https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1631262711152537605
https://preview.redd.it/ef42czwnwdla1.png?width=1202&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=7d3f0e2561a47caa71581de9f4b4daf30ec0651a
This seemed like profound thought to me when I had it around age 15. Hanson is an adult tenured professor who is supposed to have adult viewpoints.
To state the obvious:
- almost every country in Europe has some form of conscription, most notably in this case Russia. If Ukraine loses the war, their population will be subjected to conscription in the Russian army.
- conscription is involuntary and might be bad, but it is not slavery. In particular it doesn’t involve a separate caste of people who are permanent slaves without rights.
- the US also practices military conscription, so the tweet is just stupid.
I wonder if he has any suggestions for what the Ukrainians should do, given that they aren’t living in a libertarian world at the moment. The Hanson/libertarian formula – the world does not conform to my theories of how it should work, but rather than examine my theories I will complain about how the world fails to follow them.
In the replies, Geoffrey Miller states that mandatory schooling is slavery.
Prison labour, however, is merely “somewhat similar to slavery, in some regards.”
Well, chattel slavery isn’t the only kind. And I definitely think “conscription is a form of slavery” is an arguable proposition. But yes, overall this is still a dipshit tweet.
I’m not really in the loop on the who’s who of LW and EA – is this guy an EA or what?
The US essentially makes males register for Selective Service, but conscription is basically dead, though certainly a theoretical possibility. Saying that the US practices it seems inaccurate. The circumstances where the US would bring back conscription are essentially such that, in the absence of the current system of Selective Service, they’d invent it de novo. It’s certainly the case that if the US were experiencing something of the same scale as the Russian invasion, there would be conscription.
But yeah in short I agree Hanson is a tedious child.
The survivors of the culling will, that is.
Russia has been sending convicts to fight in the invasion of Ukraine, not just within the military but also in service of a private mercenary company, so, um, if normal conscription is evil then it’s certainly the lesser
Robin Hanson is back for the hard hitting slave takes. Better than his waffle about Sally Hemings? We’ll see.
I might disagree that there isn’t a separate caste. Exempt from conscription in Ukraine are:
applicants for professional higher and higher education, trainee assistants, graduate students and doctoral students studying abroad in full-time or dual forms of education (students, listeners).
men employed in nationally-important manufacturing, government support activities including state cultural institutions, education and science institutions, physical education and sports facilities, social security agencies, television production and broadcast businesses, international representation offices and NGOs working in humanitarian aid. (Getting fired from or quitting one of these jobs will typically lead to conscription)
Most of these groups skew towards higher social class, and those which don’t have clear military applications. This isn’t unique to Ukraine, these rules are pretty similar to historical American conscription rules.
Not playing devils advocate for the tweet (“therefore the United States supports slavery” is a stupid observation, we have mass prison labor) but conscription is almost always designed to target or exclude particular social classes.
and nary a hint of what prediction markets would make of all of this. robbie boy, you’re slipping
I would pay good money to see a proper expert in war and geopolitics reducing this iconic example of a navel gazinf fuckwad into a seething mess by dissecting just how FRACTALLY wrong he is. no matter how far you zoom in, this is stupid all the way down.
so close yet so far