Dictatorships are ba-

-ZINGA!

>the only faction that aims for transhumanism
Cybernetic Consciousness?

If you want transhuman, go Zakharov.

Point taken.
But then again, aside CC and Drones, SMAX adds absolutely nothing of any value.

No, Zak is anything, but transhuman. He's concerned with science for the sake of it.
It works like this (at least for me): Zak is searching way to progress humanity, regardless of how it's achieved, while Yang is searching way to overcome humanity, regardless of how it's achieved.

>SMAX adds absolutely nothing of any value
What about aliens raping your ass?

How to Spot Someone Who Knows Nothing About Transhumanism: the Post

>progress humanity
aka transhumanism

>overcome humanity
aka posthumanism

Nobody intelligent believes dictatorships are bad per se. They believe that:
>A dictatorship is only as good as the dictator leading it
>Power tends to corrupt; the greater the power the greater the corruption
>Even if a dictator is both just and talented, there's no guarantee that his successors will be (especially in the absence of any formalized dependence on or responsibility towards the governed)
This is why the only decent type of dictator is the Sulla kind, and even Sulla had literal hit lists.

Honestly? I never understood the hate of them having massive head-start. That's kind of the whole damn point.
For me Data Angels are much bigger "what the fuck they were thinking". All the factions (aside Domai) are gimmicky in SMAX, and all factions aside Drones and Conscioussness are bullshit even on fluff level, but Data Angels still stand out above anything else.

How to spot someone who ignores game content: The Post
Take this (You) and savour it

>Tries to correct idiot what transhumanism is
>Turns out he doesn't know either
Like pottery

The only decent type of dictatorship are unironically past military coups in Turkey. Each and every time when someone was trying to pass laws against the constitution or the secular character of the country, the army was going out of barracks, seizing control...
... and organising elections, without sending out their people to take posts or cheating with the outcome.

wrong

>making humanity the best it can be, while remaining fundamentally human
Superhumanism
(also a form of transhumanism, but seeks to remain significantly similar to modern humanity)

>seeking to advance beyond humanity in pursuit of greater knowledge, power, and civilization
Transhumanism

>having advanced/differentiated so far beyond/significantly from humanity in pursuit of greater knowledge, power, and civilization, that there is only incidental at best similarity with modern or near-modern humanity
>aka; becoming alien to what we conceive as human
Posthumanism

Dictatorships in the middle east are only "good" because of how horrible the alternative is. These people have neither the culture nor (as a collective, not as individuals) the intellectual capacity to function in a republic. If you give them the vote, they'll vote for Islamic rule. Then they'll get the Islamic rule they asked for, flee Islamic rule because it's shit, settle down in the West free of Islamic rule and then demand that Islamic rule is imposed on the West. With self-harming people like this, a dictator who at the very least doesn't want encroaching Islamism if only to preserve his own power is the better option. This is why you universally see that religious minorities in these countries support their dictators. The dictators know these minorities are loyal supporters for their power base, and these minorities know that without the dictator looking out for them they're lined up against a wall and shot or at the very least marignalized. Look at Yazidi's in Syria, along with Christians they're the biggest supporters of the Assad regime.

The solution then, of course, is to create a caste of statesmen who's entire purpose is purely to be good and just statesmen, to the point where their upbringing could legitimately be considered indoctrination.

A state in service to itself knows few practical limitations, and statesmen in service to the state do not serve themselves. The only concern is gradual degradation of the institution, but if the French can keep their language stable/immutable, then surely this can too.

>It's like you don't know Domai's and Drones backstory.
Other user here. Where can i learn more about them? The game itself is offer like three quotes from Domai and that's it.

Well, it was non /pol/ for longer than I thought it would be.

If you organize an election is it still a dictatorship?

Sorry, really wasn't my intention.

Yes. Because you first need to overthrown elected government, impose military junta and then organise elections. So between the coup and new government taking power after elections you have a regular military junta in power, as provisional government or something like that and matrial law imposed.

Stop arguing guys, surely we can come to some agreement?

The official page, for example?
Domai is an Aussie geologist that ended up by accident as a drone in The Hive. Imagine his reaction and why he organised a rebellion first given chance.

Your wife is hot, Lal. Do you have more of her?

When a single individual has supreme legal power it is a dictatorship. When a few individuals have equally supreme legal power it is an oligarchy.

