Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

> there is a proposal that suggests individuals nearing retirement should work in a social service job for a year

And what about letting people live their lives without constantly micro managing their fate. What happened to freedom?

As long as I pay my taxes, don't infringe on the basic universal sane laws (you know, don't kill, steal etc) leave me the fuck alone.

I don't know for Germany but France, my country, starts to ask too much in exchange for what they're offering. Can't do this, can't do that, pot holes everywhere, prices and taxes skyrocketing, impossible to find a doctor that will receive you the same day and now they want to send us to die in Ukraine?

View on HN

I think the problem is that society is not offering enough, not demanding too little.

I did my conscript service in Sweden at a time when only 8000 did. 10 years earlier, 50,000 did. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Sweden has now joined NATO. People are simply clueless about the needs of the Defense.

I have since moved to Switzerland where the military is still fully staffed by each generation. I believe this is a link that should never be broken.

Additionally, I believe countries like France and Germany are too big and should reduce in size, but that’s another discussion.

> military is still fully staffed by each generation

There was an interesting comment recently that discussed the development of a 'warrior caste' in the US military, which to no-one's surprise largely overlaps with poor people. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787714

>> What happened to freedom? I was part of the few generations that got drafted so I guess it improved?

For the new proposal? It seems only fair that the whole corpus of the population has to cover the burden and not only the young.

When you are 65 then you already have done a lot for the economy of the country. The probelm at hand is that 30% of the workforce will retire in 2030 because of the baby boom in 60s. In the 2030s there will be many open jobs for young people to show their talent and AI will help them to be even more productive. There is no need to bother old frail people into social service. Very often people in their 60s are burnt out and will not be very helpful for the society anymore.

just my 2 ct

> and AI will help them to be even more productive

I admire your optimism. But from the datapoints we have, it is not the direction we're heading.

Could you provide a link to these datasets? People always talk about data but never show it. I wanted to make an opinion but couldn't find the data at all - not counting obviously opportunistic inconclusive studies designed to support a predetermined political opinion.

The topic is so complex that I don't think I can satisfy your curiosity.

AI is just the next step of technology development, so it will just increase the rate of change we see for last couple of decades in the same direction.

And while technology is indeed helping people to be more productive, it also allows megacorps to capture the added value. You can see it in different economic benchmarks - that while there was an enormous economic growth in the past decades, there is increasing gap between classes, people outside of tech feel the decrease of their purchasing power and quality of life in general throughout the developed world.

There is a powerful systems forces in play, so it is not political, but rather more like a natural force of progress and especially automation.

If you're young and work in tech, you may notice that you are being disproportionately rewarded for your effort from the rest of the world for building tech.

> Very often people in their 60s are burnt out and will not be very helpful for the society anymore.

Cynical takes being de rigeur on HN, I’m not surprised to read this comment here; but it’s sad nonetheless. I suppose in a very narrow economic context of “utility”, you may be right. But it would be a truly impoverished society that marginalized the non-economic contributions of its citizens 60 and over.

I’m just shy of one of those “people in their 60s” and volunteer many hours a week at a music school. I’d like to think that I’ll continue being useful to society in that way and in other ways less formalized.

> When you are 65 then you already have done a lot for the economy of the country

My hunch is that in some cases boomers have been and will continue decreasing their net contribution to whichever economy they live in, which shouldn't be the most important thing in evaluating the value of someone's existence, except that in this case everyone servicing them is also being squeezed by the tax system, and the same people they're servicing. Could be living in a boomer's basement making less than them but paying 1/2 your check, or in a managed rental that's owned by a reit that's invested in by their pension fund.

> What happened to freedom?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité: Why do I have the feeling that only égalité is considered.

Your freedom went away the moment you started reading Russian propaganda (or, more certainly, propaganda from our local Russian political assets)

France is not sending people to "die in Ukraine", no matter how many potholes you might find to support your bias.

This kind of shallow dismissal is very hard to take seriously for those of us who personally know soldiers from NATO countries who are currently "on vacation" (officially) in Ukraine. This approach, by the way, has been borrowed wholesale from Putin's playbook in Crimea back in 2014. But officially you are right, they are not there.

there are NATO personnel already in Ukrainie officially. no need for Russian style vacation for them.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-18/nato-per...

Well, I happen to know people in the US military who have been on this vacation since the beginning of the year. I am not particularly social or well-connected, so the fact that I know someone like that means it's widespread. Downvotes or no, that's reality.

it doesn't logically follow from the fact that you know about a group that there are similar groups.

for example let's say you know a few people who work for the military and they happen to work at Area 51. sure lots of people know military personnel, but your sample is still pretty special. without a good representative sample we simply have no idea.

First let’s get one thing clear: NATO sending personnel is not France sending personnel. The two are distinct and anyone who would make a valid point in a conversation about this understands that.

Second, Putin’s playbook is to sow discord by introducing a bunch of FUD into the political discourse across the world, something which you are doing here. So the remaining question here is: are you doing so willingly, or are you just prey to the same?

Because this is HN, I always believe it’s the latter. Still, your comment is unsourced, your account is four months old, and all your historical comments are systematically pro Russia and/or peddling common Russian talking points that “get people thinking”. Not a good look, huh?

