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Cyrano4747 posted:What if we devised a "National Labor Service" that worked like the military, but they built, I don't know, maybe highways? You're probably aware, but this was what the civil service under FDR was: Taking kids, putting them to work as engineers, surveyors or labourers all over the USA, speeding up economic growth and giving them marketable skills in the process. Of course, republicans today hate it because SOCIALISM, but the idea is sound enough.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:06
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I've heard that argument, but conscription didn't manage to keep us from diving balls first into Vietnam. And that was a post WWII society where pretty much everyone was a vet or close with someone who was. What if conscription could provide manpower for wars that aren't popular enough to attract volunteers, preventing the populace from voting at the recruiting station, in a manner of speaking? or maybe teh truth is in the middle
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Dec 2, 2016 18:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:What if we devised a "National Labor Service" that worked like the military, but they built, I don't know, maybe highways? Isn't this a huge problem in Germany at the minute, since you could do social care as your national service instead of serving in the military, meaning that when it was ended the costs of a lot of vital services skyrocketed since they were no longer being done by teenagers paid pennies? Also the real reason conscription isn't coming back anytime soon is that it's real, real expensive for the government. Pretty sure that's the driving force for why Britain got rid of it.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:10
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Nebakenezzer posted:Since we're on the topic of presidential corruption (I don't know about you but I just have this feeling I wanna educate people on this issue for some reason) Harding had the same problem: he was way too trusting, and his friends were corrupt as poo poo. One of them was trying to sell the oil out of the strategic naval reserve, for gently caress's sake
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Dec 2, 2016 18:11
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somebody post that genderswap Warren G Harding webcomic , TIA need those D-cup Teapot Domes
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Dec 2, 2016 18:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:What if we devised a "National Labor Service" that worked like the military, but they built, I don't know, maybe highways? Kickin' RAD 
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Dec 2, 2016 18:17
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Tias posted:You're probably aware, but this was what the civil service under FDR was: Taking kids, putting them to work as engineers, surveyors or labourers all over the USA, speeding up economic growth and giving them marketable skills in the process. Of course, republicans today hate it because SOCIALISM, but the idea is sound enough. Or maybe because historically speaking the Republicans have been the party opposed to involuntary servitude.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:25
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MikeCrotch posted:Isn't this a huge problem in Germany at the minute, since you could do social care as your national service instead of serving in the military, meaning that when it was ended the costs of a lot of vital services skyrocketed since they were no longer being done by teenagers paid pennies? Yeah that's the other half of it. Millennial labour value is already in the toilet without the government getting in on it.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:25
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P-Mack posted:A lot of people on my Facebook were all in favor of some kind of mandatory service. Haven't heard a peep about it since November 9th, oddly enough. These are usually the same people who want limited government spending and a balanced budget. They never stop to consider just how expensive it would be to draft everyone coming out of high school.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:42
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lenoon posted:Post 45 national service was mainly just guys doing drill and being miserable while producing nothing of value to the Army - I think the biggest critics of the reintroduction of national service in Britain today are military, what the gently caress would the modern army do with something ludicrous like 100,000 new recruits every year who leave again in 36 months? The cynical side of me thinks that National service was kept on for as long as it was to keep youth unemployment figures down. Crazycryodude posted:Kickin' RAD This looks like the setup to a comedy musical about gravediggers.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:45
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SimonCat posted:These are usually the same people who want limited government spending and a balanced budget. They never stop to consider just how expensive it would be to draft everyone coming out of high school. Make them buy their own horses and supplies, problem solved.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:50
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Phanatic posted:Or maybe because historically speaking the Republicans have been the party opposed to involuntary servitude. They don't seem to mind prison labor very much. Just sayin'.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:51
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Well What Now posted:They don't seem to mind prison labor very much. Just sayin'.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:54
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Well What Now posted:They don't seem to mind prison labor very much. Just sayin'. Teddy Roosevelt tried to crack down on convict leasing, unsuccessfully. Part of the problem was that while the 13th amendment banned slavery, Congress had never actually passed a law spelling out a specific punishment for keeping slaves.
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Dec 2, 2016 18:55
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It really isn't fair to judge/measure/whatever the parties of today based on how they were during (insert any time before roughly the late 60's), seeing as they've almost completely turned away from their historical stances and voter bases in the past few decades.
