Off the top of my head:
The thumb drive
The Intel dual-core processor
ICQ (instant messanging software)
Capsule endoscopy (“pillcams”)
The UAV
The cherry tomato and the seedless watermellon.
First, let’s start by assessing the claim that Israel’s tech industry is dependent on national service. That’s a stretch right off the bat. Israel didn’t need a mini-Silicon Valley to develop nuclear weapons. There’s plenty of smart people. I’d argue Israel would do just fine, tech-wise, even if there was no national service.
As for some of Alessan’s claims:
One of the purported inventors is Israeli. There’s actually a bit of a fight over who invented it. And “ThumbDrive” is itself a term coined by the Singaporean claimants. So, it’s a big stretch to say the mini-Silicon Valley innovated it. Even if it did, it’s an easy enough invention that it could easily have been developed by multiple teams simultaneously.
Granted, but ICQ wasn’t exactly a major breakthrough. Other groups had messaging clients in the works, relegating ICQ to a smaller role in the US. Almost the same as the case with the thumb drive.
You’re kidding, right? The US has been developing and operating UAVs since the Cold War. And primitive models were conceived by the Brits even before the 2nd World War. I’ll grant Israel might have developed a few modern models, but the US has been working on (and using) UAVs for decades.
No to both, unless you mean a particular variety. There are multiple cherry tomato varieties cultivated around the world that pre-date Israel. As for seedless watermelons, I’ve also seen claims from Americans and the Japanese. So, maybe a particular species of seedless watermelon but it’s not likely to be the source of all of them.
So, by my count, you have 2 unambiguous achievements in endoscopy and Intel’s version of the dual core processor. ICQ gets a pass. And there’s a big question mark on the thumb drive.
And a few other claimed inventions, some of which are actually audaciously bold claims.
So, that’s 3 and a half.
But to return to the main point, no reason to believe these wouldn’t also have been achieved in the absence of national service.
What the hell are you talking about?
Once again you missed the point. The point is that taking a utilitarian approach by advocating that a few people sacrifice for everyone’s benefit is not an unpopular or indefensible position.
We could, but it’s not political attainable. Again, if you are saying that you have a problem with a lowered standard of living for other people to attain lower prices, then you wouldn’t be able to shop plenty of places. Do you have an iphone? Do you have a pair of Nikes? If you do, then you are taking advantage of low prices due to lower wages and (often) worker exploitation. If you think that is ethically wrong on its face, then it doesn’t matter if people are being forced to work.
Do you have a cite for any of that to counter the two cites that I provided? To answer the question posed before, some of the companies to arise from unit 8200 of IDF include Check Point, ICQ, Nice, AudioCodes and Gilat.
Actually, I don’t own either. But that’s besides the point, as it’s nearly impossible to be an American consumer that does not rely on Chinese manufactured goods.
I don’t have a problem with people starting with a lower standard of living.
I have a problem with lowering existing standards of living.
That’s what I was bringing up with China. Their standard of living is rising. And good for them. The market works. We wanted cheap labor. We got it, and it resulted in the Chinese seeing an increase in standard of living. We get lower prices while they start to live better. That’s good for all of us, until the Chinese standard of living is too high to sustain low prices.
You want to lower the standard of living here for a certain group of people, while the Chinese example uses an imbalance across international lines to benefit both parties. We don’t have that sort of imbalance within the country itself, so we’d have to lower standards of living, rather than raising them to get our low prices.
Do you really not see the difference in the situations?
A cite for an alternate history? No, you misunderstand.
My contention is that Israel would have had its own high tech industry with or without mandatory service in the IDF. Maybe not the same exact companies but some kind of high tech industry. I can’t prove it without an alternate reality viewer, but it’s not a big stretch.
Is your contention that Israel would NOT have a vibrant technology sector without mandatory service in the IDF? Given Israeli cultural norms, that seems a stretch to me.
“It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”
I saw this quote the other day on reddit. It wasn’t really applicable in the setting I saw it in, but it seems a lot more applicable here.
What do you do for a living, brickbacon? I’m sure society could benefit from your skills more than you can. Instead of making teenagers serve, it would be more efficient to make skilled workers serve society. After all, they have more to give, and from those who have much, much is expected.
If you are too old or infirm to serve society, it would be of more utility for everyone if you were no longer here.
I tried to point this out earlier. Instead of training kids to do the job on a temporary basis, why not take people who already have the skills and do similar jobs full-time, and make them work for a pittance?
We’re still waiting to hear where he hopes to get four billion bucks a year (the size of the now-abandoned German boondoggle, extrapolated to the US), and you expect an answer to that?
This is what I hear in this thread whe people speak of “work ethic” and “discipline.” Those are values that are easily corrupted by authority, and (as someone said earlier) serve the state better than the nation. To guard against that, they have to be made subordinate to interpersonal ethics and social responsibility - not treated as some kind of number-one priority for all youth. I’m suspicious of any proposal that puts them too far forward.
