It turns out Prince Harry is a jackass

[Adam Reynolds]

It does, however, force the government to seriously consider that their electorate and their soldiers are from the same general class of people, rather than having the soldiers mostly be drawn from poor families that don't vote and have no clout whatsoever.

[Citation Needed].

Poorer families tend to have less education, and the modern US military is more educated than the general populace, for instance.

Isn't that often because it was payed for by the government?

Obviously the fact that the military largely requires a high school diploma/GED for everyone would make them better than the overall US populace. That doesn't change the fact that US soldiers are overrepresented by lower economic groups.

[Lonestar]

Isn't that often because it was payed for by the government?

I was specifically thinking of the High School Diploma/GED requirement, and the (generally) college requirement to start off as management.

There was exactly one person on my ship who entered without a Diploma/GED, and he had to pinky-promise to get one within two years of enlisting.

Obviously the fact that the military largely requires a high school diploma/GED for everyone would make them better than the overall US populace. That doesn't change the fact that US soldiers are overrepresented by lower economic groups.

Again, [Citation Needed].

The long and short of it is that poor families are not overrepresented. Keep in mind this article came from 2008, at the tail end of the surge in Iraq and manning difficulties, when the military was allowing far more people without Diplomas/GEDs. After the start of the recession, end(or reduction) of major ground combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and force reduction requirements, that percentage has almost certainly dropped like a rock.

I totally believe that some minorities are over-represented, but there's a trend where blacks make careers out of the military compared to white kids who are largely "one term and out" enlistees.

[Adam Reynolds]

Yeah, I saw Full Metal Jacket too.

Are there any confirmed cases of this in reality?

The long and short of it is that poor families are not overrepresented. Keep in mind this article came from 2008, at the tail end of the surge in Iraq and manning difficulties, when the military was allowing far more people without Diplomas/GEDs. After the start of the recession, end(or reduction) of major ground combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and force reduction requirements, that percentage has almost certainly dropped like a rock.

That article(if not the statistics) made largely the same point I did. Because a diploma is required, it by definition would skewer the statistics. Conceeded on the rest, I did overestimate the economic factors.

I totally believe that some minorities are over-represented, but there's a trend where blacks make careers out of the military compared to white kids who are largely "one term and out" enlistees.

Not according to the report you linked. Black Americans are not overrepresented.

[Lonestar]

Are there any confirmed cases of this in reality?

Probably. I have no doubt it has happened, I took umbrage with Ray acting as if it were a common occurrence. The first week or so of Boot Camp(at least for American service branches) is used to identify and remove recruits who might do that.

Not according to the report you linked. Black Americans are not overrepresented.

I said some minorities. There's a reason why the supply rates are viewed as the domain of the Filipino Mafia.

And I meant to convey that there is a higher proportion of senior enlisted who are black compared to junior enlisted.

[ray245]

Sometime the training can drive people into wanting to kill themselves.

Yeah, I saw Full Metal Jacket too.

I was actually IN boot camp.

Are there any confirmed cases of this in reality?

Probably. I have no doubt it has happened, I took umbrage with Ray acting as if it were a common occurrence. The first week or so of Boot Camp(at least for American service branches) is used to identify and remove recruits who might do that.

It depends also on how much the army is willingly to downgrade the status of someone when it needs more recruits trained for combat. And that is one of the problems of conscription, which is basically getting as much people through military training as possible, as opposed to being selective about it.

[AniThyng]

I was actually IN boot camp.

All that aside, do you think Singaporean NS has been effective at least in molding a "singaporean" identity among male singaporeans that went through it?

[ray245]

I was actually IN boot camp.

All that aside, do you think Singaporean NS has been effective at least in molding a "singaporean" identity among male singaporeans that went through it?

I think it partly depends on whether the person in general has the ability to leave Singapore. For those that did, it becomes useful to define themselves as Singapore by comparing that experience with migrants' lack of it. On the other hand, I've known people that disliked the nation more as a result of NS.

I think it is kinda hard when the people finishing 2 years of military service did not have much benefits, such as things like a reduction in university tuition fees or getting interest free tuition loans. I do not think conscription is well suited for a population that is already extremely wealthy, because the benefits they could receive are always not sufficient to cover the time and effort they've spent.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, I saw Full Metal Jacket too.