What they do with that power does not influence who has the power.

You can have dictatorship with oligarchy, user. Polish People's Republic was probably the best case example of this ever since stalinist period ended. Ironically, on paper it was a democratic country, you just had a single list of candidates from one party to pick from.

...

>The solution then, of course, is to create a caste of statesmen who's entire purpose is purely to be good and just statesmen
And how do you prevent them from becoming a self-serving nobility? Your indoctrination angle implies humans are fully mutable, and that corruption isn't inherrent to human nature.

>but if the French can keep their language stable/immutable
>immutable
Come the fuck on, you don't actually believe this do you? That the language hasn't changed for centuries? Especially after the outrage of alternative spellings last year ("ognon" is now acceptable, without an i)? I don't know where this meme that the language is immutable comes from. Maybe the whole "it only has 10,000 words" meme.

>21 KB JPG
> (OP) #
>Nobody intelligent believes dictatorships are bad per se.

>And how do you prevent them from becoming a self-serving nobility
This.
Anyone who proposes system with "caste doing X" apparently never really bothered to check historical example of how this shit worked out EACH AND EVERY TIME.

The distinction between a dictatorship and an undemocratic oligarchy are at best vague.
Most of the people who we consider dictators had vastly more autonomy to exercise power than their counterparts in democratic states, but are still often highly dependent on the backing of other elites within their societies. They also often choose to deliberately frame their power in terms that do not invoke legal supremacy, such as maintaining powerless democratic bodies as decoration.

I dunno, how about a caste of slave soldiers raised from babies for that purpose? They couldn't possibly end up a major political power!

Ataturk was just so based it's been rubbing off on the rest of the Turkish military for a century

>And how do you prevent them from becoming a self-serving nobility?
Has every nobility throughout all of time necessarily become corrupt?

>Your indoctrination angle implies humans are fully mutable, and that corruption isn't inherrent to human nature.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Perhaps you could occasionally have a reconstruction of the caste, or have multiple, segregated and independent governing castes developing at the same time to curtail the spread of corruption.
If you're willing to consider the very idea of "indoctrinating and training someone from birth for something they will do all their life", you can get very creative on how to ensure people become perfect statesmen.

At the very least, having a defined, rigorous, and explicit curriculum required to even serve in government would help tremendously.
If you're convinced that people will always want to serve themselves first and foremost, and creating a ruling caste of truly selfless statesmen is impossible, then the challenge lies in creating a form of government in which the politicians gain more by being honesty and just, rather than selfish and ambitious.

>Come the fuck on, you don't actually believe this do you?
It's hyperbolic, certainly, but it's a far more stable language than most, if not all others. At the least, it proves that state control over culture/behavior is possible to at least some degree.

>Has every nobility throughout all of time necessarily become corrupt?

I can't think of a single one that hasn't (And has actually lasted long enough for it to be relevant)

>I can't think of a single one that hasn't (And has actually lasted long enough for it to be relevant)
Better question; what's your definition of "corrupt".

>Has every nobility throughout all of time necessarily become corrupt?
Are you dumb or trolling?

Focused more on their own personal power rather than the good of the country.

Are you just a pleb who's gotten drunk on the koolaid?

>a form of government in which the politicians gain more by being honesty and just, rather than selfish and ambitious
I feel like this was the point of democracy. If you do good things for the people they will reelect you and keep you in power.
Obviously it turned out you could do a lot of corrupt shit and still get elected either because you succesfully hid your corruption or the other candidates are equally corrupt.

Often enough, their own personal power correlates with the good of the country. No one wants to just be a king of dirt. A prosperous domain makes a powerful lord.
I would say that corruption is only a proper issue when their concern for personal power/wealth becomes an active detriment to the country.
which, coincidentally, is very often the case with democratic leaders who only have to worry about ruling for a few years to a decade or two. Get in, make their money, get out, never face consequences. Royalty and nobility are at least in it, and accountable, for life.

>I feel like this was the point of democracy. If you do good things for the people they will reelect you and keep you in power.
Two flawed assumptions with this:
>1) That the people are rational and good judges of governance
Probably the worst thing to happen to democracy was the concept of universal suffrage. Not everyone should have an active roll in the political process, if democracy/republicanism must be how governance occurs.
>2) That doing good things for the people is necessarily good for the country
Pandering to the common populace is likely to get you reelected time and time again in the short term, assuming no limits, but even with limits your successors will just do the same thing themselves. This pandering, whether it be extensive welfare, populist foreign policy, or whatever your chosen bogeyman is, can and will have disastrous long term consequences if not properly mitigated.

