because it is not meant to be. — Olivier5

If you don't want to pay taxes, don't earn above the tax threshold.

Now what am I supposed to do if I don't want to be conscripted. Change age?

Not to mention that the first half of that comment was clearly rhetorical, the second half is the content of the argument. So unless you're going to argue that taxation is as harmful as war I don't see you've got anything useful to say.

Taxation would be the obvious candidate. — Olivier5

Not even funny as a joke.

the people also understand this....

... "the government" isn't some different entity from the people making decisions to fight a war totally independently from the people. It's delusional to think any government or regime would contemplate war or to defend itself by military means if there is no support for this from it's people for this. If there's not the will to fight — ssu

Then conscription is unnecessary. So why instigate it.

as if the threat would not be extremely dangerous for everybody in the society. — ssu

As would the threat of war.

You're just completely ignoring the issue. War is bad, being taken over by a foreign power is bad.

Two bad things. You can't have neither, you have to choose which.

The question at hand here is simply why does the government decide and force its decision on the people?

Governments simply don't behave that way in any other area. People can be living lives of utter destitution, on the streets, living out of a cardboard box, the government doesn't even force anyone to give up a Sunday afternoon to help.

Citizens are harmed in all sorts of ways all the time. So what is so special about the harm from foreign rule that gives a government the right to force its citizens to risk torture and death, to mitigate it?

Well, I've tried to give examples of that (to fight or to surrender) when it comes to war, but you respond that it's irrelevant. So that's why I'm a bit confused what your point is. — ssu

You gave examples of how bad it was to surrender. We already agree that's bad. So is war. Hence the weighing exercise.

The question is why, in this specific case, the government does that weighing and then forces it's decision on its people.

It doesn't seem to behave that way in any other case. I can't think of a single thing people are otherwise forced to do with such a massive risk of harm, on the basis of the government's idea of the pros and cons.

Hence...

I'm still waiting on those examples your argument requires of government action which impose a risk of death for a non-unanimous gain. — Isaac

...that might counter my claim of uniqueness.

I question how much democracy is valued by someone who argues against participation in democracy — praxis

I value the national health service, but I don't think unqualified people ought to participate in it.

To get closer to the OP, I might value education, but not participate in any teaching establishment because I disagree with their methods.

I can't see why this is at all controversial. One need not participate in everything one values. That seems pretty straightforward.

But you would be able to divide an extended thing forever. As the tiny pizza case shows. — Bartricks

It doesn't 'show' that at all. You thought it would remain divisible, I thought it wouldn't. Nothing's been 'shown' other than what we each reckon would be the case with a shrinking pizza.

It's patently absurd to imagine a shrinking pizza and then claim that whatever you imagine happening to it tells us anything whatsoever about what would really happen to it.

Extended things are divisible. Your claim - your correct claim - that nothing can be infinitely divisible does not contradict that. It just entails what I said, namely that reality contains no extended things. — Bartricks

But reality does contain extended things. It's a self-evident fact my reason presents to me, so the burden is on you to disprove it.

I have two self-evident facts of reason. The world contains extended things, and you can't divide things forever. Therefore you can't divide extended things infinitely.

It's on you to prove that wrong, and you can't just say "it isn't" to either of my premises, because they're self-evident facts of reason.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. — ssu

Do you understand the concept of weighing two bad things trying to decide which is the least bad?

How is any of that related to the discussion. Are you claiming that more people want to be shot than want to be ruled by Russia? Because unless you're making that claim then it remains the case that forced foreign rule is a more ambiguous harm than being shot.

As such it remains the case that when weighing the risk of one against the risk of the other, the risk of war is the less ambiguous.

I'm still waiting on those examples your argument requires of government action which impose a risk of death for a non-unanimous gain.

Why do you assume that not fighting a war the other option is "an ambiguous, uncertain harm on the other"? — ssu

Because more people disagree with war than disagree that death is bad.

It's quite simple. Take a population like Ukraine. How many would be happy to be ruled by Russia? We know it's at least a notable portion. How many don't care either way? Again, we know from interviews it's a not insignificant number.