Are there any confirmed cases of this in reality?

Well, it's second-hand hearsay, but my spouse's biological father (whom I never met so calling him my father-in-law would be awkward for me) was a Marine drill sergeant who dealt with a couple suicides of people under his authority in basic training over a couple decades, including a guy who used a grenade and almost took along several other people. Sure, it does happen.

[Zwinmar]

Yeah, I saw Full Metal Jacket too.

Are there any confirmed cases of this in reality?

Well, it's second-hand hearsay, but my spouse's biological father (whom I never met so calling him my father-in-law would be awkward for me) was a Marine drill sergeant who dealt with a couple suicides of people under his authority in basic training over a couple decades, including a guy who used a grenade and almost took along several other people. Sure, it does happen.

Marine nitpick: he would be a Drill Instructor not a Drill Sergeant. Drill Sergeants are an army thing and a Drill Instructor would go ballistic if you called them one.

When I was going through Parris Island we had to stand suicide watch over another recruit. We had to wake him every hour on the hour to ensure he was alright. Not pleasant for any of us, let alone him. As for the other circumstances surrounding what was going on, we were never told.

[salm]

Marine nitpick: he would be a Drill Instructor not a Drill Sergeant. Drill Sergeants are an army thing and a Drill Instructor would go ballistic if you called them one.

Ah, so the military does turn people into lunatics on a regular basis after all...
As mentioned before, the less the better. You want your society to be influenced by as few infantile morons who get upset about a small error in their job title as possible.

[gigabytelord]

Ah, so the military does turn people into lunatics on a regular basis after all...
As mentioned before, the less the better. You want your society to be influenced by as few infantile morons who get upset about a small error in their job title as possible.

Coming from a family of active duty and ex-military adherence to rules and regs is very important, that includes having the fucking intelligence (ie the IQ of an ant) to use the proper rank and title when speaking to anther soldier regardless of branch or rank in that branch. And no enlisted man or officer worth his salt is going to lose it on an ignorant civilian because he/she misspoke and used the wrong rank or classification. He would however lose it on another soldier, why? Because they should fucking know better.

I thought we were suppose to mock stupid people for being oh I don't know... stupid... on SDN? Not be pointlessly offensive and lump entire groups together and tag them with phrases like "infantile morons".

[salm]

Coming from a family of active duty and ex-military adherence to rules and regs is very important, that includes having the fucking intelligence (ie the IQ of an ant) to use the proper rank and title when speaking to anther soldier regardless of branch or rank in that branch. And no enlisted man or officer worth his salt is going to lose it on an ignorant civilian because he/she misspoke and used the wrong rank or classification. He would however lose it on another soldier, why? Because they should fucking know better.

I thought we were suppose to mock stupid people for being oh I don't know... stupid... on SDN? Not be pointlessly offensive and lump entire groups together and tag them with phrases like "infantile morons".

I´m not lumping in all soldiers or drill whatevers. I´m lumping in people who go ballistic because of some petty nonsense. If you go ballistic for something as silly as a wrong job title you´re and infantile moron no matter what exactly your job is. If you´re an archiect and you go ballistic because somebody calls you an interior designer you´re a fucking infantile moron as well. Civillians usually don´t go ballistic over such nonsense. They will probably correct you or perhaps be annoyed but going ballistic seems to be in the realm of soldiers. Also, you don´t need a lot of intelliegence to get a stupid title right. You just need to learn them by heart. Morons are perfectly capable learning stuff by heart. In fact that is the preferred method of morons because they´re too stupid to deduct stuff logically.
Getting a job title right has nothing to do with people being smart or not. To me it looks like this has something do to with drill fucknuts finding a welcome opportunity to grill somebody over some minor error in protocol in order to satisfy their sadistic personality.

But you see, that is exactly why I want as few military people as possible. "Adherence to rules and regs" is very important to them. The military requires a culture in which minor infractions are punished. And I simply doubt that the majority is able to drop these character traits in civillian life. Or at least only partially. "Adherence to rules and regs" to the degree soldiers need to adhere is counter productive for civillians.

[Zwinmar]

Heh, adherence to rules and regulations also means adhering to the Geneva convention. Something many forget when they try to say you should follow orders without question. Instant willingness and obedience to orders works great if you are pulling WWI and Soviet military tactics (Stalingrad) however, in a small unit environment, not so much.

