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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> The US Military is venerated despite being one of the most socialist institutions in the country.

That is because even many libertarians (i.e. not just capitalists, socialists, communists) understand that national defense, internal security, justice, and diplomacy are functions that the state should take care of.

There are very few who believe we should live in total anarchy.

Now unlike most other political currents, some believe that the aforementioned roles are the only role a government should serve (in french those roles are called the "Fonctions regaliennes de l'etat", literally "Roles kingly of the state").

It's really strange to use the army as an example of "socialism" when it's one of the really rare thing nearly everybody agree is a role belonging the state.

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They're not making the point about the military being state owned. They're making the point that the military is run almost identically to how a socialist state would be run.

It's absolutely not the only way that a military could be run, and many haven't, but is, presumably, the way that the military organisers consider it to be most effective.

Military equipment, in contrast, is not generally run in quite such a socialistic fashion though it's a long way from a capitalistic free market.

Exactly.

Consider the Roman military [1] (emphasis added):

> From c100 BCE, Roman legions were reorganised into 10 cohorts of 400–500 heavy infantry, each with six centuries of about 80 men. These continued to provide their own weapons and armour until the first permanent and entirely professional Roman army with a central command and logistics structure was formed in 31 BCE.

In fact, one's position in the Roman army was largely determined by what one was wealthy enough to provide. Consider the cavalry (equites) [2]:

> From the beginning of the 4th century bc, non-senators were enlisted in the cavalry; they provided their own horses (equites equo privato). By the 1st century bc, foreign cavalry tended to replace them in the field and thus to restrict the equestrian order to posts as officers or members of the general’s staff

A military doesn't have to provide equipment. It doesn't have to fulfil basic needs. It doesn't even have to be voluntary. Or paid. But modern militaries in developed countries do basically all of those things.

[1]: https://jmvh.org/article/roman-warfare-ships-and-medicine/

[2]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/eques

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