Other countries have compulsory military service, for example Finland. Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18. Military service would just be one option, could be other kinds of civic engagement. This can really help people feel connected to their society and understand that there is something to show up for.
BUT - this really only works if there's a social contract in place. In the United States it's hard to see how compulsory service works if people don't feel like the country is showing up for them.
These days, what are American soldiers dying for? A society with great health care? Fantastic education? Wealth and social stability? Absolutely not! Until that changes I don't see any good reason why we should send our young people off to die. (EDIT: if you want a sobering experience, visit a military graveyard and pay special attention to the ages of the soldiers. We might as well call a military graveyard a children's graveyard).
And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front. Don't sell the rest of our lives while you hide in a nice air conditioned bunker.
> Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18.
Why? I get the warm-and-fuzzy angle of "instilling civic responsibility", but you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this, else you go to prison. Is that really such an enlightened thing to do?
It takes away two years of your life, possibly delaying your education, entry into the workforce, or having children. So again, what's the rigorous justification for this? The government already calls dibs on a good chunk of your economic output, on a percentage of every penny you spend, and on certain types of property you own; so why should they also be able to draft you for some free labor if there's no war or other emergency going on?
It also implies that most normal work isn't in the interest of society, which if that were true, would be a major problem on its own. In what sense is 2 years of military service or "community service" strictly better for society than going to school, or working as a waiter, or starting a small business?
Roughly speaking, 2 years of community service should be worth some % of local & federal taxes.
In a developed society, I'm not sure what kind of labor an 18-year old can perform (what I mean is that it would be mostly unskilled labor), that would be better than taxing this same individual later in life, without delaying their education by 2 years.
I suppose there would have to be exemptions for college students as there typically are in such schemes in other countries?
I mean, yes? I think when we say, we should force 18 year olds to do something useful for society instead of working doordash or taking college classes that they don't care about, that is kind of saying something about the usefulness of those things.
If the market figured it out we wouldn't be having these discussions in the first place.
It's not a market failure. If you pay enough money you can attract either citizens or even destitute African people to volunteer to get blown up for the glory of Trump and the oil companies.
In the conventional view, the earliest preparations for war involve building a strong industrial base, reducing corruption, and securing alliances through cooperative foreign policy. The near-term preparations for war include diverting a fraction of total resources away from compounding growth and towards non-compounding defense manufacturing. A draft is something you do after the war starts.
The strategic idea is to remain in a pose of compounding growth as long as possible by avoiding war and war preparations until they're known to be absolutely necessary. Peacetime investments like scientific research build on themselves, while military spending sits in a depot until it's obsolete and then costs even more to safely dispose. The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
There are other bases besides war for national service, eg disaster prep, taking care of the poor and so on. In any case, being somewhat prepared for war at the human level and understanding what that entails is more productive that not being prepared and having to educate people in an unwelcome emergency.
The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
Exaggerated tropes like this don't make for useful discussion.
I'm not sure anywhere expects people to do their national service for free - which is to say that such a programme would also likely be very expensive.
First, "national service" does not necessarily mean relocation like a military deployment does. Second, there is no requirement that national service be free.
This has me thinking about a way to encourage some level of public service in exchange for better access to government programs, like an extra 10% in retirement benefits or something.
Reminds me of Starship Troopers: "Service Guarantees Citizenship!" Yes, I know it's a play on fascism.
So, disclaimer: I'm very aware that Verhoeven created Starship Troopers satirizing fascism and holding up a mirror to American society.
That said, I am somewhat a fan of the idea that citizenship is something that should be earned. For example, birthright citizenship - I think it's a good thing and should be kept around. That said, as far as I know no natural-born American is required to raise their right hand and swear that they will take up arms to defend the United States in case of war. A naturalized citizen is required to do this. That creates a real bifurcation in the society in my opinion.
you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this
I'm so sick of libertarian tropes. Starting every argument with oerwrought emotionalism has made me increasingly indifferent to your 'plight' over the years, because it's just victimization politics. Perhaps if we rebalanced public/private obligations overall tax burdens owuld be lower and society would be more pleasant to live in.
What if it didn't delay your education? In some countries an undergrad degree is only three years. I'd take a person with 1 year of civil service + 3 years of a degree over someone with 4 years of a degree any day.
Somebody who is confident enough to handle a rifle and throw a hand grenade is way more useful to me than someone who was forced to another literature or geology course.
Have someone demonstrate a command of the English language by following written instructions that require coordinating activities with a small group of people.
Instead of learning how to read a topographical map for first year geology lab final actually put the map in their hand with a compass and have them do an orienteering exercise as a group.
Taxpayers in non-failed states like Finland that are able to provide astoundingly high quality of life for their citizens while also providing a strong military that is based around mandatory national service.
Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world what, eight or nine years in a row now and was able to secure they borders against a vastly superior neighbour with no participation in a mutual aid defensive alliance like NATO until very recently.
In so many ways Finland is the model we should all be looking at emulating in Western countries.
I like the idea of civic engagement / service in theory too, but I feel like the Vietnam war was a demonstration of possible failure modes when draft is in place: a lot of poor kids died, some rich kids allegedly used parental influence to dodge the draft. No incentive for leaders to avoid war while loop holes remain for their own interests.
A major reason why the draft was stopped is that because when you take a disunified and unwilling populace and start giving them weapons, their target may not be the enemy.
I think you could argue the draft forced the war to be real for more families (and the expansion of TV), intensifying the resistance to it. Quick googling says almost 10% of the population served in Vietnam in some capacity. Less than 1% served in the War on Terror.
This was part of Charles Rangel's (D) reasoning to propose bringing back the draft. [1]
> I think you could argue the draft forced the war to be real for more families (and the expansion of TV), intensifying the resistance to it.
Yeah, it did, all the young men of draft age had to live knowing that they might get drafted and be forced to fight and die. Even if they were never called, or in retrospect were too old at the time.