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Dec 2, 2016 19:04
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Phanatic posted:Or maybe because historically speaking the Republicans have been the party opposed to involuntary servitude. Yeah, but I was talking about modern republicans :iamafag:
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Dec 2, 2016 19:05
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Polyakov posted:The cynical side of me thinks that National service was kept on for as long as it was to keep youth unemployment figures down. This was literally one half of the purpose of the Iraqi army under Saddam, the other part was to dampen sectarian spirits by providing a national body that all ethnicities could be part of. Guess what happened when Paul Bremer disbanded it overnight
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Dec 2, 2016 19:07
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HEY GAL posted:google betsy devos child labor
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Dec 2, 2016 19:17
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lenoon posted:Post 45 national service was mainly just guys doing drill and being miserable while producing nothing of value to the Army - I think the biggest critics of the reintroduction of national service in Britain today are military, what the gently caress would the modern army do with something ludicrous like 100,000 new recruits every year who leave again in 36 months? Got to give the hilariously top heavy amount of officers somebody to command. EDIT: or they could all take turns at being officer and soldier? maybe Trotsky was onto something.... SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 19:19
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HEY GAL posted:google betsy devos child labor 
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Dec 2, 2016 19:23
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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To change the subject slightly, what was the earleir recorded case of an insurgent poorly armed force more or less appearing and shaking things up for a more conventional army? I made a vague guess about the big slave rebellions the Romans faced but I suspect I am wrong.
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Dec 2, 2016 19:27
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The Achaemenid invasion of the steppes come to mind.
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Dec 2, 2016 19:36
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Crazycryodude posted:Wow I had no idea Jane's is a whole media group, guess I just sort of assumed that their only product was All the World's Fighting Ships and even that I thought stopped publishing by WWII. Are any of their modern products worth it? As far as I've seen, just about everything Jane's puts oit that is even semi-recent usually has a starting price of 500$ USD. I scored a 70s(?) Version of Small Arms Encyclopedia some time ago. Its definitely neat stuff. Edit: Welp, turns out it was 1989-90   
Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 19:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:The argument for national service isn't that it cures laziness, it's that it creates a much stronger bond between the military and society in general and creates a lot more accountability for politicians who want to use force abroad. To cite again my favorite article ever I posted a few pages ago.... I agree with this, But also another potential benefit to universal conscription, or at least broader military service: it demystifies the military in the eyes of the public. right now so few people , at least in the US, serve or are affiliated with the military that it seems like some weird distance exotic thing majority of the people. This has a lot of negative impacts, not the least of which is the deification of the institution in spite of its many flaws. When you have a higher proportion of people serving, or at least have military experience, the country as a whole has a much more realistic idea of what exactly the military is and is not, and this is a good thing. It becomes much less this exotic distant entity and much more the mundane thing that it really is. an aside to this: the United States and much of the industrialized world that has adopted a totally volunteer military have nearly all developed a fairly discrete warrior classes. that is, families who tend to serve generationally. mine is one of these: of my 11 cousins, six of us wound up as military officers and four are intending to make it a career. This follows in the footsteps of our baby boomer parents, and their parents who had about the same proportion in their respective generations. now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does have the effect of further sequestering those who are in the military from those who are not. I feel like something similar happened in Prussia during the latter half of 19th century and that in turn led to some fairly bad things but I'm happy to be corrected on that if I'm wrong. All that being said I'm certainly not in favor of universal conscription. from practically any perspective it isn't realistic in America; I think my point is that the professional volunteer military model has some major flaws of its own.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:01
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bewbies posted:an aside to this: the United States and much of the industrialized world that has adopted a totally volunteer military have nearly all developed a fairly discrete warrior classes. that is, families who tend to serve generationally. mine is one of these: of my 11 cousins, six of us wound up as military officers and four are intending to make it a career. This follows in the footsteps of our baby boomer parents, and their parents who had about the same proportion in their respective generations. also certain families cluster in certain branches, like all the Metzsches i've found are cav and all the Kalckreuters infantry
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Dec 2, 2016 20:11
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bewbies posted:His racial agenda was great at least on paper (he was more progressive than FDR in a lot of ways, for reference) but he was probably the most corrupt president we've ever had, or at least that we know of, and this by a pretty wide margin. He ran his administration like a middle school girl clique; if you were buddies with him before he was elected you were IN and could basically do whatever you wanted no matter how shady or illegal, but if you disagreed with him, especially publicly, you were OUT. Grant wasn't nearly so bad as all that. People are rehabilitating his presidency because he's historically been maligned as corrupt when his administration was rather typical of the early-to-mid nineteenth century. What brought Grant's administration such notoriety was the expansion of federal power, and especially the budget, due to the civil war, magnifying the effects of government corruption. It's ridiculous to say that the crimes and corruption on Grant's watch significantly harmed the country while discounting the crimes and corruption in previous and later administrations. Civil service reform didn't really get underway until after President Garfield was assassinated by a mad office seeker in 1881, but the Civil Service Commission got started during Grant's first term. I'm not trying to argue that Grant's record was spotless (he removed reformers from cabinet positions nearly as often as he appointed them, and his protection of friends implicated in scandal has no excuse), but corruption in the Grant administration was more a product of the Gilded Age than a cause. No matter who'd been elected president in 1868, congressmen from both parties had been taking money from Credit Mobilier since 1867. Boiling the whole mess down to Grant specifically or his administration generally ignores pretty much any and all context in the sitution.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:21