>I feel like this was the point of democracy.
Enlightenment authors on both sides of the Atlantic feared democracy and sought to limit it as much as possible. While justification of power is of course important, equally important is the splitting of power. That's where the idea of the government that rules least rules best comes from. Basically everyone wanted to chain the government because they feared it.

Royals aren't accountable, mate. Many constitutions for monarchies, even back when the monarch actually did something, specifically stated that the monarch was untarnishable and that his ministers were held accountable. Then there's the fact that your reasoning is nicely summed up in a quote attributed to George III. To paraphrase him, he said that he desires nothing but what's best for his country so anyone who disagrees with him is automatically an enemy of the state. I hope you see how dangerous this reasoning is, and how it doesn't automatically lead to the monarch doing what's best. Thirdly, while your criticism of democracy is valid it also presupposes that there's an alternative to corruption. There isn't, there's only the ability to restrain it. This is why restrictive governance in combination with a democratic mandate and separation of powers leads to a system where the powers that be are (ideally) divided and weakened enough to never be able to do true harm. The rise of party politics and even identity politics is throwing a wrench in this, especially in parliamentary systems were executive and legislative are one and the same, and where left leaning parties keep endlessly expanding the competences of the government.

>Probably the worst thing to happen to democracy was the concept of universal suffrage.
*unconditional universal suffrage. The way the French did it until WW1 was passable. All men could vote, but it was with the explicit understanding that all these men would be digging their own trenches once the Germans started acting uppity. Every citizen a soldier, every soldier a citizen.

The problem with the modern system, with both female suffrage and mass migration, is that those with no stake in the success of the republic are allowed a say in its future. This is why I believe that across countries in the West the link between the right to vote and the duty to serve should be re-established, and that we should get rid of the idea that naturalization can take place over a single generation. If we look at the way Athenians did it, only third generation migrants could become citizens. That's not a bad system, as by then not only will the loyalty to the old homeland have been dilluted but left leaning politicians can't throw open the borders purely to gain more loyal voting cattle. If they do this, they're held accountable by the citizenry without these newcomers being able to cover their asses. Of course expelling these non-citizen newcomers is also easy if they prove to be a problem.

>The rise of party politics and even identity politics is throwing a wrench in this, especially in parliamentary systems were executive and legislative are one and the same, and where left leaning parties keep endlessly expanding the competences of the government.

Eh, that's neither really left not right. Both sides like to expand what the government can rule (But not always in the same areas). It's the nature of government to want to grow itself, regardless of political party. Yes, Minister/Prime Minister covers this pretty well with it's philosophy of 'Governments come and go but bureaucracy is eternal'

It's a rare politician who manages otherwise.

Are you saying that only people serving in the army should be able to vote? How does that make any sense.
If only some should be able to vote it should be the well educated people who might actually know what they are voting for.

I don't want to live in a militarized state where you can only vote if you have killed someone.

>Are you saying that only people serving in the army should be able to vote?
Yeah.

>How does that make any sense
Conscription is a thing that exists.

>I don't want to live in a militarized state where you can only vote if you have killed someone.
Yeah, why would you want to live in a dystopian nightmare society like early modern France or contemporary Finland/Switzerland?

>Conscription is a thing that exists.

It also runs into the fact that not everyone is physically capable of serving. Should someone being born with only 1 leg prevent them from voting?

At least explain why being trained for war would make you a better voter than being educated in science, law, economy and so on.
These things all seems way more relevant in a modern society.

>The problem with the modern system, with both female suffrage and mass migration, is that those with no stake in the success of the republic are allowed a say in its future.

Pretty sure women have a stake in the country they are members of.

They are the easiest faction to play.

Civil service (I think the english term would be, but I may be wrong) is (or was, at least) a thing in some countries. Not physically fit to serve in the army or unwilling to serve in armed forces for religious (or other) reasons? You may spend the required time (or somewhat longer time) doing other public services, like helping in hospital, or administrative work, or even even manual labor like picking trash and mowing public green.

>I don't want to live in a militarized state where you can only vote if you have killed someone.