We seem to have largely forgotten that now, along with the "Vietnam Syndrome" that the US military "suffered" through until we were successful in applying military force in 1991 with the Gulf War.
I almost hope they're successful in doing this. We've also lost the focus on clearly defined objectives for war.
It seems like we need a horrible mess to learn all the hard lessons all over again.
Drafts, and by extension wars, should be unpopular. War should be the last resort that no one wants to take. No one should be cheering for a war they won't have to participate in.
War has become too remote and comfortable for most Americans.
The word allegedly should be dropped many ie.. Taco got out of it, however much better men John McCain, John Kerry, and Robert Mueller did not. Serving is okay if everyone serves no exceptions.
For others' sake, I double-checked: 2.59 million served, of which 648,500 were draftees. Right at 25%
Is there a study of soldiers who enlisted but only because their draft number was low? There were substantial benefits to enlisting, because you could choose your branch of service.
Should break that down by people who had enlisted before hostilities began. Material difference enlisting during peace time vs when there is an active theater of war.
It would be more interesting to see those numbers broken down by frontline service. What percentage of the guys actually dying in the jungle were drafted?
Finland doesn't have compulsory military service to help people feel connected to their society. Feeling connected to one's society is not an end in itself, people should be free to choose how connected they want to feel. Finland has compulsory military service because it's a small country that borders Russia. The US is a big country that borders Canada and Mexico.
> people should be free to choose how connected they want to feel
Yes and no. Of course people should be free, at the same time you live in a society and not a state of nature.
If someone never has to put back into society, that's dangerous. It could lead to people feeling that society has no value, that there's no sense in investing in it, that since nobody else cares why should I.
Do bureaucratic mandates instill a humanistic sense of value and commitment, particularly in societies which are at peak levels of institutional skepticism?
Instead of complaining about the average person not contributing enough to society why don’t we focus on the people (I.e. politicians) who directly leech off of society and make it worse? I’d rather they simply had no impact either way.
Only works if everyone has to do it. Once you slice it into only a certain part of the population, it becomes an unfair class system. Example, rich and well connected people would never do it. If you say only men should do it, that's unfair as well.
Edit: I'm for this BTW, I think everyone should have to do some form of service, but I'd also like to see anyone in the gov with the power to send people to war be required to have served in the armed forces.
The American way of life, which is still the most preferred way of life, as evidenced by (a) people wanting to emigrate here more than any other country in the world and (b) more people immigrating here than any other country.
I would do it as a civic corps like the military in structure and pay but for civil projects and work experience. Enable our youth to learn on the job and actually value that experieence.
> And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front
I agree but I don't think it goes far enough. Leading from the front of the best equipped military in the world doesn't balance your incentives against the misery you are inflicting on the innocent denizens of the poor country you're pointlessly destroying.
There's also the economic destruction back home to balance against. So, those who call for war should be forbidden to privately fund their healthcare and children's education.
Agree. I believe during WW2 the government put rules in place to prevent companies from making too much profit from the war. From what I recall in history class taxes were raised significantly as well.
War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied. But if we take an entire country to war, then it stands to reason that the entire country should benefit from the spoils (to the extent that there are any).
The US hasn't cared about the social contract for decades and it hasn't taken justifiable military action for a longer stretch of time. Healthcare is byzantine and terrible, education is being gutted on ideological grounds, social stability is eroding, wealth inequality is an ever widening chasm, the climate is being degraded, AI is a threat looming over much (if not all) of this. Why volunteer? The arrogance to think a draft or mandatory service is anywhere in the realm of acceptable is galling.
It's almost suicidal. It's so stupidly hubristic that one has to wonder if the end goal is a total institutional collapse, with the belief that the technocracy will end up holding the cards?
> Why volunteer? The arrogance to think a draft or mandatory service is anywhere in the realm of acceptable is galling.
Agree. That's what we saw during Vietnam. The public finally got involved because it couldn't be ignored that the children of "normies" were being sent overseas to die in a meaningless and stupid war.
Spoiler alert: military "service" is an oxymoron. No American has served me by joining the military and killing black, brown, and asian women and children
The issue is, in America, we gave those less fortunate the path of military service as we value the greedy, the corrupt, nepotistic, capitalist notion that if you have enough money, laws do not apply to you.
I absolutely love the idea of me or my children going through a challenging few years as a tool of our society, whether that be military training or something else.
...with the enormous caveat that our society must be cohesive, which it is no longer (culturally, politically - you name it).
Why not make the people so proud and happy to live in the country that they choose to serve without you having to force them to do it with the barrel of a gun?
> And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front. Don't sell the rest of our lives while you hide in a nice air conditioned bunker.
It never happens because those in power use their power to avoid it, even if they bind the rest of us with rules they enforce. By saying they "should be required", you are promoting the idea that their desire for war is acceptable as long as they codify certain standards, which they are able to use their powers to personally circumvent.
> By saying they "should be required", you are promoting the idea that their desire for war is acceptable as long as they codify certain standards, which they are able to use their powers to personally circumvent.
One of the many issues with this supposedly being for everyone is that rich folks like Donald Trump's dad will get a doctor to get them out of it. Rules for thee and not for me is basically their motto.
Wars used to be paid for by raising taxes. Now we have no idea how much they cost. How many years in a row has the Pentagon failed it's audit? How many years (decades?) was the Iraq war funded through annual (unbudgeted) emergency measures? How many trillions in promised healthcare does America owe its veterans?
If the President had to make the case that taking on Iran would cost each American around $1000 on top of higher prices for fuel and food, how many would sign off on that?
So I guess I agree with Palantir. Be honest about the actual costs of war and chances are we will get into fewer.
> Be honest about the actual costs of war and chances are we will get into fewer.
This is a naive comment. The people deciding to send people to war do not concern themselves with the costs. The people concerned about the cost have no say in deciding to start military conflicts.
Unless you have popular support behind you, a draft is a great way to make your military less effective. You get a bunch of soldiers who don't want to be there, who may not do their job to the utmost either out of apathy or active malice. It also gives lots of people, who might otherwise passively disagree with your war, a great incentive to actively resist your war and your attempts to force them to fight in it.
