It is Time to Reintroduce the Draft

Oh, I suspect as much.

But I sort of enjoy the incongruity of people who attempt to believe in both things simultaneously - that market solutions are best but also that market solutions should be ignored for pet causes, especially for cases like this that would be worse, more expensive, and rely on involuntary labor

Oh, for sure, the hypocrisy is absolutely staggering. If a corporation raises prices on life saving medicine or food, they’re just reacting to market forces; but if you demand more pay for your labor you are un-American.

I just don’t finnd the staggering hypocrisy particularly notable or interesting anymore. It’s just a fact of life, like the sun rising in the east.

A significant percentage of new recruits come from military families–the children of current or former service members. Children growing up in a shit-hole the military forced their parents into are no doubt less likely to join themselves when they come of age.

And, as I noted a few posts ago, family members with military backgrounds are becoming less likely to recommend the military as a career for their own young people.

Speaking of military families; historically conscripts in most militaries have been greatly underpaid compared to career personnel. One of the (many) reasons men fresh out of school have been favored for military service is that they’re unlikely to have dependents. Often marriage and fatherhood were ways to avoid the draft. Even today in the US military junior enlisted wages aren’t really designed to support a family.

Thus the use of food stamps by somd military members.

It’s evident that what’s really sticking in the OP’s craw and motivating all these ideas is simply that the ruling class doesn’t put their kids in the infantry, but is happy to deploy that infantry in the pursuit of greater glory, power, and money for themselves. This the real problem the OP wants solved.

Everything else in the thread is either window dressing or assuming a particular solution to the unexpressed as-yet inchoate problem.

My answer:
Hint: the rest of us want the same problem solved too. It’s simply another stage of the age old battle between Kings and Princes vs. plebes and peasants. Or maybe I should say another symptom; one of thousands embedded in our laws, our customs, and our cultures. Oh yeah, and in our economies.

Fix the problems elsewhere and the military problem will fall into place. Don’t fix them elsewhere and even a draft-the-elite movement won’t fix it.

“Eat the rich” would seem to solve that problem nicely. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think the assumption Paul is working with is Rich People In Power don’t put their kids in harms way. I don’t agree with the OPs solution, but at least I find no fault with this conclusion.

Maybe that’s what it morphed into.

But the first post doesn’t really sound like that. It sounds more like “I have a gut feeling we don’t have enough people in the military, with military experience, or to feed the military-industrial complex, so we should reinstitute the draft”

Subsequently, it was clarified that college educated folks should be prioritized for the draft so conscripts could be smarter on average (less educated folks not being as effective or desirable, apparently).

This further morphed (in the back half of the thread and at the suggestion of another poster) that we should focus on the children of the rich - this was not a part of the OPs original ‘brainstorming’. It was tacked on after other posters suggested it.

Each refinement has included some very questionable assumptions.

If we want to grow the military or improve readiness or whatever, we already have the solution we expect from many businesses - make the conditions of employment clear and make the terms of employment sufficiently attractive to get the numbers and types of candidates you want. If we don’t want to spend the time and resources to do this, we’re stuck with the candidates we have. Making an explicitly unfair draft that focuses on better educated kids, especially if it’s divorced from their income level as in the original OP, to guarantee a larger pool of cheap yet high-quality labor into the future strikes me as deeply un-American. At least with drafts through history, it’s been more about warm bodies than hijacking high quality talent at rock bottom prices.

If we want to have the wealthy have their children contribute more to the armed forces or society in general, we need to code that requirement into explicit law rather than dance around with the concept of a draft rigged against them. Not that this was part of the original OP anyway.

Not only that. It’s a recipe for having disgruntled people with access to top secret information, some of who are liable to sell it to people who shouldn’t have it because they’re pissed off at being put in the situation they’re in against their will. We need fewer Reality Winners, Jack Teixeiras, and Edward Snowdens, not more.

Just look at what Russia is dealing with. We see their defections among those already in the service** and the overall brain drain from educated civilians who fled Russia as a good thing, because we see Russia (IMHO correctly) as the bad guys. But from their point of view that’s a bad thing, and I most certainly wouldn’t want that to happen to the US.

**. Just off the top of my head there’s the guy who crossed into the US from Mexico a while back who was an engineer that worked on the design of their current generation of fighter jets. There’s also the former Wagner commander in I think Norway or Sweden.

When has this country ever not been divided?

To stay on topic, as far as conscription is concerned, I’m reminded of what Stokely Carmichael said the last time the US thought it was a good idea:

"Why should black folks fight a war against yellow folks so that white folks can keep a land they stole from red folks? We’re not going to Vietnam. Ain’t no Vietcong ever called me nigger!”

Agree with your understanding of the OP. As I said.

Although as @Great_Antibob accurately points out 3 posts up from here, the OP’s intentions have been a shape-shifting reptaloid in the thread. Which I pointed out in a non-confrontational way in post #120 that received no real response from anyone.

Pretty much this.

To the extent there is a clear thesis and assumptions, it is: “we need a draft, this time focusing on better educated folks”

The rest of the thread has been scattershot addendums, elisions, and modifications to drum up support and/or deal with the many, many issues and objections raised.

The fundamental problem is the thesis of the thread itself is flawed.

If the goal is to address some of the issues raised (having sufficient military participation/retention and weapons stockpiles), there are better solutions. If you want to guarantee a college educated workforce, recruit and retain like companies that have significant college educated workforces. If you want munitions and people to make them - pay for them. The idea of a draft is trying to get there on the cheap by hijacking young people’s lives and careers. TANSTAAFL

If the goal is merely to have a draft at all for whatever reason and military readiness is really more of an excuse to get there, then this thread is a reflection of that - scattershot addendums, elisions, and modifications to try to get people to come around to the idea of re-instituting a draft by hook or by crook.

I’m half tempted to start a new thread on the usefulness of required national service of 50 weeks for all citizens before age 25. Not necessarily military service, but things like the Peace Corps, Civilian Conservation Corps, etc.

But I don’t have a strong opinion, so I haven’t.

Whether its for the military or for other perhaps more worthy goals, I’m against compulsory volunteering. We used to say “it’s a free country.” I’d love to make it more attractive for people who are considering any of these options, but I would never support forcing people into this kind of servitude.

How do you feel about Jury duty? Or being summoned to participate in a Sheriff’s Posse? That was customary before the rise of police agencies.

That would be about as entertaining as a draft would be in 2023.

That’s a good question. I do support requiring service on jury duty. However, there is a mechanism for those who would find service an unusual hardship. Usually, for any trial over two or three weeks, the judges are pretty good about letting people off if serving would disrupt their lives. A year in the Peace Corps or two years in the Navy is a lot more to demand.

It’s probably off-topic for this thread, but in both of these cases, I think that the use of amateurs with no relevant background or training for life and death roles in a law enforcement context has been disastrous in terms of outcomes.

The Professionals haven’t necessarily always covered themselves in glory, either. You might be surprised.

I’d argue these issues are totally on topic, they deal with citizen responsibilities, not arguing I necessarily agree with them, but that’s the argument, and is similar in principle to a draft. The citizen is liable for public service.

Some ancient Greek city states drafted public employees. Worked pretty well - though they also had the death penalty for malfeasance.