Military service doesn't inherently mean killing anyone.

A which point there should be alternative non-combat methods of service.

Imagine all the infrastructure work that could be done if most 18 to 22 year olds served in the Corps of Engineers.

>Imagine all the infrastructure work that could be done if most 18 to 22 year olds served in the Corps of Engineers.

Well, you'd see a lot more foreign doctors because you'd be taking an extra 4 years to get your doctorate in medicine.

>every person who works for the military is a soldier
>every soldier has killed people
user, how old are you?

>It also runs into the fact that not everyone is physically capable of serving.
Though luck.
>Should someone being born with only 1 leg prevent them from voting?
Admittedly that's the big weakness of the system but personally I'd say that a valid physical disability should create an exemption. Just being too weak to deadlift a certain weight isn't a physical disability though.

>At least explain why being trained for war would make you a better voter than being educated in science, law, economy and so on.
Because you have proven the willingness (or at least availability) to defend the nation and proven that your interests and those of the greater good are intertwined. It doesn't make you more educated, but it does make you more loyal and aware of your position in the greater good. It should be part of your education towards citizenship, but of course it's neither the beginning nor the end of the story.

Pretty sure I never ruled women out from being conscriptable.

It would cost the country a lot of money to do that. They are not really engaging in the economy/improving businesses until four years later than they would otherwise be. You've also got to get enough equipment for everyone, something that's not really normal in this day and age of small but highly equipped militarises.

That and well...it wouldn't be teaching useful skills to the majority of the people involved. If you want it to be about voting, you might as well make it 'Everyone has to take a uni degree in political studies'. That would be more relevant.

Dictatorships/Monarchies have always been less stable and have prospered less than democracies. Here are the reasons why:
Dictatorships have regularly had violent competitions for power either on behalf of the dictator or the would-be usurper. To the victor goes the spoils and when the prize is absolute power, there's very little people wouldn't do to protect or obtain it. Examples abound, from Stalin's Great Purges to the many wars of succession for the British crown in the pre-industrial era. Even if the dictator lays out clear rules about who is supposed to succeed him or her, oftentimes rivals or pretenders just flat-out ignore them and you have conflict anyway. Democracies, by contrast, have much more peaceful transitions of power. (Think France in the 1790s. Or any Latin American republic which holds presidential elections.)

A corollary is that dictatorships rarely select for competence or vigour in the leadership below the dictator — quite the opposite. An underling who is too competent, too popular, too effective, or too vigorous will usually be eliminated, leaving incompetent nonentities. This creates security for the dictator — no rivals for power — but it plays merry hell with succession and the period after. An exception might involve when a dictator expects to die in the next year or two; he might attempt to groom a successor molded in his image, as Francisco Franco did with Prince Juan Carlos in Spain (although that didn't work out as he planned).

>Pretty sure I never ruled women out from being conscriptable.

No but that was quoting saying that women's suffrage (aka: The right to vote) is an issue.

Also, the skills required to successfully seize power and to actually govern successfully are rarely guaranteed to reside in the same person. Mao Zedong, for example, was a downright brilliant guerilla and military leader. This guy was able to outfox both Chiang Kai-shek and the genocidal Japanese Imperial Army (contrasting craven milksops such as Stalin) so was obviously a shoo-in for dictator once establishing the People's Republic of China. But in a very cynical and horrifying application of the Peter Principle he did not translate into prosperity for China, as he was totally fucking incompetent at actually running a country. But since he was dictator, thus holding absolute power, what were the Chinese gonna do? And despite all this the guy, criminally incompetent douchebag or no, undoubtedly earned his position. Many hereditary or yes-man dictators can't even give us the assurance of at least being good at kicking some butt.

Even if you could find a dictator who was qualified and benevolent enough to do the job in a way that was beneficial, unless that dictator happens to be immortal that still leaves the problem that their successor may not be so great, often with disastrous consequences.
Going with the above problem, dictatorships waste enormous resources on establishing security. In order to prevent challenges to their rule, dictators must obtain control of the media, army and police force, spy on the populace, etc. Classic example: North Korea. That state police and million-strong standing army ain't paying for itself, ya know. The money needed to keep a democracy functioning (polling places, franking privilege, etc.) is much lower in contrast.

>It doesn't make you more educated

Why not do something that makes them more educated then? The point of democracy is to allow for the rule of the people, so people making more educated decisions would be the ideal situation.