Now conduct a survey on how many want to be shot or tortured. Do you think you'd get anything less than a unanimous 'no'?

So when weighing the two (we have to risk being shot to avoid Russian rule), the former is unambiguously bad, the latter isn't.

Let's look at what that meant for example for Estonia: — ssu

It's irrelevant. No one is claiming that being invaded is good. We're talking about the weighing of that badness against the badness of war. So...

Where do you get this idea that countries that invade others are somehow very benign and friendly to the people they conquer? — ssu

Where do you get this impression that war is nice and harmless?

Like what decisions? — Olivier5

Every single other decision. There is no precedent at all for forcing people to risk their lives for a gain they might not even agree with. None.

There's not even a precedent for governments forcing fairly minor impositions on otherwise innocent people for gains they might not even agree with.

I can't even think of a non-choice imposition a government makes on free, innocent adults at all, let alone one which carries such a high cost.

You are not appealing to reason, but to physics. — Bartricks

No, the physics is entirely imagined. I haven't a clue about physics. I'm appealing entirely to reason. My reason says that you can't just keep dividing extended objects forever, it sounds ridiculous.

Since my reason said it, we take it as default true and you have to prove it's wrong.

The idea that below a certain size it would become indivisible is utterly inconceivable. — Bartricks

I'm conceiving of it right now. Can't be held responsible for your lack of facility can I?

In things that it considers dangerous for the collective, these regulations can be far more drastic than otherwise. — ssu

Just ignoring the counterargument and restating your position is not discussion. This is a discussion forum.

I've already addressed this with examples. The government frequently ignores even minor impositions which would provably reduce harm to the collective. So the question remains why war is considered an exception. Massive imposition (risking death), uncertain danger (some citizens actually want foreign rule). Where's your precedent for such behaviour?

wars typically are the most dangerous things for the collective. — ssu

Wars are, not the consequences of not fighting, those are much, much harder to judge. So with a clear and definite harm on one side, and an ambiguous, uncertain harm on the other, by what precedent does the government consider forcing people to take a very high risk of torture and death to avoid such an uncertain outcome.

If you think this is normal behaviour for governments, you shouldn't have any trouble coming up with a similar action. Something where the harm is near certain injury, torture and death, the benefits are not even agreed upon, and the government gives no choice.

There are, in fact, a very small list of things governments actually force their citizens to do. Most government interventions are proscriptive, not prescriptive. Those that are prescriptive are either harmless or justice-based.

I can't think of a single example of a prescriptive government intervention which risks the death or torture of the citizen concerned, so I find the idea that this is just normal government behaviour in no need of special explanation completely absurd.

Stop saying you can't and not explaining why. — Bartricks

I don't need to explain why I can't. It's a self-evident fact of reason. You have to explain why I can. The burden of proof is on you.

Shall I remind you...?

Our reason represents [X].

That's prima facie evidence that's precisely what they are.

That means it is defeasible evidence. That's fancy for 'it could be false'.

But it means the burden of proof is on the person who thinks [~X] to undercut those rational intuitions. — Bartricks

So why can't you divide it? — Bartricks

Some law of physics prevents it.

We can't get that tiny and still be functional objects capable of dividing other objects.

Shrinking things doesn't even make sense without a non-shrunk background against which to compare and that non-shrunk background exerts a field which restricts shrinking.

... Are just some of the ideas I've just imagined.

I might imagine a few more over tea.

National defense is a collective good — Olivier5

This is the matter we're discussing, so just asserting it is begging the question.

National defense is good. Fighting in a war is bad. So if national defense requires fighting a war one must weigh the good and the bad and decide which outweighs which.

The question is why the government forcibly imposes its conclusion on that weighing exercise when it doesn't do so in many other far less impactful decisions.

Imagine a region of space isaac. Now imagine half of that. See?
Space. You can divide it. Any region of space. — Bartricks

Nope. I imagine at some point that just becomes impossible. I imagine that at some point the fabric of space becomes quantised such that it ceases to be like the space I'm used to but acts rather more like something space is made of than something divisible.