[salm]

Adhering to the Geneva conventions without questions is just as immoral as adering to any kind of other rules without questions.

[salm]

One question to the soldiers: How often does it actually happen that somebody openly challenges the order of some higher ranking soldier?

[Lonestar]

I was actually IN boot camp.


It depends also on how much the army is willingly to downgrade the status of someone when it needs more recruits trained for combat. And that is one of the problems of conscription, which is basically getting as much people through military training as possible, as opposed to being selective about it.

Look dude, The experience with the Singaporean military is obviously much different than with the US system. And it produces shitty enlisted people. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, whenever we had a VBBS team visit a civilian vessel the we knew when the Singaporeans had been there because some poor Pakistani fisherman was complaining about having the shit beat out of him by "the Chinese".

One question to the soldiers: How often does it actually happen that somebody openly challenges the order of some higher ranking soldier?

Not often. And when it is challenged it usually isn't because of some moral reason, it's because they just don't want to do it.

[Simon_Jester]

The flip side of which is, I suspect that very few soldiers spend much (or even any) of their time being commanded to do things that are genuinely immoral. Even evil armies aren't evil all the time, and for every time they indiscriminately blow up a bunch of random buildings, there are dozens of times some foot soldier will throw a fit because he doesn't want to dig latrines...

But you see, that is exactly why I want as few military people as possible. "Adherence to rules and regs" is very important to them. The military requires a culture in which minor infractions are punished. And I simply doubt that the majority is able to drop these character traits in civillian life. Or at least only partially. "Adherence to rules and regs" to the degree soldiers need to adhere is counter productive for civillians.

Veterans, on the whole, don't seem to have problems because of their own excessive adherence to rules in civilian society. The ones with PTSD or injuries may have problems, but "too orderly" doesn't seem to cause problems in and of itself.

And likewise, on the whole, being organized, acting according to predictable rules and habits, working well as part of a unit that is operating according to some external plan, and being able to force oneself to do things that are unpleasant or to keep persisting when one is tired...

Those are positive skills, not negative ones. They're not the only positive skills that exist, and some people demonstrate them in undesirable ways, but you're still more likely to be better off with those skills than without them.

[madd0ct0r]

in my limited experience, the vets returning did have issues since their own standards of rule adherence and 'not being fat and lazy and grossly entitled' was much higher then the society people in the office they were working in.
To the point where one guy moved to malaysia, since he liked the work ethic of developing countries more.

[ray245]

Look dude, The experience with the Singaporean military is obviously much different than with the US system. And it produces shitty enlisted people. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, whenever we had a VBBS team visit a civilian vessel the we knew when the Singaporeans had been there because some poor Pakistani fisherman was complaining about having the shit beat out of him by "the Chinese".

If conscription does not produce good soldiers, then it becomes even less necessary to have a big conscript army. When the only means of controlling the soldiers is basically to have a massive stick with a small carrot, it creates massive problem for discipline.

[salm]

Veterans, on the whole, don't seem to have problems because of their own excessive adherence to rules in civilian society. The ones with PTSD or injuries may have problems, but "too orderly" doesn't seem to cause problems in and of itself.

And likewise, on the whole, being organized, acting according to predictable rules and habits, working well as part of a unit that is operating according to some external plan, and being able to force oneself to do things that are unpleasant or to keep persisting when one is tired...

Those are positive skills, not negative ones. They're not the only positive skills that exist, and some people demonstrate them in undesirable ways, but you're still more likely to be better off with those skills than without them.

I´m not talking about individual soldiers having or causing problems. I´m talking firstly, about how soliders are a significant group of the population. Secondly, about how a significant group influences the population because, well, it is of significant size. Since soldiers get molded into having particular character traits this group will cause a certian shift of the presence of these traits in the population.

Since I find adherence to rules a bad trait (at least if as dominant as in soldiers) I want to have as few people with this trait in the population as possible. Therefore it is logical to favour and army with fewer soldiers. On the other hand I want the military to have a certain value, so if we have few soldiers they need to be good soldiers. Since conscripts tend to be worse than non consricpts due to a bunch of factors I favor a non conscripted military.