Speaking as a former IDF draftee, I’d say that service* in the IDF *is an element, albeit not the only one. However, the IDF as an organization is very, very different from the U.S. military, to such a degree that many of the benefits it gives its veterans could not be replicated in the U.S.
If you somehow converted U.S. military cuture to Israeli, maybe you could replicate some of Israel’s conditions - but I don’t see why you’d want to do thgat. The U.S. military is an excellent military force, and is perfectly adapted to American culture, American traditions and American wars.
Sure, but brickbacon is trying (unsuccessfully) to lay all the credit for Israeli technological development on mandatory service in the IDF. I’ll admit that it may help make certain elements of technical development easier, but it’s a huge leap to lay even the majority of the credit on mandatory service. At best, it helps facilitate technology development but cannot be solely responsible for it.
I’m not remotely convinced that the country would have been better off by having my scientific contributions delayed by two years. I reject the notion that the service would not cause a delay. You don’t get into top schools by taking correspondence classes on a sub, and even if you do, those credits are not likely to transfer.
Dangling tuition money as a reward for this farce is not enticing to those going to the best schools, because most of those students have their costs covered in full by family or loan-free financial aid. It only applies to those with parents who can pay but choose not to.
How many times does it need to be explained to you that workers in Third World factories are not sacrificing anything? Obviously (well, obviously to anyone who knows the fundamentals of economics), their lives are better because they have those jobs instead of working in the fields or whatever they were doing before; otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
If you still don’t follow, I’ll make it simpler: if you believe that Third World urban living isn’t a step up from Third World rural living and you believe that the state should decide where individuals ought to work, there’s no reason to find Pol Pot’s actions particularly objectionable.
Again, if “sacrifice” is your thing, when are you going to at least going to earn a smidgen of respect by advocating that you be the one to “sacrifice for everyone’s benefit”?
First, I did not lay all the credit on ALL the credit on mandatory service. All I did was echo sentiments expressed by experts quoted on the cites I linked to. I have provided two cites that detail the extent to which this actually is the case, while all you have provided is hand waving and conjecture. The burden is on you to prove or even explain why you think this is not the case.
First, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why fundamental changes and discoveries are made in society. Delaying any one scientist (in the vast majority of cases) will not have any great impact on the body of scientific discovery. It a creation myth to think inventors and innovators operate in a vacuum. Societies create the foundations from which people innovate. I would contend that a society, which has better infrastructure, more expansive personal networks, and more opportunities will see productivity gains that greatly exceed the detriments that may arise from “delaying” scientists. That’s one reason why Israel’s programs seemed to work. It identifies and trains talented people, it give them a chance to interact with people they would have never met, and gives them the bona fides to credibly create a startup company. By your logic Harvard delayed Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook. I mean, why go to Harvard to take a bunch of prerequisite courses when you could be out creating shit?
How many times does it need to be explained to you that the working conditions in sweatshops and other factories overseas do not just represent a market oriented difference in wages and standards of living. It is pure exploitation even given the norms in the respective countries. Did you miss the articles about all the suicides of workers making Apple products in China? Or the ones about the workers in Dubai that have their passports taken and are subjected to brutal living conditions? Or the ones written in the US about places like Walmart that have refused to pay overtime to their workers, and have even gone as far as locking their employees in the stores? All sacrifices made by workers in the name of low prices for consumers. Your bullshit economic theories aside, of course less developed nations will rise up as they become more advanced. That’s not the issue. The issue is that economic theory doesn’t prevent people from being exploited, and if you buy the products of companies who engage in such practices, you are giving tacit consent to the ethos I mentioned before.
Yes; this is why your big-government proposal to interfere with the development of those institutions would harm productivity (in addition to the already-stated reasons why your proposal is morally unacceptable – as I noted, and as you tacitly admitted by not even making the attempt, you cannot draw any bright line between yourself and Pol Pot).
Obvious nonsense, given that the factories are staffed by people who left the fields without your proposed big-government coercion.
You advocate forcing people into servitude, and beat your breast about… people being forcibly kept at a work site?
This is one of those moments where one horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.
Irrelevant, since we are talking about a point of political theory (government coercion, which you support and the rest of us reject) which prevents people from being exploited (exploitation you support and the rest of us oppose).
Still waiting for you to put your money where your mouth is and offer two years of free service…
Ahe government is that institution in a number of circumstances. Broadening their purview will not necessarily result in overall harm. In Israel’s case, it seems to have done some good.
I didn’t bother responding because it’s an idiotic accusation. Do you think the leaders of Norway and Israel are in any way similar to Pol Pot? Either you have a misunderstanding of Pol Pot, or you don’t at understand what I am proposing.
Which is irrelevant since the point of contention is the ethics of one group of people sacrificing to provide others with lower prices.
