Right, but you can't just throw your hands up and go for conscription immediately. *Why* don't people want to serve? Force should never come first. Any other sector complaining about shortages we'd tell them to find ways to be attractive. Why should the military be let off the hook? - ThreadSky

chris.sigint.life • 5 days ago

Right, but you can't just throw your hands up and go for conscription immediately. *Why* don't people want to serve?

Force should never come first. Any other sector complaining about shortages we'd tell them to find ways to be attractive. Why should the military be let off the hook?

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chris.sigint.life•5 days ago

Most of all, it doesn't actually solve the problem. What's needed is a competent standing army of a reasonable size. If the military is unattractive, it'll continue being so and people in conscription will just leave as soon as they can.

trlp.bsky.social•5 days ago

Because making sure a large number of your people are trained to operate jointly as a significant force for defence is not an industry in the business sense. It's organizing to provide a public service - of defence.

chris.sigint.life•5 days ago

Conscription does not automatically achieve that. For a lot of people their time in conscription is largely a waste, which is not a surprise given the lopsided economic incentives conscription produces.

martinthemess.bsky.social•5 days ago

A lot of 18-year-olds' early jobs are pretty much a waste, where they earn little money, learn no useful skills, and their lack of experience mean they're not particularly productive to their employer of that firm's customers. At least to go by my own retail-sales experience.

chris.sigint.life•5 days ago

I agree, but that means it should be real easy to make the military an attractive prospect for people in that situation. If you have to force people to work for you when competing against very little of money, skills, and experience there's something horribly wrong.

martinthemess.bsky.social•5 days ago

Even in Downtown Chicago during the high-crime 1990s, working in a Radio Shack or the bookstore department at Marshall Fields doesn't carry with it the expectation of a near-certainty of having to go through a combination of Fat Camp and the worst camping trip ever, plus a good chance of being shot.

martinthemess.bsky.social•5 days ago

Even for people young enough to still feel immortal and thus willing to risk the small chance of being shot or maimed, the hell of Basic Training/Boot Camp and the awful living conditions in a muddy foxhole or hot-bunking on a ship make even crappy 20s-bachelor shared apartment living look good.

martinthemess.bsky.social•5 days ago

Between transit fare to get to my job, dress shirts and ties to wear on the job, the fast food lunches and cigarettes I bought to deal with the stress of working downtown, and the books I bought from my bookstore employer because I was a reading freak, I barely broke even at that job.

martinthemess.bsky.social•5 days ago

Conscription probably doesn't give you a lot of marketable skills on the civilian market, unless cleaning and loading a mortar becomes a growth industry. And if no war actual shows up, your military skills are pretty useless even if you retain them. But hopefully you learn some teamwork skills.

trlp.bsky.social•5 days ago

*When it is badly organized*. It is a logistical exercise, for sure. That is exactly why conscription should be tailored to the capacity of training available - and planned around resources available and needed in the country in question.

chris.sigint.life•5 days ago

Or you could just do exactly the same thing, but do that while paying people for their time and making it an attractive prospect.

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