It worked in WWII because of Pearl Harbor and the Axis being cartoon villains. Direct US involvement also only lasted 4-5 years. Vietnam demonstrated that an unpopular, long-term conflict is ill-suited to the draft.
This is very much anecdotal but the concept of fragging has gone mainstream in my social media feeds. Mostly gen z joking about ww3 when the Iran conflict kicked off
Doesn’t ycombinator and hacker news have links with this company? Makes it hard to maintain the hacker ethos when this entire site seems so closely linked with such forces.
The hacker aesthetic has always been largely reactionary and hyperfocused on the individual and individual freedoms. See also the politics of "generation X"
The saddest thing of our age is that "reactionary" and "individual freedom" is equated to authoritarian movements that are anything but.
The hacker aesthetic has always been anarchist in nature, until the rich Californians decided that a hacker is an entrepreneur that participates into the game of capitalism. To be fair, even the concept of libertarianism was an offshoot of anarchism, until the Americans decided that it means right-wing party politics of the rich elite. Words don't mean anything any more, any concept that can equated to its opposite if it rewards one with internet points.
"Right wing politics dominated by the rich" is the natural endpoint of libertarianism, so that makes sense. Whether they're "real" libertarians or not, the elite techies leading the charge are people with politics like Karp, Andreessen, Musk, etc.
as a counter, it is exactly the hacker ethos to take something and use it not as expected by those that made it so that it can be used for their own purpose
Between idiotic tech bros who wouldn't know a war if it bit them on the butt promoting a draft because they don't think they'd be drafted and HN having links with Palantir/Karp I think I'm done with this site.
Bizarre for them to suggest this right after the US unilaterally launched the most unpopular war in modern history. A war with almost no tangible upside for US citizens, and a war many people think was started on the whims of another country.
I'm in favor of mandatory public service (not exclusively military) but I also don't think a private company should be weighing in on such topics, since it's just a bunch of capital owners preaching about what everyone else should do.
It's hard to take them seriously given the omission of the biggest catastrophe of the 2000s-2020s that underlies everything they do, i.e., wealth inequality, the creation of a parasitic ruling class that uses propaganda to control the political narrative (and seeking AI for even greater control with less support), and the destitution of the poor by the rich, from the manufactured opium epidemic, gig economy, financial crises, etc.
Their sundry list reminds me of the smarty boys in undergrad philosophy who pretend to be great philosophers before they have taken even one step into self-criticism and self-knowledge.
Opening graph: "We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost," says military contractor and all-around surveillance-enabler Palantir.
If that's the case, then every war to be fought needs to have the say so of those that will be doing the fighting and not the solitary decision made by a delusional leader that had already circumvented the required process from Congress.
Robert Heinlein proposed something like that in his "lost" novel For Us, the Living: instead of declaring war, Congress would authorize a war referendum, in which only those eligible for military service could vote. The catch was, everyone voting "Yes" would thereby automatically sign themselves up in the military for the duration. If a further draft was needed, it would first be composed of those that didn't vote, and lastly those who voted "No."
(In the book, the "future" Congress had called war referenda on three occasions; each time, the vote was overwhelmingly "No," and historians believed those decisions were justified.)
Simpler: Leaders who engage in military engagements should face a public referendum 6 months/1 year later, with exactly 1 question: "Should [Leader] die?". Presidents in the US rarely get elected with less than 40% of the popular vote, and I reckon about 30% of people wouldn't vote to kill someone pretty much no matter what they did. Half of those people are your supporters, so really it's just a matter of avoiding your popularity plummeting to sub 35% because of your warmongering. By that math. By that math, Trump, W. Bush, and Truman would have gotten the gallows. Biden, Carter, and Nixon all fell below 35%, but didn't start any foreign wars.
Having those sent to fight in a war being the ones to decide if the war should be fought was on of the major points in General Butler’s 1935 book War is a Racket
> Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt.
I was going to make a sarcastic comment about how everyone in Russia shared the risks and costs with Nicolas Romanov but then realized it was true. If politicians sending kids to kill and die shared the risk and cost of war then they wouldn't get to come home from Washington when the war is finished.
Surely he means that himself and his billionaire buddies will be the first boots on the ground when we decide to plunder another country for oil again. No?
Karp has a right to his opinion as bonkers as it may be but it is doubly bonkers to release this as company policy. Especially coupled with all the other bonkers things that went into this manifesto. Rearming Germany and Japan? Why does Palantir care about that? Toss in some unsubtle racism and you're really just staking your company position as aligned with a very narrow political niche. Seemingly at odds with the company's interest to provide services to whoever will pay.
Unless I'm mistaken Germany has US-owned nuclear weapons on it's soil at all times. There are some part of the German military that could use a serious rethinking because of a decay of operational capacity. But exactly what else would we be arming them with?
Palantir is a more dangerous enemy of the USA (or any people of Earth) than, say, Iran.
There's no point in addressing their propaganda, but the idea that that a draft leads to everyone from every class of life having to be involved in war equally is so obviously untrue it's a joke.
The movements and announcements of large tech companies tend to be newsworthy, whether it's "we made a new iPhone", "our new model is so good it's dangerous!" or "we should have a draft to support new American imperialism"
> Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible
I would agree with that, but its debt is to the people of that country, not their current government. But instead, Palantir conspires to surveil and repress those people at the bidding of an elite, anti-democratic minority.
And would the leaders of Palantir still argue it had a moral debt to serve the government if it was a left-wing one, engaged in a process of wealth redistribution? No, they wouldn't. This supposed moral ideology is a facile sham.
the absurdity to even entertain this dorks musings.
imagine if tim cook or satya came out and talked about how there needs to be a draft. people would say lol shut up nerd and move on.
some dorkus who heads a company that's just providing over reaching surveillance data to governments so they can do dumb data analytics should have no say in these affairs, and we should promptly discard what they have to say. peter thiel is a sociopath, karp is a dork, these people just want to be known as "the guy with the ideas" and they've crossed deep into the "what are you even saying right now" territory.
tbh we should jettison them into the sun they're kind of a scourge on civilization and clearly lake any real stakes that keep them grounded in the world.