Wonderful thing the imagination.

Unfortunately almost useless when determining what actually is the case.

If we all shrank down, and everything else with us, would there come a size where we couldn't divide our pizzas Isaac? Does your reason say yes? — Bartricks

Yes. That's what I just told you. My reason says that space is not infinitely divisible and what you've just described is infinite divisibility.

Do explain to me, isaac, how it could be that an extended thing might not be divisible. — Bartricks

Easy. It seems to me that extended things are sometimes indivisible. It's what reason tells me. And, as you're so fond of reminding us, we have no other ground for knowing anything. It's you who have the burden of proof to show this self-evident fact of reason is not true.

And don't be predictable and say 'philosophers' and then lament that physicists don't study philosophy. It's very tiresome.

It is always more complicated than you cretins think. — Olivier5

Your comment had nothing to do with complexity. It was just a very basic error.

That some people choose to be involved has no bearing on the question of why a government would want to force others to be.

A foil for the indirect realists. — Andrew M

So I'm discovering.

So, shall we start with Parmenides and then Zeno of Elea. How many more do you want? What'll do the trick, Isaac?

Or do you want to know why they thought that any region of space can be infinitely divided? — Bartricks

Well yes, I suppose. I was leaving open the possibility that you'd supply the names of anyone who has actually studied space...

But let's look at what some other people reckoned. So two ancient Greeks from way before even the beginnings of physics had s bit of a think about it and reckoned that space is infinitely divisible, and that tells us what...? A good historical insight into the cultural beliefs of ancient Greece, perhaps.

As usual, you're supporting a premise of the form "Bartricks reckons...", by appealing to something else you reckon.

1. Leprechauns exist
2. If leprechauns exist then they're the only tiny creatures who wear pointy red hats
3. The tiny creature I just saw with a pointy red hat must have been a leprechaun.

All valid and sound.

Premise 1 is undeniable because I also believe leprechauns take the milk I put out for them and they couldn't do that if they didn't exist.

Premise 2 is undeniable because I also believe that the book I have on leprechauns is the gospel truth and it says they're the only tiny creatures who wear pointy red hats.

So the conclusion is undeniable.

Not really. People can volunteer to fight in Ukraine, and they do, so it's not like it's totally removed from personal choice. — Olivier5

Usual garbage.

Conscription removes personal choice. It's literally the definition of conscription.

It's not complicated.

any region of space can be divided. — Bartricks

According to whom?

half a mind makes no sense. — Bartricks

According to whom?

you really think it would just have been "a change in existing power structures"? — ssu

The question was not about the nature of the change (that was a proposed explanation) the question was about the need, and justification, for the imposition.

Let's take your assumption for granted. Israel would have ended up under the Palestinian thumb had it lost. That's not the question the OP is asking. The question the OP is asking is why does a state feel compelled to decide in opposition to those citizens, which state of affairs is preferable - war, or Palestinian rule.

Normally such monumental decisions are even considered too much for representative democracy to handle and are given over to referenda or personal choice. The oddity the OP is picking up on is that in the case of war, the decision (of literally life and death magnitude) is not only removed from any democratic process, but removed from personal choice too.

To argue that the decision can be explained by a beneficent concern for quality of life is ridiculous.

Think of the quality of life improvement if nonessential car journeys were simply banned. Millions saved from early death.

Think of the quality of life improvement from banning the consumption of excess sugar. Again in the millions.

And on... Dozens of impositions a government could make, of far less impact than conscription to war, which would have far greater impact on quality of life than a change in government.

So I don't see how concern for the outcome of regime change could possibly be the motivating factor, such concern would manifest in a whole slew of far less dangerous impositions first.

How can someone who is not against democracy honestly argue against participation in democracy? — praxis

Democracy doesn't require everyone's participation in voting.

If you really are published on this, then tell us the title of your book or article — Janus

It's alright. I think I've found it...

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-7859-2_1

I have mentioned about the effect of voting for smaller (lesst strong) parties has, in my first example at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/723152.
As for the confrontation between the two stronger parties, I gave another example in may recent post — Alkis Piskas

Those both seem to reference the post I responded to.

