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Comment by lambchoppers | Hacker News Reader

You should maybe read some articles about modern situations where people dodged conscription before assuming what is practical today. The average person who hasn't thought about it for a week is certainly in trouble but..

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Why is the solution to avoiding conscription being able to hide rather than making the conscription not happen in the first place?

Governments in a position to conscript their citizens usually aren’t taking a lot of feedback on the issue.

Yes, fight in advance to prevent such a situation, but don’t assume you will win. It’s good to have a backup plan.

If the third world war were declared tomorrow I think there would be precious few governments who didn't get started on conscription.

I'm not sure about that. Maybe? But... Firstly, there are surprisingly many people who are insanely patriotic so would volunteer anyway (perhaps fewer than in the past but perhaps still enough; see point three). Secondly, there are surprisingly many people who enjoy violence and killing people so would volunteer anyway (this probably hasn't changed). Thirdly, modern warfare doesn't need large numbers of people (this has definitely changed over time). And fourthly, a lot of modern people rather object to being ordered around by the government (I think this has probably increased a bit, at least; I can imagine that there are even people who would volunteer for military service when it's optional but would resist being conscripted).

In fact I cant disagree with most of what you've said, except to say that I was thinking from the state perspective, rather than the cannon-fodder.

Conscription has never been popular, and I think today in healthy industrialised nations it would be an exceptionally hard sell. Ukraine, Russia and (somewhat) Israel give us hints here of what might happen if the US or Germany or India started drafting all able-bodied young men.

It would be a disaster, but my guess is that it wouldn't stop governments from trying.

You need to convince, what, 300 people in a country to vote in their voting system the right way, and then it affects millions of people.

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