The same counts for soldiers with PTSD. If you have a significant number of them they will have a negative impact on the country. Therefore it is better to have fewer soldiers because fewer soldiers means less PTSD soldires which again means more resources per PTSD soldier to keep away negative impacts on the rest of the population. Obviously this profits the individual solidier as well.

This isn´t something confined to soldiers. I want to have as few beurocrats, cops and probably consultants and advertisers as possible, too. It´s just that with soldiers it is relatively easy to categorize them because they get actively drilled into certain behaviors whereas other jobs are less clear cut.

An extreme case would be societies like ancient Sparta where a very large percentage of people were soldiers. That would be a social model that is extremely unappealing to me.

[Patroklos]

I said some minorities. There's a reason why the supply rates are viewed as the domain of the Filipino Mafia.

The "Filipino Mafia" was a thing because there was a special program when Subic Bay was open that allowed for increased recruiting of non citizen Filipinos into the Navy (which most did as a springboard for US citizenship). Since they were non citizens they were not eligible for clearances thus they gravitated to the supply rates and by the time they had citizenship they were too far along to leave them. I also believe the deal included a guarantee of a first tour Westpac assignment.

The Filipino Mafia is largely extinct now. No more recruiting from the Philippines proper (at least not from an advantaged position) and those that are in are generally second generation Americans with clearances that did not restrict their ratings choices. That said my LSCS is current Filipino.

One question to the soldiers: How often does it actually happen that somebody openly challenges the order of some higher ranking soldier?

My senior enlisted personnel (or junior officers) routinely ask to speak to me privately to address the course of things they disagree with. Rarely is it something earth shattering but the fact is we do not stifle dissent, we simply control it to avoid second guessing each other all the time in public. Its just as damaging to my CPO's authority to question him publically as it is for him to do it to me. Unless its something safety related or otherwise situationally important there is no need to correct people right then and there, whether junior or senior.

Those behind the scenes chats don't make the big screen though, which makes it really easy to weed out the civilian wannabe experts on the military in discussions like this.

[Knife]

Coming from a family of active duty and ex-military adherence to rules and regs is very important, that includes having the fucking intelligence (ie the IQ of an ant) to use the proper rank and title when speaking to anther soldier regardless of branch or rank in that branch. And no enlisted man or officer worth his salt is going to lose it on an ignorant civilian because he/she misspoke and used the wrong rank or classification. He would however lose it on another soldier, why? Because they should fucking know better.

I thought we were suppose to mock stupid people for being oh I don't know... stupid... on SDN? Not be pointlessly offensive and lump entire groups together and tag them with phrases like "infantile morons".

I´m not lumping in all soldiers or drill whatevers. I´m lumping in people who go ballistic because of some petty nonsense. If you go ballistic for something as silly as a wrong job title you´re and infantile moron no matter what exactly your job is. If you´re an archiect and you go ballistic because somebody calls you an interior designer you´re a fucking infantile moron as well. Civillians usually don´t go ballistic over such nonsense. They will probably correct you or perhaps be annoyed but going ballistic seems to be in the realm of soldiers. Also, you don´t need a lot of intelliegence to get a stupid title right. You just need to learn them by heart. Morons are perfectly capable learning stuff by heart. In fact that is the preferred method of morons because they´re too stupid to deduct stuff logically.
Getting a job title right has nothing to do with people being smart or not. To me it looks like this has something do to with drill fucknuts finding a welcome opportunity to grill somebody over some minor error in protocol in order to satisfy their sadistic personality.

But you see, that is exactly why I want as few military people as possible. "Adherence to rules and regs" is very important to them. The military requires a culture in which minor infractions are punished. And I simply doubt that the majority is able to drop these character traits in civillian life. Or at least only partially. "Adherence to rules and regs" to the degree soldiers need to adhere is counter productive for civillians.

Heh, hyperbole is hyperbole. I doubt any Drill Instructor is going to gut you like a little piggy for it but it is annoying when you are a professional who went through a lot of effort for a title to be mislabeled. Doctors don't like being called technicians, Senators don't like being called Congressmen, etc... You've seemed to have latched onto to this small thing and are riding it like a high horse and it really makes you look silly.

[Knife]

I´m not talking about individual soldiers having or causing problems. I´m talking firstly, about how soliders are a significant group of the population. Secondly, about how a significant group influences the population because, well, it is of significant size. Since soldiers get molded into having particular character traits this group will cause a certian shift of the presence of these traits in the population.