Your argument seems to be that abstaining makes it more likely the dominant party gets in because the second most dominant party gains fewer votes.

It's also true that the second most dominant party gains fewer votes if you vote for a minor party.

So yours seems to be an argument against voting for anyone other than the second most dominant party.

We have evidence that animals can recognise colours and no evidence that they share a common colour vocabulary. — Michael

What evidence are we working from here then?

in essence, by not voting, one supports the strongest party, whether this is known beforehand or not. — Alkis Piskas

This is no less true of voting for any party other than the second strongest. So is your argument that we should all vote for either the strongest or the second strongest party, and no others?

A hermit with no language could look at two objects and see them to be the same colour (or different colours) — Michael

You know this how?

Hacker shouldn't be construed as defending either direct or indirect realism. — Andrew M

Well then I'm left with no idea who these 'direct realists' even are, let alone what they claim. I asked @Michael for some examples of the direct realist claim and he pointed me to the SEP article on colour primitivism which listed Hacker as a proponent.

So...

1. Is Hacker not a colour primitivist, or is colour primitivism not a form of direct realism?

2. Who the hell is a direct realist? Seems everybody quoted turns out not to be one.

No offense, but this is bullshit. — L'éléphant

What is bullshit? That we should expect citations, or that it's standard practice? Your comment only goes on to describe the situations in which citation is accepted (though is unclear on how you measure this). My comment, however, is about what ought to be the case, not what is the case.

These kinds of actions are a detriment to robust discussion. Do you see why? — Tate

Deleting unargued, un cited, and un related content promotes robust discussion, it is not a detriment.

If you want to join in robust discussion, post relevant, argued and cited positions.

Elections are decided by votes and the structure of the election system, not be preferences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Only if people vote randomly. If people's votes reflect their political preferences then clearly their political preferences determine the outcome. Otherwise you might as well say that the returning officer determines the outcome and the actual votes merely cause him to decide to call it that way.

If preferences = outcomes than the Republican party would be extinct at the national level because it fares worse with median preferences continually. It is viable in part because of election mechanics (e.g., the electoral college, partisan districting, capping the House of Reps early in the 20th century, the arbitrary representation of the Senate) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, true. Not votes either though is it? In fact I don't see how this does anything but undermine your position. Voting matters even less if the system is rigged.

Having less support but supporters who are much more likely to vote is the thing that keeps the party competitive, none of the other stuff would save them without that edge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I said earlier, I don't consider the Democratic party to be any different from the Republicans so the fact that there's a set of non-voters who could get Democrats elected in some areas is irrelevant. If there were a set on non-voters who could get a socialist party elected I'd be more interested, but I already know there isn't. I don't need an election to tell me that. I can look out of my window.

It just happens rarely because radicals are, pretty much by definition, far from median preferences and so are unlikely to win in any electoral system. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Making voting for them pointless.

even if you're a radical you probably have competitive candidates that are closer to your ideal than others. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes probably. And if they're going to lose, they're going to lose. If, and only if, a moderately preferable party was a few votes behind a less preferable one I might be persuaded to vote, if it wasn't raining, and I had nothing else to do that day. Slightly increasing the chances of getting a slightly less awful party elected for a brief period where they will probably achieve none of their promises anyway, is not high on my list of priorities.

No. I think their success was down to frightening the Tories into adopting their policy, which they did by "splitting the vote." Without those losing votes, there would have been no referendum. — unenlightened

I see what you mean. I think maybe the misunderstanding here is in the sort of movement I'm imagining. Brexit was popular (despite people not actually wanting that party in power) and we could see how popular it was just by looking out of the window. I don't think Tory policy really waited for the actual election results before designing the strategy. They knew which way the wind was blowing. It goes back to what I said earlier. If you want to know what people are thinking politically, there's better ways to do that than elections.

I think the mistake here is conflating campaigning (which might be associated with an election), data-harvesting (which might be via an election, but need not be), and actually voting.

