, France, Denmark, Greece, Estonia.

Conscription has absolutely no bearing on how conservative or liberal a country is. Not to mention that if anything it will give people the wrong impression by making their first major job and potential career a state one with good benefits and retirement. It doesn't incentivize them to learn trades or enter the private sector. If anything you should be advocating for trade school options in secondary schools.

 

[break these cuffs]

I don't think it should be mandatory. I think short term civil service for departments like the Forestry Service, could be made into an attractive alternative to college. Not everyone needs to go to college. Even less so now that is has been made a complete and total racket with a debt bubble waiting to burst. You'd be doing shitty grunt work, but getting paid and be given time to figure your shit out. At then end you have some marketable skills and some sort of point advantage for future hiring, possibly an offer for permanent hiring if you excel in your field. Job hunting and placement in the private sector should be a cornerstone of the program. The positions would obviously have to be limited to ones that require little training so time and money isn't wasted on someone who will just peace out in a year and a half.

Combat arms of the military must remain volunteer only unless Selective Service kicks in. There are already enough fuckups and shitbags in a squad that you don't need to pack them full of guys like Bergdahl. I'd rather go short a couple dudes, which is what happens. Some guys are so shit they are a liability in a firefight.

 

[Zersetzung]

Have you seen the drill-sergeant dynamic that Western militaries fetishise?
Kind of indistinguishable from a bunch of open-mouthed gimps, huh?

now kith, puthies

 

[Slap47]

Also look at other countries with conscription, most of them are shitty socialist hellholes. Finland, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, France, Denmark, Greece, Estonia.

And all of them are countries that are afraid of being invaded by some obvious imminent threat. The USA has no such threat. It has no border area of perpetual conflict or tension that needs a permanent armed garrison... oh.. maybe...

 

[Recoil]

As I move closer to being a legit boomer I've come to wish I took a stint in the military. I can't help but feel like the people I know who had that experience are better for it. They can think better under pressure and they handle suffering better.
The school I struggled and scraped to get into was a joke, in retrospect. A moral vacuum for spoiled children. I have very little respect for it as an institution and I sometimes feel like I got sold a false bill of goods.

 

[Zersetzung]

The USA has no such threat.

The USA has made a career of making enemies of every living "threat" there is, and that shit is finally coming home to roost, as if we all haven't fucking noticed.
There's no military counter to an entire planet slowly drawing lines that intersect at the confluent collapse of your whole entire shit.

As I move closer to being a legit boomer I've come to wish I took a stint in the military. I can't help but feel like the people I know who had that experience are better for it. They can think better under pressure and they handle suffering better.
The school I struggled and scraped to get into was a joke, in retrospect. A moral vacuum for spoiled children. I have very little respect for it as an institution and I sometimes feel like I got sold a false bill of goods.

PM me for oil rig jobs

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

Smart people will waste good years of their life on something that will never really benefit them.

Really? So, the military is nothing for "smart people", you imply?

 

[ProgKing of the North]

Fuck that. I’d rather be a soyboy than have my ass shot up in some shithole country cause my government wants their oil. Or have to shoot people because of it. It’s not worth it to me.

 

[An Ghost]

The Jews and gooks do it because they’re constantly on the verge of attack. When rockets fly in from the Gaza Strip (any day ending in y) it’s better to have civilians drilled already. America doesn’t have that problem.

Short story: an international student I was friends with had to go back for his mandatory SK military service. Despite being out of shape from American food and beer and having a fatty liver, they decided the navy was the area where he could cause the least bit of damage. Did it make him a more disciplined, thoughtful human being? No, he just complained about how one shipmate always wanted to be “skintimate” (korean men touch each other a lot).

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

Mandatory military service

No.

I think the draft is fucking hot garbage, and I think this is about ten times worse.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

I have thought about this a lot. It is a nuanced discussion and I will be writing a sloppy answer. These are as of yet relatively unconnected lines of thought. Please bear with me.

I think that having broadly trained base of citizens is helpful in a whole heck of a lot of ways. Knowledge of basic threat management and trauma medicine should be learned by just about everyone with a brain.

The problem you comes to a fundamental fact of human psychology: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. You can force the average person to take all the classes in the world, and they still won't learn anything. Case in point the absolute failure of the public school system.

Echoing what has been said before, military service doesn’t change people as much as the media says it does. Life in the service only really agrees with a select few. Like any other career, sure you can take any person off the street and put them through an extensive engineering course. Odds are, unless that person was already predisposed to that particular field of engineering, they are going to do significantly worse than someone who chose that career. That person doesn’t start magically thinking like an engineer either.

People only learn when they want to. People only toughen up when they want to. Besides, There are much less unwieldy way to change the cultural atmosphere than mass conscription. With the broad trend line of social tension ratcheting up over the past couple of decades, that atmosphere is already changing. More people are getting interested in self defense and obtaining some level of self responsibility.

We used to have strong communities here in the US, a long long time ago. Those communities had a local militia which was the town pride and joy... before sportsball teams became the town pride and joy. Which is not to say that those militias were the be all end all, in fact they were regarded as a sort of proto-gentlemen's club. To be used for social drinking and showing off. Still, a properly organized and trained militia can increase the resilience of the community from the blowing winds of any storm, Political or meteorological.

“Service guarantees citizenship” has a lot of structural issues. So does the Active (voting) and Passive (non-voting) sub variant of that system. The biggest of which is: The idea of everyone is a citizen and every citizen is a potential soldier is a powerful idea, and is how we justify the draft in the first place. Saying not all residents are citizens, or the same type of citizens, significantly weakens or destroys the manpower pool. The bigger issue is that is sets up a very obvious class divide and foments the growth of revolutionary leftists cough cough The French Revolution cough cough. Because the “under” class would almost always be bigger, or grow over time, it become harder to sustain that scheme.

Ideally though, A system should be set up in such a way that encouragement of self improvement. The problem is how to set up a sustainable arrangement.

So TL;DR Join your local not-a-complete-joke militia today.

 

[Watcher]

State mandated military service would only occur if there was a specific reason for the state to do it. It makes perfect sense in South Korea because they have North Korea wanting to bomb them at any given time so they need a constant military force at the ready.

It costs an enormous amount to suddenly double/triple your military force, a non-trivial amount. And where are you going to send them? You need to also build things like housing for them on a base. I don't think a lot of the people here would be in favor of it if suddenly your taxes multiplied because of it and you'd read stories they just sit around because the military can't afford to build infrastructure, and the middle eastern bases are too full now.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

At most we should encourage National Guard recruitment. Sending absolutely everyone through the military pipeline will only make them resent the shit out of it. Even a huge swath of the people who choose that life end up regretting the choice even after doing research and carefully signing the dotted line, don't drag a bunch of normies from offices and trade work into this shit too.