Hacker News Reader

Comment by mightyham | Hacker News Reader

I hate to be the one who asks for sources, but you really do need to have some solid data to make claims like "In the very near future only a tiny percentage of the American population will be capable of serving". While my experience is anecdotal, your evaluation does not mesh with it at all, which is that people in the military, even officers, are pretty average or less than average in intelligence, and the PT requirements for the army are completely achievable for a normal person with a couple months of training.

If you've ever interacted with veterans, it's pretty laughable that they are going to "become the new elite". The elite in America has been and will continue to be people who go to ivy league schools for business, finance, or law and then find jobs in wall street, banks, media, and government.

View on HN

Very quick search

> A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

> https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-...

The reality is tons of military recruits enlisted and officers have done or are doing drugs, they just lied about it, and the military doesn't care to check

Army units are required to perform random drug testing 4 times a year.

I mean having a bunch of overweight recruits doesn't sound like a big issue to me? Maybe you need to put them on a diet/exercise regime for a couple of months before they're physically fit enough but that doesn't sound like a huge issue if you're expecting them to serve for years or decades.

Obviously physical and mental health problems are a lot more significant but I would imagine that weight is by far the factor that impacts the most people here.

A lot more details here from page 5: https://dacowits.defense.gov/Portals/48/Documents/General%20...

Note that 44% of people are disqualified for multiple reasons. The big disqualifiers are :

Overweight 35%

Medical/Physical 33%

Drug Abuse 32%

Mental Health 25%

obesity is an easy one, almost a 1/4 population would not qualify

> The United States has the 12th highest obesity rate in the world at 36.2%

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/obesity-r...

Obesity was always treatable via methods the military already had available (beating the shit out of people via PT), but they could even add on modern weigh-loss drugs now. Compared to the rest of the cost of the military-industrial complex, it would be a rounding error.

You cannot treat obesity that way unless you want young adult with destroyed joints and nerve damages. I was obese for 3 years (and overweight 5 years prior, following an injury) my ankles still prevent me from really running, and when I go on a hike, the first day (or rather, the first morning after waking up cold) is extremely painful.

Weight loss drug then exercise? That could be a good idea, i think it's easier to readapt/recover from bad joints before 25.

I'm not actually advocating for "beating the shit" out of them; I'm just repeating what a marine told me about his experience.

I was a fat kid with an actual joint disorder (that would never allow me to be in the military), but I lost a lot of weight via marching band in high school while eating double cheeseburgers heartily throughout; there was a lot of fast food nearby. I've also gained and lost weight several times in life but have to tailor my exercise to an extreme to accommodate my disability. That is to say, I can't imagine life with good joints, but I've still managed things somewhat.

If I was actually setting up a sort of pre-boot program, it would indeed feature low-impact exercise and carefully controlled diet for a few months. Weight loss drugs are still a bit new, but I could absolutely see them having a place in such a program.

Yes, absolutely. Different parts of the body heal at different rates. The heart, stomach, and liver adapt very quickly. Other muscles improve less quickly. Joints improve and adapt over weeks. Bone density and flexibility is almost impossible to regain once it’s lost even for young people.

That is why slowly building up slow running speed for long distances, such as 6 miles or more, is vital for improving physical health. It’s not about just the cardio. It’s about strengthening the entire body.

Cheating that and immediately pushing for speed gets people injured.

As an aside, the top ten seems to be mostly island states in the Pacific. Why is that? Smaller populations? They seem to be paradise places yet people are obese.

Or is it a cultural thing? Obesity doesn't need to have the same cultural stigma seen globally.

Historically being fat was a signifier of wealth, as it implies that you can afford a lot of food. Some cultures also see it as a sign of fertility. This was also the case in the Western world until recently.

Another well known historical signifier for wealth was fair skin. As you wouldn’t get a tan if you didn’t have to labour out in the sun.

It's probably due to genetics, their body assimilate food better than Caucasian, due to their diet for 5000 years being really light of fat and sugar, so when they follow the Caucasian diet (2300 cal a day high carbs high fat) it does not work.

Also, they are poor countries who can't produce the food they need for multiple reason (sometime it's population, but often it's mining/industrial pollution related) and they have to import the cheapest food available, ie leftover from US (and recently China) food processing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com