Brexit got done despite the Brexit party never winning significantly, because the movement became a bandwagon and the bigots climbed aboard. So losing votes matter. — unenlightened

I'm not following your line of thinking. The brexit movement promoted brexit sufficiently to get it done. What's that got to do with the votes they got? If anything they made progress despite low votes, not because of them. I guess I'm just not seeing the link you're seeing between their votes and their success. Do you not think their success is far more likely to be down to their (Cambridge Analytica) campaign strategy, rather than people seeing a few measly votes and thinking 'sod it, let's leave Europe, I'm sold"?

Even if your preferences are far from the median voters', your vote will still move the needle towards your preferences and away from the ones you most dislike. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And that does what?

voting for the candidate you least dislike is still an option. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think anyone is denying it's an option.

what you have is a tipping point. If you are balancing weights on a fulcrum, and you have more weight on one side than the other, and so you get a tip to one side, it isn't that the mass on the other side is reduced to zero, it just isn't enough to stop the tipping. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This would only be the case if voting were random. It isn't. Someone's voting behaviour is determined by their political preferences, which exist prior to the act of voting. So voting cannot tip the balance. The balance is already tipped (or not) by a slight change in political preferences. The vote merely records this change, it cannot cause it.

as one sided as the US system can get, you still get surprises. Massachusetts has had two long term Republican governors recently who were quite popular. Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. Parties with dominating leads in average voter preference can still manage to muck things up for themselves. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Did the communists get in somewhere? Was there a surprise landslide toward the radical eco-anarchists in Alabama? Somewhere we expect to be Republican turning Democrat is not a 'surprise' they're basically the same party anyway and to the extent they're different the changes will be undone/smothered completely by next election.

Winning on slim margins may also signal to election winners that they may need to moderate their views if they want to win re-election. This isn't always how it works, but it sometimes does. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not of the slightest interest to someone who dislikes both the leading party and the second though. You're just assuming a binomial political system and considering the effect of voting for the runners up. Not all of us fall into one of two camps.

One way they are seen to grow is by increasing their support in an election. Thus If I vote Green and the Green candidate does not win, still I have demonstrated some support for Green policies. — unenlightened

Absolutely. I don't see how that contradicts anything I've said.

Voting is simply the bureaucratic exercise of officially informing the returning officer of that position.

If I vote, I give the returning officer a more accurate dataset. — Isaac

Voting gives a slightly more accurate impression of how people feel politically than would be given if you didn't vote.

A well constructed survey would do a considerably better job of the same task.

Neither change the way things actually are, which is what determines who gets into power.

I can see a case for voting making a difference in the very specific circumstance where it is unclear what people's political views are (it's usually blindingly obvious), but in such cases a survey would be a better method.

Showing support influences others. — unenlightened

Does it? Does showing support for United at a football match influence City supporters? Are football fans constantly changing ends?

Are the wealthy surprised by opposition, or do they merely expect it?

Tories are not necessarily persuaded to be less bigoted by an increasing Labour vote. They may even be persuaded to be more bigoted to pick up the EDL vote to compensate.

Besides which, again, there are way more effective ways of showing support. Protests, consumer choices, strikes... Which render mere voting trivial by comparison. Very few people strategically go on an anti-racism march. Strategic voting is so commonplace as to render the tally almost meaningless in terms of support.

Fair enough. It seems like such a weak position shown false by the simplest of counterarguments that I find it very hard to believe I haven't simply misunderstood their position. I mean, one of the proponents listed in the article you cited was PMS Hacker. I don't agree with a lot of his philosophy, but he doesn't strike me as the sort of low caliber philosopher likely to make such an elementary error.

More reading required, I think. Probably more than I have the time for, unfortunately.

would you hang around a forum where your opponent deletes your posts? — Tate

If you consider @Xtrix your "opponent" that somewhat undermines your entire argument that your ice age comment just...

brought up the fact that we're in an ice age to explain some of the complexity. — Tate

Ask direct realists, not me. — Michael

But you're arguing against direct realism. You must have an understanding of their position in order to do so, surely?