EPTOn September 28 2021 04:55 Zambrah wrote:
Having been through American public school, allow me to further amend my statement,
Having been through American public school, allow me to further amend my statement,
Touché sir.
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27340 Posts
Touché sir. | ||
micronesia
United States24799 Posts
On September 27 2021 15:21 Mohdoo wrote: I think it’s totally fucked that “recruiting” is a thing at all for the military. The entire idea of trying to convince kids to join the military is wild to me. Especially at high schools. Looking at 18 year olds as I am today, it feels deeply immoral that we let 18 year olds join the military. They really just aren’t grown up yet and they aren’t able to reason everything out. Sending them to kill people and be killed by others is overwhelmingly bad. I don't agree with all recruiting practices, but can you clarify what you think the right answer is here, thinking realistically in the current environment? | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
On September 28 2021 05:11 micronesia wrote: I don't agree with all recruiting practices, but can you clarify what you think the right answer is here, thinking realistically in the current environment? Abolish all forms of military advertising and stop recruiting in high schools. Anything less than that is morally reprehensible. Taking advantage of kids is beyond fucked up. Offer better benefits and make it very lucrative. We are ultimately asking people to do something really messed up. If we decide a military is necessary (I think so) then we need people, so keep throwing money at it until we get enough people. But victimizing children isn’t the answer. | ||
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micronesia
United States24799 Posts
On September 28 2021 05:40 Mohdoo wrote: Abolish all forms of military advertising and stop recruiting in high schools. Anything less than that is morally reprehensible. Taking advantage of kids is beyond fucked up. Offer better benefits and make it very lucrative. We are ultimately asking people to do something really messed up. If we decide a military is necessary (I think so) then we need people, so keep throwing money at it until we get enough people. But victimizing children isn’t the answer. Your solution to redirect money from advertising to once-you-are-in benefits is interesting, but I think it will require a significant increase in military spending in order to accomplish the same military objectives, if everything else stays the same. If they did that, then people could still go to the appropriate website/recruiting office (which I assume is still okay) to learn all the same information that recruiting ads and guest speakers could provide. Banning military recruiters from going in to schools, but allowing unscrupulous employers of other types still concerns me a bit, though. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27340 Posts
On September 28 2021 05:40 Mohdoo wrote: Abolish all forms of military advertising and stop recruiting in high schools. Anything less than that is morally reprehensible. Taking advantage of kids is beyond fucked up. Offer better benefits and make it very lucrative. We are ultimately asking people to do something really messed up. If we decide a military is necessary (I think so) then we need people, so keep throwing money at it until we get enough people. But victimizing children isn’t the answer. I don’t really get why a force of potential killers recruited via a more attractive financial inducement is particularly more moral than one scraping at the edges of society for recruitment. They’re still ultimately doing the same thing, indeed the military is a route out of abject poverty for many. Raising that bar is just cutting off another decent earner for folks who don’t come from salubrious backgrounds. Now on a wider sense of structural poverty and having to choose between fuck all prospects or joining the military, well that’s something else entirely. And redressing the former is the order of the day. How military recruitment works is a symptom atop deprivation problems, it’s not any kind of causal thing. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
On September 28 2021 05:53 micronesia wrote: Your solution to redirect money from advertising to once-you-are-in benefits is interesting, but I think it will require a significant increase in military spending in order to accomplish the same military objectives, if everything else stays the same. If they did that, then people could still go to the appropriate website/recruiting office (which I assume is still okay) to learn all the same information that recruiting ads and guest speakers could provide. Banning military recruiters from going in to schools, but allowing unscrupulous employers of other types still concerns me a bit, though. I'd gladly raise my own taxes significantly if it meant I wasn't complicit in recruiting 18 year olds into the military. I feel guilt knowing I pay taxes to a country that uses 18 year olds in the way we do. And yeah, if people want to go search out the military, I am not against that. But recruiting 18 year olds is just crazy messed up. I'm sure you're the same rough'ish age as me, so I am sure you look at 18 year olds right now and think "we let these guys decide if they join the military or not? damn." I won't make too much of a rant out of this, but I will say: 18 year olds need a lot more protection than they currently have. Our spitball estimation of "yeah so how about lets just call it good at 18, they are now adults" wasn't a good idea. Other unscrupulous recruiting is also bad. But I think it is worth pointing out the stakes are a lot higher in the