Ok, I have no problem with this premise.

Since I find adherence to rules a bad trait (at least if as dominant as in soldiers) I want to have as few people with this trait in the population as possible. Therefore it is logical to favour and army with fewer soldiers. On the other hand I want the military to have a certain value, so if we have few soldiers they need to be good soldiers. Since conscripts tend to be worse than non consricpts due to a bunch of factors I favor a non conscripted military.

This is the one I am having problems wrapping my head around. You have a problem with people having a trait of following rules. Ok, I guess it is a spectrum, in that at some point blindly following rules can be seen as bad. However, I don't see where you've stipulated that or have shown that the basic trait of said veterans is elevated to that level.

I could be wrong but it looks more like a clumsy justification of not liking military things and so deciding to not like this trait. But I could be wrong.

The same counts for soldiers with PTSD. If you have a significant number of them they will have a negative impact on the country. Therefore it is better to have fewer soldiers because fewer soldiers means less PTSD soldires which again means more resources per PTSD soldier to keep away negative impacts on the rest of the population. Obviously this profits the individual solidier as well.

Yeah, the more you go on the more I'm seeing you working backwards on this issue. Look, I have sympathies with your position, if I'm seeing it right, in that large military needs to do something, might as well break a country- type thing. That said, if you go that route, you need to look at leadership, not some weird thing about how positive traits in the military are really negative. lol.

This isn´t something confined to soldiers. I want to have as few beurocrats, cops and probably consultants and advertisers as possible, too. It´s just that with soldiers it is relatively easy to categorize them because they get actively drilled into certain behaviors whereas other jobs are less clear cut.

Sure.

An extreme case would be societies like ancient Sparta where a very large percentage of people were soldiers. That would be a social model that is extremely unappealing to me.

I'm more worried about wannabe's than actual vets. People who buy into and want the prestige, glory, mythos, and grandeur of military service without actually going into the military and learning those positive traits you don't like. Nutbar militia guys running around with guns and some old training book they bought off of Amazon but have never wanted or have been trained to work as a group, follow legal orders but refuse illegal ones, fantasize about the glory of combat against evil government forces but have never really been in danger let alone be shot at to temper those fantasies. Those are the scary ones.

[Simon_Jester]

Since I find adherence to rules a bad trait (at least if as dominant as in soldiers) I want to have as few people with this trait in the population as possible. Therefore it is logical to favour and army with fewer soldiers.

Would this assessment depend in part on the overall character and nature of the society?

I mean, if you have a society where general disorder among the civilian population is very high, perhaps they could use a dose of people who are quite orderly. Complementary opposites, and that sort of thing.

Conversely, in a place where the civilians are well-ordered, perhaps adding super-orderly soldiers to them in large numbers will cause greater problems.

Then again, one might reverse the argument equally well.

The same counts for soldiers with PTSD. If you have a significant number of them they will have a negative impact on the country. Therefore it is better to have fewer soldiers because fewer soldiers means less PTSD soldires which again means more resources per PTSD soldier to keep away negative impacts on the rest of the population.

On the other hand, what if soldiers are more likely to end up with post-traumatic stress as a result of being sent into a combat zone in smaller numbers, and thus having to fight a longer and bloodier campaign to defeat the enemy?

An extreme case would be societies like ancient Sparta where a very large percentage of people were soldiers. That would be a social model that is extremely unappealing to me.

What made Sparta so appalling was not so much the existence of a large class of soldiers (not, proportionately, much larger than the portion of residents expected to be prepared to fight in other Greek city-states). It was how that class of soldiers was raised, and how brutally they oppressed the slaves that did all the normal civilian work.

[Grumman]

I mean, if you have a society where general disorder among the civilian population is very high, perhaps they could use a dose of people who are quite orderly.

Not if those orderly people start thinking that those civilians have a problem that can be solved by conscripting them to build character.

Returning to the specific case of the UK, the UK does not need conscripts. The French Foreign Legion aren't going to come charging through the Chunnel, and Germany isn't coming back for round three. And the UK does not deserve conscripts. We're talking about David Cameron and his cretins here. We've seen how well they'd handle this, it's called Workfare.