Because dictators have absolute power, they often find themselves completely unable to forgo using their own power to enrich themselves and their supporters at the expense of their subjects. See: the disgustingly sybaritic buildings of the Catholic Church at a time when folks didn't even have closed sewers (even the Indus Valley civilization that came thousands of years before had that!) or the special Communist Party shops or the opulent palaces of the Tsarist government that they used as a hypocritical justification for overthrowing. What makes this especially ironic is that even though dictatorships benefit in the short term by looting their subjects and hoarding the wealth, in the long term they'd be even richer by letting a portion of that capital escape to their subjects. Monarchs in Medieval Europe and governors in pre-modern China held ridiculous amounts of power and wealth relative to their kingdoms, but an upper middle-class Westerner from this era would laugh right in their faces at how small and weak their wealth really is. Regardless, the ruling class in dictatorships just can't break the cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul once it's established, so even after an initial period of increasing the welfare of the populace above and beyond the base trickle the march of technology allows, the average prosperity hits a brick wall. Democracies put a hard limit on how much wealth the elite is allowed to accumulate, voting in policies such as progressive taxation to funnel some of the money back down to the masses.

It's almost impossible for dictators to get a handle on the entire government. It's no accident that as history marches on dictatorships steadily grow more incompetent; that's because government (and business) has become increasingly more complex both in form and the number of people they need to serve. To "solve" this problem dictators have to end up delegating some of their power to underlings. It's already bad enough in democracies where people are encouraged to scream at bureaucratic fuck-ups — John F. Kennedy was famously completely floored at Nikita Khrushchev's demand to remove missiles in Turkey, since he had ordered them removed months before and they hadn't gotten around to it. If it's that bad in democratic governments, how much worse do you think it will be in a government where delegates are immune to criticism from the masses, have the ability to reward themselves at the expense of the group, and have an incentive not to piss off Dear Leader by doing something contrary to the wishes of their leader for the good of their people?

A REMINDER

Yeah, because even the examples of modern conscription nations in Europe I listed don't conscript women. Hell, many anti-suffragettes wanted to avoid the female vote specifically because they assumed their governments would be non-hypocritical enough to start conscripting women. Of course that's an issue the suffragettes remained conveniently quiet on.

>The point of democracy is to allow for the rule of the people
>people
Nice key word. Conscription is part of the creation of this fiction called "the people". It is neither part of their education, nor mutually exclusive with their education. It just prevents the rise of a cynical group of individuals with no identification with their greater group and no loyalty to their country. There must be a demos if a democracy is to function, and no education in the world can create the sense of community that sharing in the same suffering in the name of the greater good can create.

Elaborating on that last clause some, making the delegation problem significantly worse is that underlings are tempted to sugarcoat bad news and avoid criticizing the dictator's plans or interventions and thus shield them from the truth. Which (notice how dictatorships are like a multi-layer marble cake of bat, dog, horse, whore, chicken, and bullshit; the deeper you go into it the shittier it gets) leads to the next problem: Dictatorships invariably come to believe in their own propaganda and become increasingly separated from reality. You'd think that they would have the sense to keep their prolefeed separate from the reality of their situation, but — George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four aside — few dictators actually want to hear news that their policies are making people desperately unhappy for no good reason. Furthermore, this effect combined with the effect of dictators almost automatically trying to inflict their personal delusions and viewpoints onto the populace (rather than collecting it from the masses/bureaucracy) leads to cognitive dissonance and ignorance both self-inflicted and not. Again picking on Stalin and Mao (because they really really deserve it) this descent into a fantasy world leads to catastrophic events like the the great Soviet famine or the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Democracies are much better about knocking some sense into the people that rule them, both because the trustees have to listen to them to know what they want and also to knowingly avoid taking actions that will piss off the populace. Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush were very rudely jolted out of office in their succeeding elections because of ideologically-driven groupthink that led them to make unpopular decisions. This doesn't happen in dictatorships short of extraordinary crises such as the February Revolution — long after years or even decades of misery and which have a high chance of tearing the country apart.