May we meet on vacation.

So the "good look" is when people aren't thinking?

Leaving you and anyone else alone - be they young, old, male, female, blue, furry or even ... American - implicitly requires the continuation of politics that will make sure that you are in fact left the fuck alone.

You are probably not going to be surprised, but things are not going great.

> now they want to send us to die in Ukraine?

I think you're misinformed or showing anti-Ukraine bias. No one would send their military there, but could get sent in aid to another EU/EEA/NATO member.

Anyway, I agree that mandatory drafting should not be reintroduced.

> Anyway, I agree that mandatory drafting should not be reintroduced.

Why not? Why should the burden only fall on the poor and the desperate?

For reference, Finland has universal conscription. The question over here is, why are women excluded?

For one: modern professional armies do not want this, because conscripts don’t make great soldiers.

This is definitely one of those citation needed comments.

Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.

Secondly, the above comment completely sidesteps the moral aspects. Why should the burden of military service fall predominantly on the poor and the desperate? Why should decision makers be able to only send other people’s children to war?

> Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.

This isn’t true. The US and UK conscript armies of WW1 and WW2 were significantly healthier and better educated than the general population. Lots of people grew up in wretched poverty and had deficiency diseases or were malnourished or had parasites. Those people were rejected.

It is illegal for the US military to accept recruits with an ASBAB score of ten or below, roughly equivalent to IQ 83. The military is in some sense representative but it is not a random sample.

To your first point, it really ought not require a citation to understand that people who have been training full-time for years make better soldiers than people you pull out of civilian life and ship off to the front after a few months, and who want nothing more than to exit the service.

There is no modern, professionalized army that wants conscripts. None. Conscripts are a liability, and a measure of last resort.

To your second, it’s far from just the downtrodden that fill the ranks of professional armies. In many countries, e.g. France (where I served), the upper classes of society (grande bourgeoisie and nobility) are over-represented in the ranks.

Conscript armies do win grand wars, but I agree that some current military leaders may not want to divide the military pie.

They are a measure of last resort. They are not something that armies are asking for.

Peace-time armies will not ask for that, that’s for sure, but when a real war is on the table (like it looks to soon be the case here in Europe) then things change.

Doesn’t matter. If a real war starts you want a lot of men and the only reliable way is conscription. No one could have fought WW2 with a volunteer military. Ukraine aren’t relying on volunteers. Israel don’t rely on volunteers. You do the best you can with what you’ve got available.

Yes, conscription is a measure of last resort.

Why do you imply that non mandatory conscription means that the poor or desperate will be the ones to enroll?

In Romania around 2008 mandatory drafting was removed from the constitution and yet we still have an army. The reason why we have such a small army is in a significant part due to pervasive corruption in all of the state's structures, low salaries and abusive higher ups. We have an interesting documentary about the subject (has english subtitles) about the ridiculous state of the army due to reasons mentioned. https://youtu.be/0_YnxJJcC7M?feature=shared

> Why do you imply that non mandatory conscription means that the poor or desperate will be the ones to enroll?

Because the army is the employer of last resort. It is what you do when you have no other options.

Different culture and society. Here you get paid better as a supermarket clerk with overtimes than a soldier, or clearly better if you get promoted from a clerk to/pick another role (shift manager, or warehouse work). And our desperate also use the travel flexibility to work in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, than here. We used to be the source of manual labour during summer in many of those countries.

That's a very un-European view that would mark you as crazy here. Nobody goes to the army to get a job, not even those who can't find a job, and the unemployment office won't try to suggest it - it's not considered a job here, it's a service duty.

In my country we don't have mandatory military service. The "employer of the last resort" is the unemployment office and welfare, not army. I have never heard of anybody going to the army for any other than duty/ideological reasons, desperation for a job might even disqualify you - they want people who are motivated to join the army, not poor desperate people looking for money.

I am in the United States. It isn’t a categorical truth here, but many people here have and do join the US military because that is the “ticket out” that they have access to. I saw it a lot in my high school. I had some friends who were good people but they were not terribly academically gifted, their families were poor, and college wasn’t a realistic option for them. Several of them joined the military in part due to the recruiters that would visit the school. During my senior year of high school one of those guys ended up being the recruiter that visited my high school. It was interesting to see a bit of a cycle there.

It’s almost a trope here. I expect that’s why the original commenter said that the military is the employer of last resort. In the US that is often the case for many young people.

Yeah I know it is in the US, but military recruiters visiting a school class would be a major nationwide scandal here, comparable only maybe to visits of some political or religious figures. The only approvable way is a moderated discussion where both positives and negatives are (must be) voiced in age-appropriate way.

The entire culture around the separation of state, its components and citizens is very different here. We really don't want another 40 years of dictatorship - best to stop it right at the beginning.

This is a mindset that causes a country to disappear throughout history.

I don’t know.. why can’t men bleed every month, possess a uterus and bear children ..and the burden of perpetuating the human race.

This topic was talking about conscription though, a measure of last resort.

If we really reach a point where conscription is required, it also means that carrying an uterus is probably irrelevant: it's either kill or be killed.

Hopefully that's never going to be a thing again in as many countries as possible

My reply as to the person who queried why women in Finland are not conscripted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com