"We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost,"
OK, sure, but only if we agree that a war should be fought. No more fighting a war because six rich guys in a back room decide we need unobtanium. Or because one rich guy doesn't like some other rich guy's religious values.
I still cannot help but look at Palantir as a company that just sends $ to the "oligarchs". I still wonder what real value Palantir provides the US Gov.
After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
> I still wonder what real value Palantir provides the US Gov.
Their "product" has always been some hacky database joins behind a web app with a dark mode interface that makes the baby brains at DOD feel like they're in a 90s hacker movie
Different deployments of Palantir Foundry exist in the US gov't/military and do provide real data science/analytics value.
> After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
Cyber in the military has abysmal retention because of the pay. You can get an immediate ~$50k pay raise doing the same work as soon as you leave the military.
I think the proper counter move is to seize all assets of oligarchs and distribute it among The People. That way those Vietnam 2.0 loving guys won't get any say in anything anymore.
The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, has extensive ties to the Israeli government and is a self-avowed Jewish-supremacist. Peter Thiel was also featured extensively in the Epstein Files, and the two collaborated on creating Palantir to serve Israeli interests.
To those HNers working at Palantir - and there's bound to be a few - what's your deal?
You do realize what sort of company you work for, right? Is it cognitive dissonance or are you really a paranoid right winger that's fully on board with Palantir's efforts to enable authoritarian governments akin to 1984's Big Brother?
I'm curious. Please feel free to explain how you go to work every day and do what you do. Fair warning, the rest of us are pretty disgusted with you.
Money can paper over a lot of moral dilemmas - everyone has a price, whether or not we're necessarily aware of it. I refuse to interview with any company in the "defense," space, but I'm sure if someone threw enough money at me I might entertain it.
For true believers though, which I'm sure exist there, I do wonder much the same things.
This article has a strong slant. If we can look past that, we should consider the claim: everyone having skin in the game is more democratic and leads to a better aligned government.
But everyone won’t have skin in the game. We’ve played this game before. The uber wealthy and politically connected kids will either get outright deferments, or cushy positions that never have them sniffing any danger beyond carpal tunnel.
It’s no different than the republicans that are violently against abortion and then you find out they’ve funded multiple for their mistresses. They’re perfectly fine with a law banning it because they know it will never apply to them.
Right, in the minds of millions right now there's literally no reason to fight for this country. This country certainly ignores their existence and refuses to honor most forms of basic rights as health, education, and shelter. It really only cares if you mess up your tax return.
Not even that long ago, nobility died at higher rates than normal people in ww1 and ww2. Many lines were killed during them. I still know of nobles in my own country in the army. Generals died in WW2 at a decent rate as well.
Nobility lost most relevance now so I'm sure it's different now, owning a castle or a weird last name doesn't make you rich or powerful.
But it’s how it will be sold to us. It’s sure a lot warmer in the abbatoir for some reason. And they give some of us cigarettes. Bill says they even feed him.
Other countries have compulsory military service, for example Finland. Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18. Military service would just be one option, could be other kinds of civic engagement. This can really help people feel connected to their society and understand that there is something to show up for.
BUT - this really only works if there's a social contract in place. In the United States it's hard to see how compulsory service works if people don't feel like the country is showing up for them.
These days, what are American soldiers dying for? A society with great health care? Fantastic education? Wealth and social stability? Absolutely not! Until that changes I don't see any good reason why we should send our young people off to die. (EDIT: if you want a sobering experience, visit a military graveyard and pay special attention to the ages of the soldiers. We might as well call a military graveyard a children's graveyard).
And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front. Don't sell the rest of our lives while you hide in a nice air conditioned bunker.
> Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18.
Why? I get the warm-and-fuzzy angle of "instilling civic responsibility", but you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this, else you go to prison. Is that really such an enlightened thing to do?
It takes away two years of your life, possibly delaying your education, entry into the workforce, or having children. So again, what's the rigorous justification for this? The government already calls dibs on a good chunk of your economic output, on a percentage of every penny you spend, and on certain types of property you own; so why should they also be able to draft you for some free labor if there's no war or other emergency going on?
It also implies that most normal work isn't in the interest of society, which if that were true, would be a major problem on its own. In what sense is 2 years of military service or "community service" strictly better for society than going to school, or working as a waiter, or starting a small business?
The only reason to force two years of service is to reinforce conformity and suppress outward signs of neurodivergence.
Roughly speaking, 2 years of community service should be worth some % of local & federal taxes.
In a developed society, I'm not sure what kind of labor an 18-year old can perform (what I mean is that it would be mostly unskilled labor), that would be better than taxing this same individual later in life, without delaying their education by 2 years.
I suppose there would have to be exemptions for college students as there typically are in such schemes in other countries?
I mean, yes? I think when we say, we should force 18 year olds to do something useful for society instead of working doordash or taking college classes that they don't care about, that is kind of saying something about the usefulness of those things.
If the market figured it out we wouldn't be having these discussions in the first place.
It's not a market failure. If you pay enough money you can attract either citizens or even destitute African people to volunteer to get blown up for the glory of Trump and the oil companies.
[delayed]
> why should they also be able to draft you for some free labor if there's no war or other emergency going on?
You can only prepare for a fire before it starts.
In the conventional view, the earliest preparations for war involve building a strong industrial base, reducing corruption, and securing alliances through cooperative foreign policy. The near-term preparations for war include diverting a fraction of total resources away from compounding growth and towards non-compounding defense manufacturing. A draft is something you do after the war starts.