Let's have a quick aside for a second. While the "tyranny of the majority" is often cited as a problem with democracy, the oppression of minorities is exponentially greater in dictatorships. In democracies everyone belongs to a minority group of some form (white male middle-class heterosexual Protestant, while a majority in individual categories, is a minority demographic taken as a whole) and have to form alliances to protect their rights; this is why, for example, Italians and Irish in the United States are viewed as 'white' even though they weren't in the late 19th century. It's no accident that, for example, the American civil rights movement of the 1960s saw an explosion in rights for the underclass and minority as a whole because they formed alliances. In a more contemporary example, even though in the 1990s American racial minorities had a more negative opinion of gay marriage than their white counterparts, recent polls in the 2010s show them as having more support for it than whites. It's not hard to see that, for example, if a surge of dominionism were to infect a portion of the populace it'd be crushed at the polls not only by non-Christians but by women and minorities who saw their rights threatened next. Sexism and racism are greatly reduced because political actors, if not exactly wanting the votes of the minority groups they're opposed to, don't want them to align with other factions and crush them and in the process ruin unrelated interests like tax cuts.

>Nice key word. Conscription is part of the creation of this fiction called "the people". It is neither part of their education, nor mutually exclusive with their education. It just prevents the rise of a cynical group of individuals with no identification with their greater group and no loyalty to their country. There must be a demos if a democracy is to function, and no education in the world can create the sense of community that sharing in the same suffering in the name of the greater good can create.

Suffering in the name of the greater good? That's...not really conscription. Most countries with mandatory service don't actually have WARS with those people.

I assume you think boot camp is just some kind of sleepover and has nothing to do with either suffering or bonding?

>Yeah, because even the examples of modern conscription nations in Europe I listed don't conscript women. Hell, many anti-suffragettes wanted to avoid the female vote specifically because they assumed their governments would be non-hypocritical enough to start conscripting women.

Well, most countries also stopped conscripting men not long afterwards too. With modern military structure, there is basically zero use for military conscription. You'd be better off having everyone serve in a civil work program if you need everyone to work in something for a few years rather than something that's a rather outdated concept from when militarises had a very different structure.

Also no matter how smart you are, assassins and poisons will get you. If not that, sleep deprivation will make you slip up.

No but it's not really 'The greater good' either. It's kinda neutral morally/isn't really helping the country.

By contrast, minorities always get persecuted worse in dictatorships. Dictatorships just plain do not need the support of anyone other than a small proportion of the population; rulers find it absolutely irresistible to persecute and crush rivals and minority groups perceived as a threat in some way or another and if they can't oppose them politically then how are they going to fight back? To make this problem significantly worse, after one minority group is disposed of dictatorships tend to look for the next minority group they can separate and crush, which allows them to steadily shape the populace in the form that they want. This process is almost inevitable in dictatorships, either by design (such as with the Nazi Party) or by trying to look for new enemies to keep the politics of fear gravy train going. Martin Niemöller puts the process succinctly and poetically:

>They came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.

>Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

>Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

>Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

All in all, want to know why even Benyamin Netanyahu pays lip service to treating Arab Israelis fairly, while many rulers in other Middle Eastern states could not give two flying fucks about Arab Christians? Because Israel has democratic elections and the votes of the 20% Arab citizens are not to be discarded.

Mind you, the negative to that is that deliberately fostering such a focus/innate loyalty means that it is more difficult for a country to actively shift when it needs to because of the inertia of what that training is doing. It's good for stability, bad for future change.

>They are not really engaging in the economy/improving businesses until four years later than they would otherwise be.

Only if they are not getting paid.

Ask a South Korean male about what they think of their 2 years of compulsory service.

>Ask a South Korean male about what they think of their 2 years of compulsory service.

Going by the ones I know 'I'm behind on my degree'

>Of course that's an issue the suffragettes remained conveniently quiet on.

and you know a lot about suffragettes and libertarians, do you ?
if you want to shit on something, first rule is to know what you're talking about, wild guessing just makes you look stupid and illiterate.

But i GUESS it's just because seeing an uniforms urges you to masturbate furiously.

>Only if they are not getting paid.

At which point you are paying people for something that is providing no economic (And honestly barely any military) benefit to the country. So you have to be prepared for this system to be a drain on the finances.

>Well, most countries also stopped conscripting men not long afterwards too.
Yeah, meaning that men aren't immune in their disconnect from greater society either.
>You'd be better off having everyone serve in a civil work program
A lot of demilitarized West European governments are experimenting with that with little success. The thing is that this is often treated as some kind of obligatory internship. Also helping the elderly is nice (not so much when you're forced to do it but w/e) but I doubt it creates either a sense of community compared to what the military can do, nor the willingness to defend your country.