military. Broken kids looking for identity and purpose, not even done growing up, finding themselves without legs is a tragedy beyond measure. On September 28 2021 06:07 WombaT wrote: I don’t really get why a force of potential killers recruited via a more attractive financial inducement is particularly more moral than one scraping at the edges of society for recruitment. They’re still ultimately doing the same thing, indeed the military is a route out of abject poverty for many. Raising that bar is just cutting off another decent earner for folks who don’t come from salubrious backgrounds. Now on a wider sense of structural poverty and having to choose between fuck all prospects or joining the military, well that’s something else entirely. And redressing the former is the order of the day. How military recruitment works is a symptom atop deprivation problems, it’s not any kind of causal thing. Yeah I'd say in my perfect world, education would be free and strongly encouraged through 2 years of college rather than just high school. Then let people join the military at age 20+ rather than 18. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On September 28 2021 04:55 Zambrah wrote: Having been through American public school, allow me to further amend my statement, Suprised you just didn't cut it even shorter with Our society is really not well That said I am actually fine with 18 year olds joining the military. As far as I am concerned 18 is old enough to be considered mentally an adult. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On September 28 2021 08:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Suprised you just didn't cut it even shorter with That said I am actually fine with 18 year olds joining the military. As far as I am concerned 18 is old enough to be considered mentally an adult. Have you not met 18 year olds? | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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EnDeR_
Spain2938 Posts
Seriously, as someone who has to deal with them on a daily basis, on average, they're babies and make terrible choices. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7393 Posts
At this point Im pretty sure she doesnt intend to win reelection and just wants to milk her remaining time in office and in the by cozying up to corporate shits in order to secure a real sweet do-nothing gig once she loses. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/politics/sinema-fund-raiser-social-climate-bill.html | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24341 Posts
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
Most I met are self assured young adults about to go to university. Virtually every professional, every doctor and nurse you entrust your life to have been trained from that age and made that decision from at that age. Some are not, but many of adult age are never mentally an adult either. If you can entrust an 18 year old to make significant life decisions, then I think they should not be restricted from joining the military either. The real question is why you and an another appear to have a different experience of 18 year olds. Afterall, I assume we were all 18 once. It's a question of adult rights. If at 18 you can vote, legally have sex, get married and raise a family and have a full time job, drink alcohol and operate the fast heavy and dangerous machinery known as cars and may have been for years already, then why shouldn't they also be attributed the rights and freedom to lawfully be employed by the military if they chose to do so. To do otherwise is to give them the rights of adults in all but a specific area, which appears to be morally inconsistent. To which I am aware of that USA in particular to alcohol is morally inconsistent. If you solely restrict that one normal right, to be able to choose a full time job, and exclude it to a single profession on the basis of age based mental development then it should be natural to extend that argument to everything else on the basis of age based mental development. If you beleive that 25 for example is the age of an adult, then voting rights, sexual rights, driving rights and so forth should also be extended to that age. But you do not argue against those rights, but only against employment by the military. If you think that 18 is too young to join the military then 18 is also too young to have sex and to vote. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
Plus I also think people who only encounter responsible 18 year olds who know exactly what they want in life and what that entails for their future are rather in the minority. Most people I went to university with were still babies. | ||
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ggrrg
Bulgaria2716 Posts
On September 30 2021 16:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote: ... If you think that 18 is too young to join the military then 18 is also too young to have sex and to vote. Is this really the logical conclusion? Afaik, it is pretty rare that people get blown to pieces during sex or voting. | ||
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Falling
Canada11607 Posts