The strategic idea is to remain in a pose of compounding growth as long as possible by avoiding war and war preparations until they're known to be absolutely necessary. Peacetime investments like scientific research build on themselves, while military spending sits in a depot until it's obsolete and then costs even more to safely dispose. The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
There are other bases besides war for national service, eg disaster prep, taking care of the poor and so on. In any case, being somewhat prepared for war at the human level and understanding what that entails is more productive that not being prepared and having to educate people in an unwelcome emergency.
The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
Exaggerated tropes like this don't make for useful discussion.
Sure, but you also don't keep 1.3 million firefighters idling in case of a really big fire.
Of course you do, thats how fire brigades work!? Though you are somewhat right, its closer to only 1.1 million firefighters across the US.
https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...
Don't we? That is pretty close to the number of firefighters in the US, and they rarely fight fires
> free labor
I'm not sure anywhere expects people to do their national service for free - which is to say that such a programme would also likely be very expensive.
Devil's advocate.
First, "national service" does not necessarily mean relocation like a military deployment does. Second, there is no requirement that national service be free.
This has me thinking about a way to encourage some level of public service in exchange for better access to government programs, like an extra 10% in retirement benefits or something.
Reminds me of Starship Troopers: "Service Guarantees Citizenship!" Yes, I know it's a play on fascism.
> Starship Troopers
So, disclaimer: I'm very aware that Verhoeven created Starship Troopers satirizing fascism and holding up a mirror to American society.
That said, I am somewhat a fan of the idea that citizenship is something that should be earned. For example, birthright citizenship - I think it's a good thing and should be kept around. That said, as far as I know no natural-born American is required to raise their right hand and swear that they will take up arms to defend the United States in case of war. A naturalized citizen is required to do this. That creates a real bifurcation in the society in my opinion.
you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this
I'm so sick of libertarian tropes. Starting every argument with oerwrought emotionalism has made me increasingly indifferent to your 'plight' over the years, because it's just victimization politics. Perhaps if we rebalanced public/private obligations overall tax burdens owuld be lower and society would be more pleasant to live in.
What if it didn't delay your education? In some countries an undergrad degree is only three years. I'd take a person with 1 year of civil service + 3 years of a degree over someone with 4 years of a degree any day.
Somebody who is confident enough to handle a rifle and throw a hand grenade is way more useful to me than someone who was forced to another literature or geology course.
Have someone demonstrate a command of the English language by following written instructions that require coordinating activities with a small group of people.
Instead of learning how to read a topographical map for first year geology lab final actually put the map in their hand with a compass and have them do an orienteering exercise as a group.
Who's going to pay for that?
Taxpayers in non-failed states like Finland that are able to provide astoundingly high quality of life for their citizens while also providing a strong military that is based around mandatory national service.
Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world what, eight or nine years in a row now and was able to secure they borders against a vastly superior neighbour with no participation in a mutual aid defensive alliance like NATO until very recently.
In so many ways Finland is the model we should all be looking at emulating in Western countries.
> the government forces you to do this, else you go to prison
You'll never guess what happens if you choose not to pay taxes.
They use tax money to house and feed you?
[delayed]
And this justifies it why?
I like the idea of civic engagement / service in theory too, but I feel like the Vietnam war was a demonstration of possible failure modes when draft is in place: a lot of poor kids died, some rich kids allegedly used parental influence to dodge the draft. No incentive for leaders to avoid war while loop holes remain for their own interests.
Also the poor kids started killing the rich kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging
A major reason why the draft was stopped is that because when you take a disunified and unwilling populace and start giving them weapons, their target may not be the enemy.
I think you could argue the draft forced the war to be real for more families (and the expansion of TV), intensifying the resistance to it. Quick googling says almost 10% of the population served in Vietnam in some capacity. Less than 1% served in the War on Terror.
This was part of Charles Rangel's (D) reasoning to propose bringing back the draft. [1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_National_Service_Act
> I think you could argue the draft forced the war to be real for more families (and the expansion of TV), intensifying the resistance to it.
Yeah, it did, all the young men of draft age had to live knowing that they might get drafted and be forced to fight and die. Even if they were never called, or in retrospect were too old at the time.
We seem to have largely forgotten that now, along with the "Vietnam Syndrome" that the US military "suffered" through until we were successful in applying military force in 1991 with the Gulf War.
I almost hope they're successful in doing this. We've also lost the focus on clearly defined objectives for war.
It seems like we need a horrible mess to learn all the hard lessons all over again.
That argument falls flat, when considering regions like the Ukraine that are fighting for survival today.
And when contrasting with earlier times like the Civil War, where a draft was unpopular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrollment_Act
Drafts, and by extension wars, should be unpopular. War should be the last resort that no one wants to take. No one should be cheering for a war they won't have to participate in.
War has become too remote and comfortable for most Americans.
I don't think I follow why your examples contradict the argument. A draft will always be unpopular.
The word allegedly should be dropped many ie.. Taco got out of it, however much better men John McCain, John Kerry, and Robert Mueller did not. Serving is okay if everyone serves no exceptions.
People greatly overestimate the number of Vietnam vets who were drafted.
It isn't the number that were drafted that matters. It is the number who were enrolled who might have been drafted that matters.
For maybe people, even one would be too many.
For others' sake, I double-checked: 2.59 million served, of which 648,500 were draftees. Right at 25%
Is there a study of soldiers who enlisted but only because their draft number was low? There were substantial benefits to enlisting, because you could choose your branch of service.
Should break that down by people who had enlisted before hostilities began. Material difference enlisting during peace time vs when there is an active theater of war.
It would be more interesting to see those numbers broken down by frontline service. What percentage of the guys actually dying in the jungle were drafted?
A formal declaration of war by Congress is the minimum.
Otherwise I agree that the incentives are warped.
Finland doesn't have compulsory military service to help people feel connected to their society. Feeling connected to one's society is not an end in itself, people should be free to choose how connected they want to feel. Finland has compulsory military service because it's a small country that borders Russia. The US is a big country that borders Canada and Mexico.
