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When you say
I think you are misreading what OP said:
The "ideal" state described is not waiting till 30 and then figuring out who to pick. It is to pick around University and stick with your choice. The children (and marriage) wait until the woman feels safe both by herself (that is she has education and a job to support herself and potential children, if something were to happen to her bf/husband) and with her bf/husband. That is he proves that he is reliable etc.
This is certainly not ideal when it comes to having (especially many) kids. The biological window is limited (not only for women). But it is a perfectly rational choice of action fo women if you want to mitigate the risk of having a terrible husband who will not treat you well.
But that's my point. This desire for safety is antisocial.
And before we start arguing that this is an unreasonable or special demand, let me remind you that men can still, to this day, be forced to fight and die for society.
If you want your society to continue to exist, you're going to have to sacrifice some comfort and take some risks to make sure that there is a next generation of your people. Or we can just live in anarchy and have no loyalties to each other until we get conquered by more sensible people. I so far see no reason to believe there is an alternative.
I understand you are not American. From my very American perspective: yes, I registered for selective service, which is our national male military draft program. I volunteered for some hypothetical draft. I predict if they ever to use the draft in anything other than an apocalyptic impossible situation in which mainland America was invaded, it would be an unmitigated shitshow. Our culture used to have a commonly used draft. A significant minority of American men were called to military service including in peace time to maintain a standing military. The Vietnam War ruined it beyond recovery.
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Speaking as someone who is against the draft, I am also against forcing women into performing an equivalent sacrifice.
We're in the age of automation and exponential productivity growth. Surely the solution is simply to guarantee security and flourishing for everyone. I cannot imagine any version of the world where solving that engineering problem is actually harder than convincing millions of women to sacrifice their security.
For goodness sake, we're already most of the way there!
As for being conquered, I'm willing to bet everything on NATO. A planet-spanning military alliance that spends more on weapons than the rest of the world combined will not be overcome so easily. China might get Taiwan back, but they're not going to land troops in San Francisco any time soon. In the long run, AI will change the nature of the game in a way that makes population dynamics obsolete long before any power rises that can credibly challenge NATO.
First, this seems entirely unprincipled given that NATO (and its proxies) relies on conscription ultimately.
Second, I see here no reason to believe that AI or any sort of productivity improvement changes the base reality that it is people who exist who shape society. Japan's automation strategy is a pragmatic mitigation but doesn't change the destination of their society.
What the hell kind of twisted definition of "flourishing" are we using here that people being so secure and domesticated they won't have children counts? It's a zoo you're building.
Some of NATO's proxies rely on conscription, but I think that NATO itself doesn't, at least as long as it only cares about defense and not taking the offense. I think that nuclear weapons by themselves are already sufficient to guarantee NATO's security, and maintaining an effective nuclear deterrent does not require the labor of so many people that a developed country would ever realistically need to use conscription to get the necessary manpower, as opposed to using less forceful means of recruitment such as money, patriotism, and the mystique of nuclear weapons.
I don't understand why people are so keen to forget that Korea and Vietnam were both very much in the atomic age. I can understand people in the 50s thinking nukes would be the end of war, but we're surely free of such illusions? At best they're the end of world wars. Maybe.
Being generous you could place the end of mandatory military service and the West's choice to rely on professionals in the 60s, which is less than a century ago and did not result in an end of conscription laws being on the books. If it reverted it wouldn't be the first time something like that happens.
I wouldn't exactly take it for gospel that you'll never be handed a rifle, not when you can lawfully be handed one right now on a whim of "national security".
Korea and Vietnam were not wars of national defense for the US, USSR, and China. My point is that nukes are probably sufficient to deter other powers from launching major attacks on your own territory, not that they are sufficient to put an end to all forms of war.
Also, I phrased my comment poorly. I was not trying to say that NATO does not or will not use conscription. Clearly, some NATO members already use conscription right now. I was trying to say that NATO, insofar as it actually is a defensive alliance, does not actually need to use conscription. But to some extent it uses conscription anyway.
That said, maybe I'm wrong. I do not think that NATO would abandon, say, Finland or Poland to a Russian invasion out of fear of nuclear war - since this would mean the end of NATO as a viable alliance. But certainly a country would prefer to be able to fight off an invasion in the first place, rather than just relying on waiting for a NATO counterattack to liberate it at some point later.
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One thing to note is that in WW2 people were ultimately forbidden to volunteer (in the British Army, anyway). Relying on patriotism creates big bulges of recruits that are hard to process at the start of the war, after important event etc.
Conscription works much better for any serious war because it allows you to stagger your intake, make sure the impact of losses is spread through the country, and get a wider variety of applicants.
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I should note that Japan too has recently discovered the joys of ActuallyIndians. If you go to any convenience store or quite a lot of chain restaurants, all the staff are Indian now and have been for several years. Maybe since Covid?
It’s less so outside Tokyo but I imagine that’s a matter of time.
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