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P-Mack posted:I've heard that argument, but conscription didn't manage to keep us from diving balls first into Vietnam. And that was a post WWII society where pretty much everyone was a vet or close with someone who was. The thing is, you join the army for a set period, both in active service and the reserves, of I believe a minimum of 8 years. Noone who joined up in 1995 knew they would be on the hook for Gulf War 2 but they sure had to fight in it, voluntary army or not.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:28
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P-Mack posted:Teddy Roosevelt tried to crack down on convict leasing, unsuccessfully. Part of the problem was that while the 13th amendment banned slavery, Congress had never actually passed a law spelling out a specific punishment for keeping slaves. The 13th amendment very specifically still allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment for crimes (y'know, prison), so people leasing convicts were not, by Constitutional law, keeping slaves.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:32
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zoux posted:Either Heinlein was all over the place ideologically He was. Isaac Asimov saw a simple explanation. quote:although a flaming liberal during the war, Heinlein became a rock-ribbed far right conservative immediately afterward. This happened at just the time he changed wives from a liberal woman, Leslyn, to a rock-ribbed far-right conservative woman, Virginia.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:43
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dublish posted:Grant wasn't nearly so bad as all that. People are rehabilitating his presidency because he's historically been maligned as corrupt when his administration was rather typical of the early-to-mid nineteenth century. What brought Grant's administration such notoriety was the expansion of federal power, and especially the budget, due to the civil war, magnifying the effects of government corruption. It's ridiculous to say that the crimes and corruption on Grant's watch significantly harmed the country while discounting the crimes and corruption in previous and later administrations. Civil service reform didn't really get underway until after President Garfield was assassinated by a mad office seeker in 1881, but the Civil Service Commission got started during Grant's first term. Agreed. The United States Civil Service Commission was founded in 1871 (under President Grant, no less), and had to be re-founded in 1883. Before then, giving government jobs to all your friends and supporters after winning an election was normal and expected. Grant's friends were just more corrupt and incompetent than the usual set of cronies that followed every election.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:55
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkOqiweYfwQ only good starship trooper
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Dec 2, 2016 21:00
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feedmegin posted:The 13th amendment very specifically still allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment for crimes (y'know, prison), so people leasing convicts were not, by Constitutional law, keeping slaves. They weren't being directly sentenced to labor, they were being given fines and fees they couldn't pay and then a third party was paying that fine in exchange for their labor for a given term, so it's a bit muddier. More importantly, they were also regularly held past that term, which was violating the thirteenth however you slice it.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:06
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SeanBeansShako posted:To change the subject slightly, what was the earleir recorded case of an insurgent poorly armed force more or less appearing and shaking things up for a more conventional army? Define 'insurgent' and 'conventional' because those labels are really hard to apply in any era where you have lots of pastoral nomads coming into conflict with settled agriculturists. So, probably something that happened in Egypt or Mesopotamia?
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Dec 2, 2016 21:20
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feedmegin posted:The 13th amendment very specifically still allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment for crimes (y'know, prison), so people leasing convicts were not, by Constitutional law, keeping slaves. interestingly enough this is a big reason why African slavery still essentially lives on through the modern american prison system
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Dec 2, 2016 21:24
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SeanBeansShako posted:To change the subject slightly, what was the earleir recorded case of an insurgent poorly armed force more or less appearing and shaking things up for a more conventional army? I would agree with your guess of the servile wars becuase i think the Roman army was the first incarnation of what i would recognise as a conventional army as we would understand it.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:27
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I'd say it was the Helot uprisings against Spartan rule myself.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:30
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Polyakov posted:i think the Roman army was the first incarnation of what i would recognise as a conventional army as we would understand it.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:34
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Phanatic posted:Or maybe because historically speaking the Republicans have been the party opposed to involuntary servitude. CCC wasn't "involuntary", unless you think that all work is involuntary under the capitalist system where you have to work or starve.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:45
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HEY GAL posted:no way, sumer had professional soldiers My knowledge of Sumerian history is pretty much nil, but i was working under the assumption that the first soldiers we would class as full time professionals were the Romans just because they were the first empire to reach a sort of size/organisation where having professional full time soldiers on a large (enough to be called an army) scale was plausible. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 21:57
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The Romans had a fully professional army but there were professional soldiers earlier. I dunno about Sumer but by the New Kingdom in Egypt they start to be a permanent thing.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:59
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