> people should be free to choose how connected they want to feel
Yes and no. Of course people should be free, at the same time you live in a society and not a state of nature.
If someone never has to put back into society, that's dangerous. It could lead to people feeling that society has no value, that there's no sense in investing in it, that since nobody else cares why should I.
That's not a world I want to live in.
Many people I’ve met in the US feel like they already live in that world.
Do bureaucratic mandates instill a humanistic sense of value and commitment, particularly in societies which are at peak levels of institutional skepticism?
Instead of complaining about the average person not contributing enough to society why don’t we focus on the people (I.e. politicians) who directly leech off of society and make it worse? I’d rather they simply had no impact either way.
Only works if everyone has to do it. Once you slice it into only a certain part of the population, it becomes an unfair class system. Example, rich and well connected people would never do it. If you say only men should do it, that's unfair as well.
Edit: I'm for this BTW, I think everyone should have to do some form of service, but I'd also like to see anyone in the gov with the power to send people to war be required to have served in the armed forces.
Agree. I also think both men and women should serve.
> what are American soldiers dying for?
The American way of life, which is still the most preferred way of life, as evidenced by (a) people wanting to emigrate here more than any other country in the world and (b) more people immigrating here than any other country.
> These days, what are American soldiers dying for? A society with great health care? Fantastic education? Wealth and social stability?
Yes, except it's not their own one.
> These days, what are American soldiers dying for?
Israel
more likely big tech and the oligarchs.
(The name of my next punk band.)
You restated his point less succinctly.
Good name for a punk band though.
more likely, investment bankers class and war profiteers with their friends!
Why not all three?
> These days, what are American soldiers dying for?
Why, they're dying for people like Alex Karp and Peter Thiel of course.
I would do it as a civic corps like the military in structure and pay but for civil projects and work experience. Enable our youth to learn on the job and actually value that experieence.
That's what the ideal would look like in my opinion too. Like the Peace Corps.
> And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front
I agree but I don't think it goes far enough. Leading from the front of the best equipped military in the world doesn't balance your incentives against the misery you are inflicting on the innocent denizens of the poor country you're pointlessly destroying.
There's also the economic destruction back home to balance against. So, those who call for war should be forbidden to privately fund their healthcare and children's education.
Agree. I believe during WW2 the government put rules in place to prevent companies from making too much profit from the war. From what I recall in history class taxes were raised significantly as well.
War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied. But if we take an entire country to war, then it stands to reason that the entire country should benefit from the spoils (to the extent that there are any).
War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied.
Isn't that the broken window fallacy writ large?
The US hasn't cared about the social contract for decades and it hasn't taken justifiable military action for a longer stretch of time. Healthcare is byzantine and terrible, education is being gutted on ideological grounds, social stability is eroding, wealth inequality is an ever widening chasm, the climate is being degraded, AI is a threat looming over much (if not all) of this. Why volunteer? The arrogance to think a draft or mandatory service is anywhere in the realm of acceptable is galling.
It's almost suicidal. It's so stupidly hubristic that one has to wonder if the end goal is a total institutional collapse, with the belief that the technocracy will end up holding the cards?
> Why volunteer? The arrogance to think a draft or mandatory service is anywhere in the realm of acceptable is galling.
Agree. That's what we saw during Vietnam. The public finally got involved because it couldn't be ignored that the children of "normies" were being sent overseas to die in a meaningless and stupid war.
I dont know if its worth 2 years of our lives. 2 years! A lot can be achieved in just two years
Imagine how the recipients of the work done by those spending just two years of their life doing civic projects would feel.
Spoiler alert: military "service" is an oxymoron. No American has served me by joining the military and killing black, brown, and asian women and children
> No American has served me by joining the military and killing black, brown, and asian women and children
Oh? I would argue that most of us in the United States live in complete blissful ignore that our entire way of life is propped up by this.
The issue is, in America, we gave those less fortunate the path of military service as we value the greedy, the corrupt, nepotistic, capitalist notion that if you have enough money, laws do not apply to you.
Utterly precise.
I absolutely love the idea of me or my children going through a challenging few years as a tool of our society, whether that be military training or something else.
...with the enormous caveat that our society must be cohesive, which it is no longer (culturally, politically - you name it).
Why not make the people so proud and happy to live in the country that they choose to serve without you having to force them to do it with the barrel of a gun?
I think that's a lovely idea.
> And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front. Don't sell the rest of our lives while you hide in a nice air conditioned bunker.
It never happens because those in power use their power to avoid it, even if they bind the rest of us with rules they enforce. By saying they "should be required", you are promoting the idea that their desire for war is acceptable as long as they codify certain standards, which they are able to use their powers to personally circumvent.
> By saying they "should be required", you are promoting the idea that their desire for war is acceptable as long as they codify certain standards, which they are able to use their powers to personally circumvent.
I am not.
I absolutely read it as promoting war.
Well you are absolutely wrong.
One of the many issues with this supposedly being for everyone is that rich folks like Donald Trump's dad will get a doctor to get them out of it. Rules for thee and not for me is basically their motto.
Wars used to be paid for by raising taxes. Now we have no idea how much they cost. How many years in a row has the Pentagon failed it's audit? How many years (decades?) was the Iraq war funded through annual (unbudgeted) emergency measures? How many trillions in promised healthcare does America owe its veterans?
If the President had to make the case that taking on Iran would cost each American around $1000 on top of higher prices for fuel and food, how many would sign off on that?
So I guess I agree with Palantir. Be honest about the actual costs of war and chances are we will get into fewer.
> Be honest about the actual costs of war and chances are we will get into fewer.
This is a naive comment. The people deciding to send people to war do not concern themselves with the costs. The people concerned about the cost have no say in deciding to start military conflicts.
> How many years in a row has the Pentagon failed it's audit?
The pentagon has NEVER been successfully audited.
The current administration can't even be honest about the fact that we're in a war, so there's no way they're gonna be honest about the costs.
