ceasarlegsvin

this is a tread about the UK government trying to sell a crap idea.

Largely, but I was responding to the specific sentence I highlighted.

The UK back in the 1960s ended conscription. And decided instead to invest in technology. And personal with the training to operate that technology.

The UK has favored a doctrine of a small, well trained, professional army since before WW1. It’s also tended to be more expeditionary. Both of these conflict with the benefits of conscription.

That doesn’t mean it’s an outright superior system. It has its own drawbacks and benefits compared with alternative systems. Sometimes you send that force into a meatgrinder because the fighting calls for more manpower than it can supply, regardless of technology. It depends on the war you’re fighting.

Rather then using ill motivated short time troops as little more then cannon fodder.

Weirdly enough, fighting a defensive, existential war tends to solve the motivation problem pretty quicky.

Also, if you’re calling up previously conscripted troops when shit hits the fan, they will have been trained for far, far longer than if you try to enlarge the size of your fighting force from scratch.

I feel like your knowledge of conscription comes entirely from the Red Alert 2 unit of the same name. Don’t confuse peace time conscription with war time conscription. They’re incredibly different things.

For a nation lacking funding.

You’re really just running down the bingo board of one-liners that betray a complete unfamiliarity with what you’re trying to talk about.

No military budget is infinite. You decide the type of military you want to build, and you build it in the most effective way possible. Sometimes conscription fits in with that. Sometimes it doesn’t.

once you have gotten to that stage

Tick another one off the bingo board.

We’re talking about conscription in peace time.

Conscription is by its very nature using citizens of your own nation to absorb attacks.

That’s literally what a military is.

in no situation can conscripts show the professional training of people who choose to invest in a military career.

Conscripts receive the same training as career professionals.

Russia knows full well attacking a NATO member nation will not result in a ground war

Why wouldn’t it result in a ground war? NATO isn’t going to want to escalate into full apocalypse unless they absolutely have to.

There’s a reason the UK didn’t nuke Argentina when it took the Falklands.

They know full well natos are well maintained

The UK’s two most recent trident tests both failed.

Other countries considering a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea.

This isn’t talking specifically about the UK, and nor was I.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to admit you were wrong for you to be wrong.

Other countries considering a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea.

“Conscription is always a bad idea” is an objectively incorrect sentiment.

In a war, the bulk of Finland’s force will be made up of conscripts. Or more accurately, people who were conscripts.

The career military men will be the officers. If you look at their officer to non officer ratio in peacetime it will be absolutely bananas compared to the UK’s. Because if they do get invaded by Russia, they’ll immediately call up their reserves (which due to conscription is their entire eligible population) and the ratios will make more sense.

Because their long term military strategy changed.

Conscription makes perfect sense if you’re setting yourself up to fight a defensive war. E.g., Finland’s entire military is more or less built for a defensive war against Russia, so they conscript.

Because they built it into their long term strategy, like I said in my original comment.

Germany used to conscript, because there was this thing called the USSR that represented a very real and existential threat right next door. Then that stopped being the case, so their long term doctrine changed from defensive to expeditionary, so they stopped conscripting.

Given that expeditionary wars in the middle east are becoming a bit faux pas, and “being invaded by your neighbour” is back in fashion, I imagine more places will shift doctrine again and conscription will start seeing a return. Then again it might not because of how fundamentally unpopular it is with the population.

And the military leadership of every country where conscription is a thing disagrees with you.

All it dose is create ill motivated unskilled labour.

If you think military conscription is for the here and now you unfortunately don’t know what you’re talking about.

Conscription is so that if you need to mobilise quickly, all of your eligible population are already trained, have units to report to, officers etc.

If you’re building a defensive military, it makes perfect sense, because in a defensive war motivation more or less ceases to be an issue.

The UK’s military is far more expeditionary, so it doesn’t make sense unless you build it into your long term plan, which is exactly what I said in my original comment.

Conscription isn’t fundamentally a bad idea it just needs to be built into your long term defense strategy

Didn’t Legoland give permission

“coal exists, so coffee is sustainable, but not coffee in pod form” is legitimately one of the dumbest things I’ve read on this site, so I’m just surprised you’re hitching your wagon to that post

Yes because it doesn’t make any sense. Not only is the coffee industry not really all that sustainable, it’s completely meaningless to compare two types of resource in entirely different categories.

It doesn’t matter how “unsustainable” a medically necessary resource like helium is in comparison to literally any amount of environmental or social damage caused by the persuit of a luxury good.

Also, as a rebuttal to a rebuttal to the idea that canned coffee is still better it doesn’t make any sense, because the logic that “coal isn’t sustainable” could justify literally any amount of ecological damage in the coffee supply chain, thereby justifying the pods. You could chop down and burn a tree for every sack of coffee you fill, for fun, and it still probably wouldn’t be as unsustainable as coal.

Me: no coffee is environmentally sustainable or a necessity

You: damn they must be shilling for big coffee

Also you realise the fediverse isn’t large enough to justify marketing on, right?

My highest rated comment is literally condoning videogame piracy. Did you think that accusation through at all? I’m honestly baffled.

How does the coffee get from where it’s grown and into the can? Where does the space to grow it come from?

Also, what are you talking about? Helium’s uses are largely medical, which is pretty far up there on the list of things we can’t do without.

Also, so what? These new coffee pods are also more sustainable than both helium and coal when you use whatever definition of sustainability you’re using

If you’re playing that game, you don’t need any coffee at all, so none of it is sustainable.