War is obviously not an ideal and there will never be an age where we would want to send someone off to war- unless you are into culling the population for old age or something nefarious. At some point you just have to decide how old is 18 really? Do we hold their hands for ever and ever? At some point we have to cut the line and say you are sufficiently capable of making a decision and abiding by its consequences. The point in which you can move out of the house and off to college, work, or whatever seems to me a sufficiently useful marker. It's already delayed independence when compared historically, so it's good enough for now, I think. The fact is, we really can't make up our minds on they should be responsible for and we are pushing and pulling in opposite directions. On one hand we are advocating for some fairly life-altering decisions at very early ages and on the other hand people arguing that 20 year old are getting 'groomed' by 40 year olds. . .because the mind isn't fully developed until 25. It's wildly inconsistent and a can of worms unto itself. Regardless, I don't think we gain much by delaying legal independence beyond 18. War will always be nasty. No-one is ever ready for it. But unless we are taking a pacifist argument, 18 is good enough. It's certainly an age that an invading army would forcibly draft you into their army regardless of your own country's recruiting policy. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
The argument that there has to be a cutoff and that we can't hold people's hands forever is just as applicable to 14 year old soldiers as 18. There does have to be a cutoff but that statement doesn't imply that it must be 18. There is also an assumption that people want to bar 18 year olds from enlisting. That's not what was said. What was criticized was a deliberate policy of recruiters with quotas seeking out 18 year olds by recruiting in schools etc. It's perfectly legal to have sex with a 16 year old in the UK but I would still disapprove of schools inviting middle aged men to come in and hit on 16 year old girls. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15743 Posts
On September 30 2021 09:24 Falling wrote: Is there any age where you are old enough to get blown to pieces? War is obviously not an ideal and there will never be an age where we would want to send someone off to war- unless you are into culling the population for old age or something nefarious. At some point you just have to decide how old is 18 really? Do we hold their hands for ever and ever? At some point we have to cut the line and say you are sufficiently capable of making a decision and abiding by its consequences. The point in which you can move out of the house and off to college, work, or whatever seems to me a sufficiently useful marker. It's already delayed independence when compared historically, so it's good enough for now, I think. The fact is, we really can't make up our minds on they should be responsible for and we are pushing and pulling in opposite directions. On one hand we are advocating for some fairly life-altering decisions at very early ages and on the other hand people arguing that 20 year old are getting 'groomed' by 40 year olds. . .because the mind isn't fully developed until 25. It's wildly inconsistent and a can of worms unto itself. Regardless, I don't think we gain much by delaying legal independence beyond 18. War will always be nasty. No-one is ever ready for it. But unless we are taking a pacifist argument, 18 is good enough. It's certainly an age that an invading army would forcibly draft you into their army regardless of your own country's recruiting policy. The fact that war sucks doesn’t mean people aren’t able to make better decisions when they are older. 20 is better than 18 in that regard. You’re making a classic argument of “if we can’t make it perfect why change anything at all?” as if anything in the world is perfect. Incremental improvements are good. And especially at that stage in life, the difference between 18 and 20 is really big. People go through rapid development psychologically and emotionally at those ages. Kwark did a good job explaining the other aspect so I won’t needlessly repeat him. | ||
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Erasme
Bahamas15899 Posts
On September 30 2021 12:48 KwarK wrote: 18 year olds lack the life experience to have an idea of what war involves outside of Call of Duty. Given how many veterans end up killing themselves it's not unreasonable to want them going in with a clear idea of what they're doing, that'll probably save a lot of lives down the line. The argument that there has to be a cutoff and that we can't hold people's hands forever is just as applicable to 14 year old soldiers as 18. There does have to be a cutoff but that statement doesn't imply that it must be 18. There is also an assumption that people want to bar 18 year olds from enlisting. That's not what was said. What was criticized was a deliberate policy of recruiters with quotas seeking out 18 year olds by recruiting in schools etc. It's perfectly legal to have sex with a 16 year old in the UK but I would still disapprove of schools inviting middle aged men to come in and hit on 16 year old girls. Nobody has the life experience required to go to war. And if someone did, they're probably already pretty fucked up. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24341 Posts
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced Thursday that his top-line spending number for the budget reconciliation package is $1.5 trillion, far below the $3.5 trillion spending goal set by the budget resolution that he and every other Senate Democrat voted for last month. thehill.com“My top-line has been $1.5 [trillion],” he said, explaining that he doesn’t want “to change our whole society to an entitlement mentality.” The House is scheduled to vote Thursday on a $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill backed by Manchin that passed the Senate, but progressives have threatened to vote against it unless a separate social spending measure is moved in tandem. Pelosi pulling the vote off the schedule is probably the least embarrassing for everyone and the most likely imo, but that's just kicking the can. | ||
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