> Wars used to be paid for by raising taxes
in the long term maybe, in the short term its mass debt of trillions
Inflation sort of is a tax, on those who do not hold appreciating assets. I.e. mostly people on the poorer side.
Unless you have popular support behind you, a draft is a great way to make your military less effective. You get a bunch of soldiers who don't want to be there, who may not do their job to the utmost either out of apathy or active malice. It also gives lots of people, who might otherwise passively disagree with your war, a great incentive to actively resist your war and your attempts to force them to fight in it.
It worked in WWII because of Pearl Harbor and the Axis being cartoon villains. Direct US involvement also only lasted 4-5 years. Vietnam demonstrated that an unpopular, long-term conflict is ill-suited to the draft.
This is very much anecdotal but the concept of fragging has gone mainstream in my social media feeds. Mostly gen z joking about ww3 when the Iran conflict kicked off
What is fragging?
Doesn’t ycombinator and hacker news have links with this company? Makes it hard to maintain the hacker ethos when this entire site seems so closely linked with such forces.
The hacker aesthetic has always been largely reactionary and hyperfocused on the individual and individual freedoms. See also the politics of "generation X"
The saddest thing of our age is that "reactionary" and "individual freedom" is equated to authoritarian movements that are anything but.
The hacker aesthetic has always been anarchist in nature, until the rich Californians decided that a hacker is an entrepreneur that participates into the game of capitalism. To be fair, even the concept of libertarianism was an offshoot of anarchism, until the Americans decided that it means right-wing party politics of the rich elite. Words don't mean anything any more, any concept that can equated to its opposite if it rewards one with internet points.
"Right wing politics dominated by the rich" is the natural endpoint of libertarianism, so that makes sense. Whether they're "real" libertarians or not, the elite techies leading the charge are people with politics like Karp, Andreessen, Musk, etc.
as a counter, it is exactly the hacker ethos to take something and use it not as expected by those that made it so that it can be used for their own purpose
Between idiotic tech bros who wouldn't know a war if it bit them on the butt promoting a draft because they don't think they'd be drafted and HN having links with Palantir/Karp I think I'm done with this site.
OK, Lets put Alex Karp in the frontlines.
He can lead that way with that sword he's been showing off!
He's just overcompensating - can't even get his stock up no more!
oh what a shame.. I'm sure he can reach out to Elon to ask him how to inflate it
Bizarre for them to suggest this right after the US unilaterally launched the most unpopular war in modern history. A war with almost no tangible upside for US citizens, and a war many people think was started on the whims of another country.
What are they thinking lol
I'm in favor of mandatory public service (not exclusively military) but I also don't think a private company should be weighing in on such topics, since it's just a bunch of capital owners preaching about what everyone else should do.
I've read their tweet: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312
It's hard to take them seriously given the omission of the biggest catastrophe of the 2000s-2020s that underlies everything they do, i.e., wealth inequality, the creation of a parasitic ruling class that uses propaganda to control the political narrative (and seeking AI for even greater control with less support), and the destitution of the poor by the rich, from the manufactured opium epidemic, gig economy, financial crises, etc.
Their sundry list reminds me of the smarty boys in undergrad philosophy who pretend to be great philosophers before they have taken even one step into self-criticism and self-knowledge.
Of course they do. They make stalkerware at scale. Their products would be used to track down draft dodgers.
Opening graph: "We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost," says military contractor and all-around surveillance-enabler Palantir.
If that's the case, then every war to be fought needs to have the say so of those that will be doing the fighting and not the solitary decision made by a delusional leader that had already circumvented the required process from Congress.
Robert Heinlein proposed something like that in his "lost" novel For Us, the Living: instead of declaring war, Congress would authorize a war referendum, in which only those eligible for military service could vote. The catch was, everyone voting "Yes" would thereby automatically sign themselves up in the military for the duration. If a further draft was needed, it would first be composed of those that didn't vote, and lastly those who voted "No."
(In the book, the "future" Congress had called war referenda on three occasions; each time, the vote was overwhelmingly "No," and historians believed those decisions were justified.)
Simpler: Leaders who engage in military engagements should face a public referendum 6 months/1 year later, with exactly 1 question: "Should [Leader] die?". Presidents in the US rarely get elected with less than 40% of the popular vote, and I reckon about 30% of people wouldn't vote to kill someone pretty much no matter what they did. Half of those people are your supporters, so really it's just a matter of avoiding your popularity plummeting to sub 35% because of your warmongering. By that math. By that math, Trump, W. Bush, and Truman would have gotten the gallows. Biden, Carter, and Nixon all fell below 35%, but didn't start any foreign wars.
Exactly. Enforce the war powers of congress and require a non-delegatable per-war approval.
Hell, require the approval of 3/4 of governors as well.
How about a random sample of registered voters too? It would be nice to have a cohort that cannot be bought and paid for.
Having those sent to fight in a war being the ones to decide if the war should be fought was on of the major points in General Butler’s 1935 book War is a Racket
Great example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
> Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt.
And also the us not prosecuting those people in 1935is sadly a precursor of j6 in the US.
I was going to make a sarcastic comment about how everyone in Russia shared the risks and costs with Nicolas Romanov but then realized it was true. If politicians sending kids to kill and die shared the risk and cost of war then they wouldn't get to come home from Washington when the war is finished.
what war? 'tis but a skirmish ... o.O
Surely he means that himself and his billionaire buddies will be the first boots on the ground when we decide to plunder another country for oil again. No?
No he just wants to send our kids to die in the desert for Palantir’s profits.
Karp has a right to his opinion as bonkers as it may be but it is doubly bonkers to release this as company policy. Especially coupled with all the other bonkers things that went into this manifesto. Rearming Germany and Japan? Why does Palantir care about that? Toss in some unsubtle racism and you're really just staking your company position as aligned with a very narrow political niche. Seemingly at odds with the company's interest to provide services to whoever will pay.
Unless I'm mistaken Germany has US-owned nuclear weapons on it's soil at all times. There are some part of the German military that could use a serious rethinking because of a decay of operational capacity. But exactly what else would we be arming them with?
