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Comment by TomK32 | Hacker News Reader

In peacetimes, yes, but if it's defensive war I don't see many arguments against a draft, it can't be generalized though.

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There certainly are arguments against a draft at the individual level - Example being if the people being drafted do not believe in their own governments ability to lead.

A draft is by definition forced labor either way - because if enough people volunteered there would be no need for a draft in the first place.

But usually it doesn't matter either way. Either the people believe in their own government/territory and see it as worth defending, or alternatively they don't believe in it, but their government is authoritarian and will force you at risk of punishment or death into being drafted.

In both cases a draft is still forced labor for those who did not volunteer to participate.

If there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it.

Indeed, and there are many historical examples of this.

Today’s average Western nation-state tends to be a rathole that spits into the faces of its citizens every single day, until the moment the state is under attack, at which point everyone is told that they owe their lives to their sacred motherland that has done so much for them.

What if people do but not in enough numbers? Farewell, sweet country!

If the country doesn't have enough people to defend it, perhaps it's good and just that some other community gets to control the territory? A country isn't really anything except for its people, after all.

The occupying power may be interested in your country's resources rather than its people.

How does that change matters? If anything that makes it even worse. If not enough of your people can't be bothered to join the military even when an enemy army is invading, perhaps the country in question should draw the conclusion it's not viable as an independent nation.

What happens in those cases is that the majority vote to force everyone to defend the country. Its just easier that way since it means you wont be defending alone, if everyone defends together then its very unlikely the country will fall while if just volunteers does it then almost any country will fall.

Thinking you can defend a country just via volunteers is like thinking you can pay for a country just via charity, we vote to tax everyone for a reason. And people do that voluntarily afterwards, they are fine paying taxes as long as everyone is required to pay, same with defending the country.

Seems like there's a clear free-rider problem, the volunteers make the sacrifice and the non-volunteers reap the benefits.

> If there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it.

That's a pretty binary view of the situation. It's not enough for something to be worth defending: People have to recognize that it's worth defending — and that might not happen instantaneously, because "people" come to appreciate things at very different rates.

States have a legitimate right to taxation. Taxes can be used to pay volunteers. While there are still people owning wealth above the poverty level, there is no excuse to force people into military slavery. And even if literally everybody has been taxed into poverty, there are more ethical alternatives than slavery, e.g. tying the right to vote to military service like in Starship Troopers. Freedom from slavery is extremely high on the scale of ethical importance, even more important than democracy.

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