Only an idiot doesn’t recognize that the government has different powers and responsibilities. Conscription is no more forced servitude than mandatory jury duty is. Regardless, once again, you completely missed the point. The point is that denying that many Walmart workers are making sacrifices to provide customers with low prices if foolishly naive. To make an ethical stand against being complicit to the sacrifice of the few for the benefit of the many leaves you with very few refuges. It’s not the bright line that you seem to contend must be drawn. Even if you contend that I, or the leaders of Israel, bear some superficial resemblance to Pol Pot, any fair observer can recognize that those similarities are not substantive; amounting to nothing more than name calling. It’s Godwinizing by another name.
Again, more naivety on your part. No government could exist without exploiting people under your loose definitions. You are also moving the goal posts. Your contention was the economic theory does not result in third-world workers sacrificing in service to low prices. To quote you:
“How many times does it need to be explained to you that workers in Third World factories are not sacrificing anything? Obviously (well, obviously to anyone who knows the fundamentals of economics), their lives are better because they have those jobs instead of working in the fields or whatever they were doing before; otherwise they wouldn’t be there.”
Now, you tell me it’s about political theory. Bullshit. Your whole quote rests upon the notion that knowledge of the fundamental of economics would lead one to recognize that third-world workers are not sacrificing. Yet, they clearly are in many circumstances as I mentioned several times. So just admit you overstepped.
I would. It’s really kind of a moot point anyway, and is a terrible debate strategy.
Don’t be absurd. Obviously, when you shift from Fallacy A to Irrelevance B to Inconsistency C to Nonsense D, a wide medley of counter-arguments is necessarily called into play to swat them all aside.
In this particular case, the argument, such as it is, mostly falls into the “irrelevance” category. The argument that persons whose labor is stolen* are not “exploited” because there are Third World factory workers with a lower standard of living is equivalent to the argument that Bernie Madoff is not a criminal because his victims were still better off than said Third World factory workers.
*[ Sgt. Schultz] “Not ‘stolen’. Con-fis-cat-ed!” [ /Sgt. Schultz ]
What a dodge. You clearly have poor reading comprehension skills, an aversion to answering questions being asked, and an inability to present a clear and coherent response. This is just more of the same. Please don’t even bother responding unless you plan to address the above deficiencies.
That is NOT the argument. Please show me where I said it was. Since you will not be able to do this, please try to follow along.
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I was asked if I had a problem with some people sacrificing (eg. having a lower standard of living) for the benefit of other (eg. lower prices). The contention was that such a stance was unethical on its face. Please note that the issue does not hinge upon the use of government coercion or force as is the case with conscription or jury duty.
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I pointed out that I didn’t have a problem with it in the case of a proposed mandatory national service, and that, moreover, taking an unwavering stance against utilitarian ethics would lead to one taking the unenviable position of painting many people and entities as unethical. Companies like Nike, Walmart, and Apple that exploit people at home and/or abroad would fall under the umbrella of corporations that lower the standard of living for some in order to secure lower prices.
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You incorrectly chimed in that Chinese workers aren’t exploited because they (theoretically) are paid wages set by the market in China, and that they are lucky to have those jobs, and if they don’t like it, they can leave. You claim this is basic economics. Although you correctly stated that the trend of outsourcing to China will eventually allow their economy to advance, leading to higher wages, you incorrectly assumed that this trend prevents exploitation on an individual level.
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After it was pointed out to you that, in the real word, ignoring labor laws, instituting sweatshop conditions, and providing below market wages and conditions are common ways some of these companies have exploited workers in order to save money and lower prices, you decided to pretend none of the above happened.
If the argument were just whether mandatory national service “exploits” people the same way that Apple computer (for example) does, you might have a point. However, that was not the basis for the argument. If you had been following along, you would know that.
Either way, if you want to continue, please try to answer the following questions.
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Are governments that have conscription ethical? Are they enslaving their own people?
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If conscription is slavery, is mandatory jury duty slavery as well? What about involuntary quarantines, or psychiatric holds?
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Should the government be able to force you to pay taxes, buy insurance, or do anything you don’t want to do?
How do you propose to differentiate between the people who already have confidence, pride in staying fit and active, and giving back to their community, from those who might benefit from losing two productive years of their lives?
Why restrict your compulsory program to only young adults? Why not make it mandatory for all people of any age who lack confidence, pride in being physically fit and active, and giving back to their communities?
Most people attend an education system for a dozen years or more. Should not this education cover developing confidence, taking pride in being physically fit and active, and giving back to one’s community? If it does not, then should it be changed to do cover these things as opposed to keeping people in a government system for yet a further two years?
At what age should a person be emancipated, such that he or she will have the authority to make his or her own life choices, including choice of marriage, residence and occupation?
Since that is precisely the argument, and the sole relevant argument, I’ll take that as a full concession. I’ll even let you continue using your idiosyncratic definition of “concession”, and stand by to catch you if you fall off your wall.
The obvious conclusion, if one insists on equating the two, is to leave each individual free to decide whether to buy Apple’s “exploitative” products, or join a voluntary “exploitative” government program.