>Mind you, the negative to that is that deliberately fostering such a focus/innate loyalty means that it is more difficult for a country to actively shift when it needs to because of the inertia of what that training is doing
That's possible, though I'm critical of to what extent this is true. In terms of innovation neither Switzerland nor Finland are exactly underperformers. On top of that, ideally conscription would create a sense of community and patriotism, but not blind loyalty to the entrenched government. In fact, ideally (though I admit I'm only theorizing here) it would create a better armed and trained populace that would keep the political elite on its toes.

From a purely political (not moral) perspective, what greater good is there than national security, other than perhaps the guaranteeing of certain liberties (with in terms of external national security, the two being one and the same)?

Unless the state controls all industry and that counts as public service, businesses will continue to exist and people will continue to work for them in order to survive. If you deny the workers the franchise, one would hope that would just hasten the internationalization and radicalization of the working class into a revolutionary element to overthrow your shortsighted regime.

>if you want to shit on something, first rule is to know what you're talking about
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather
>Inb4 one or two obligatory namedrops on suffragettes who argued for male conscription but ended up having no influence on the wider movement

And what happens with pacifists? Do they not get to vote because they are unwilling to join the military?

>Dictatorships just plain do not need the support of anyone other than a small proportion of the population; rulers find it absolutely irresistible to persecute and crush rivals and minority groups perceived as a threat in some way or another and if they can't oppose them politically then how are they going to fight back? To make this problem significantly worse, after one minority group is disposed of dictatorships tend to look for the next minority group they can separate and crush, which allows them to steadily shape the populace in the form that they want.
That's swell but by this logic dictator has no reason to persecute minorities unless they can really challenge him and undermine his power and have reason to do so. Dictators don't need support from the populace so they don't need to please the rest of their subjects and can keep taxes coming from minorities by letting them live.

Marx plz.
1. Explain how this is a "denial" of franchise. In fact, it's open to anyone and actually forces a certain degree of equality of opportunity. The fit worker you idolize has a better chance of passing the standards than the fatcat bourgeois you demonize. These are affairs unrelated to money, power or birth.
2. Explain how a "denial" of franchise changes the relationship between worker and companies, especially in the absence of government intervention? Competition, negotiation and the free market don't stop being a thing just because some people can't vote.

Only because they are measuring themselves relative to those who did not spend those 2 years in the military.

How is building, maintaining and upgrading infrastructure providing no economic benefit?

Mentioned earlier not all service needs to be in combat roles.

>Do they not get to vote because they are unwilling to join the military?
Yeah, same as with weaklings and cowards. Perhaps "conscription" would be the wrong word technically speaking because there's a possibility to opt out. In a country like Israel, the hyperorthodox Jews would also fall in that category.

>Mentioned earlier not all service needs to be in combat roles

Then why have it be conscription at all/have the military involved?

>Only because they are measuring themselves relative to those who did not spend those 2 years in the military.

Well, yeah. Because I met most of them at non-korean unis where they were annoyed others were getting degrees younger than they were/they'd spent a few years doing nothing that would help their future job prospects.

Lionizing of the military I assume.

> That's swell but by this logic dictator has no reason to persecute minorities unless
There's plenty of reason for the dictator to do so. He can. Those people have some resources, and because they're in an even weaker position than most, the dictator can get away with substantially more. Plunder is vital to the dictator if he wishes to remain in power, because the few people that he does rely on will want a good return on investment, or they might start looking to support a rival that would give them a better deal.

>Yeah, same as with weaklings and cowards.

Alright, Navy guy here, son of another navy officer...go fuck yourself. The military serves so that others don't need to fight. There is no shame in not being part of the military and knowing where your own morals lie.

I wouldn't trust half of the guys I went through basic training with to not get drunk if left alone with a case of beer, they are not magically better at voting than anyone else.

it's also just not any use. We are increasingly having smaller military forces as we get more specialised equipment that requires more advanced training. this isn't WWI any more where warm bodies were the major factor.

> navy guy
> not weaklings and cowards
Pick one and only one.

People who talk about dictatorship as if it's a decent system always rely on fiction, because reality repeatedly shows that it isn't.