Aiding and abetting to a current genocide does that to the appetite for more corpses.
They are simply following along with the basically fascist direction of Trump, or maybe leading them.
> Rearming Germany and Japan? Why does Palantir care about that?
New markets to sell genocide tools to.
Service guarantees citizenship!
Bilionaires talking about morals sound like Tony Soprano talking about morals.
And let's be clear: Palantir executives want "other" people to die in wars, not them or their children.
Palantir is a more dangerous enemy of the USA (or any people of Earth) than, say, Iran.
There's no point in addressing their propaganda, but the idea that that a draft leads to everyone from every class of life having to be involved in war equally is so obviously untrue it's a joke.
What does it mean for Palantir to want to reinstate the draft? And why is this newsworthy?
The movements and announcements of large tech companies tend to be newsworthy, whether it's "we made a new iPhone", "our new model is so good it's dangerous!" or "we should have a draft to support new American imperialism"
> Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible
I would agree with that, but its debt is to the people of that country, not their current government. But instead, Palantir conspires to surveil and repress those people at the bidding of an elite, anti-democratic minority.
And would the leaders of Palantir still argue it had a moral debt to serve the government if it was a left-wing one, engaged in a process of wealth redistribution? No, they wouldn't. This supposed moral ideology is a facile sham.
Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country, and the country now has to serve.
What?
Silicon Valley could easily pay their moral debt by not evading taxes.
Big tech supercorp wants war efforts to increase
the absurdity to even entertain this dorks musings.
imagine if tim cook or satya came out and talked about how there needs to be a draft. people would say lol shut up nerd and move on.
some dorkus who heads a company that's just providing over reaching surveillance data to governments so they can do dumb data analytics should have no say in these affairs, and we should promptly discard what they have to say. peter thiel is a sociopath, karp is a dork, these people just want to be known as "the guy with the ideas" and they've crossed deep into the "what are you even saying right now" territory.
tbh we should jettison them into the sun they're kind of a scourge on civilization and clearly lake any real stakes that keep them grounded in the world.
lol Palantir it's a US Agentic AI or more like Humantic AI for Donald!
"We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost,"
OK, sure, but only if we agree that a war should be fought. No more fighting a war because six rich guys in a back room decide we need unobtanium. Or because one rich guy doesn't like some other rich guy's religious values.
> This Big Tech Firm Wants To Reinstate the Draft
I still cannot help but look at Palantir as a company that just sends $ to the "oligarchs". I still wonder what real value Palantir provides the US Gov.
After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
> I still wonder what real value Palantir provides the US Gov.
Their "product" has always been some hacky database joins behind a web app with a dark mode interface that makes the baby brains at DOD feel like they're in a 90s hacker movie
Different deployments of Palantir Foundry exist in the US gov't/military and do provide real data science/analytics value.
> After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
Cyber in the military has abysmal retention because of the pay. You can get an immediate ~$50k pay raise doing the same work as soon as you leave the military.
Palantir is CIA-founded
Alex Karp needs an army.
I think the proper counter move is to seize all assets of oligarchs and distribute it among The People. That way those Vietnam 2.0 loving guys won't get any say in anything anymore.
I like to think that Eisenhower would punch Karp in the face if he met him today.
The Nazi government would not have gotten this far without the help of industrialists and oligarchy.
The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, has extensive ties to the Israeli government and is a self-avowed Jewish-supremacist. Peter Thiel was also featured extensively in the Epstein Files, and the two collaborated on creating Palantir to serve Israeli interests.
To those HNers working at Palantir - and there's bound to be a few - what's your deal?
You do realize what sort of company you work for, right? Is it cognitive dissonance or are you really a paranoid right winger that's fully on board with Palantir's efforts to enable authoritarian governments akin to 1984's Big Brother?
I'm curious. Please feel free to explain how you go to work every day and do what you do. Fair warning, the rest of us are pretty disgusted with you.
Money can paper over a lot of moral dilemmas - everyone has a price, whether or not we're necessarily aware of it. I refuse to interview with any company in the "defense," space, but I'm sure if someone threw enough money at me I might entertain it.
For true believers though, which I'm sure exist there, I do wonder much the same things.
They are fascists that like money
lol Palantir it's a US Agentic AI or more like Humantic AI for Donald F Trump!
This article has a strong slant. If we can look past that, we should consider the claim: everyone having skin in the game is more democratic and leads to a better aligned government.
Perhaps this would lead to more peace.
But everyone won’t have skin in the game. We’ve played this game before. The uber wealthy and politically connected kids will either get outright deferments, or cushy positions that never have them sniffing any danger beyond carpal tunnel.
It’s no different than the republicans that are violently against abortion and then you find out they’ve funded multiple for their mistresses. They’re perfectly fine with a law banning it because they know it will never apply to them.
They certainly don't have skin in the game now, either!
Right, in the minds of millions right now there's literally no reason to fight for this country. This country certainly ignores their existence and refuses to honor most forms of basic rights as health, education, and shelter. It really only cares if you mess up your tax return.
Bone spurs
Agree - the key is that everyone MUST include people in power.
It's not how conscription is ever implemented in practice.
Of course it's not. Once upon a time quite long ago kings and generals got on the field. But as we industrialized leadership moved to "the back."
See concepts like Auftragstaktik, command intent, mission command.
Not even that long ago, nobility died at higher rates than normal people in ww1 and ww2. Many lines were killed during them. I still know of nobles in my own country in the army. Generals died in WW2 at a decent rate as well.
Nobility lost most relevance now so I'm sure it's different now, owning a castle or a weird last name doesn't make you rich or powerful.
But it’s how it will be sold to us. It’s sure a lot warmer in the abbatoir for some reason. And they give some of us cigarettes. Bill says they even feed him.
But they never do
"Perhaps" you say even though humanity hasn't had a long history of conscription and it has never created peace.
"When the rich wage war it's the poor who die"