I saw this circulating around and thought it was an interesting read.
Some of these are horrendous, some are funny, and a few made me think "Hmm, maybe not a bad idea"
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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I think this thought experiment is only around voting on things that would cause harm to citizens. If you're willing to vote to send people to their death, you'd better be willing to join the list.
Like people frequently say representatives who vote against health care coverage for all should have their coverage taken away and they solely rely on private as well
Plenty of things cause harm to citizens. Somebody has to weld, somebody has to produce paints and batteries, the list goes on. All these things - including a standing army - are useful for the public, and it’s important to have professionals who handle it without forcing anybody who likes these things to volunteer to do them.
In the west we generally have professional armies, made of volunteer soldiers who chose to be sent wherever the country’s administration deems appropriate - and in working democracies the administration makes their decisions according to the popular will. If a foreign entity is posing a material threat I am very much free to think and express my opinion that we should let our professionals handle it, this is how things work in the present. To suggest that I should be enlisting because of this opinion is moronic.
Not that it’s any less moronic to suggest that military endeavours should be decided by popular vote: in representative democracy we vote people who we deem competent to form governments to run our countries, I certainly don’t think I can handle military affairs better than the ministry of defence. Direct democracy in general is a horrible idea, it’s not implemented anywhere relevant for good reason. But I digress.
The point is: the idea of “if you want the country to do it you should do it” is stupid and reeks of demagoguery.
If you like guns, then you need to be on the boat. This wasn't only true of people when I served, but culling our violent people by sending them where they've romanticized their involvement and (tell everyone) they dream of going satisfies that money/mouth issue and reminds them this isn't homeroom any more.
Voting to provide beneficial things like sewage and medicine aren't warhawk problems, so much as they are a hallmark to basic society. Don't conflate "killing in the name of " with fucking "do no harm".