This isn't as big of a deal as people are hyping it up to be. This (and things like including women) has been talked about for a while now. Men have been required to register for selective service during all recent times. This just saves you the trouble of going to the post office to fill out the form (or maybe it's online finally).
> A vast majority of US states and territories also automatically register men for selective service when driver's licenses are issued.
I think a lot of people either (understandably) forgot or didn't pay attention to the details of when they got their driver's license, or we have a bot problem spreading toxic propaganda.
The majority of men are already registered. I agree this is not controversial.
its bizarre when people act like the preceding day, week, month, etc has no bearing on the weight of activities. same with who makes the decisions and their biases
if you want to present the history of why now, go ahead but acting like a gollygeewhiz LLM about it is bizzare and incurious.
>The new rule, proposed by a government agency, would see men being registered automatically rather than being asked to do so themselves within 30 days of their 18th birthday.
Honest question: Why is there no such auto registration for women?
Women are currently not required or allowed to register for selective service. It doesn't make sense to automatically register them for something they're not allowed to register for.
Because it's a polite fiction that men and women are equally capable and expendable at warfare. Successful and enduring human societies practice traditions around warfare that reflect this.
It's more that women are the less expendable gender. If you send the women to die on the front lines, who is going to birth the next generation to replenish your population?
I mean, the mongols were probably the most successful military, taking on armies five times their size with better metalworks. They used women as fighters. Japanese Bushi ('samurai' class) also had women in their ranks, and Celtic traditions had women not only serving in the army, but very often as arms teachers (military instructor), and sometimes war leaders. Some of the army leaders who troubled Rome the most were women. You can also take a look at the Vikings if you want a fourth example.
The fact is, western military traditions it sexist for no good reason. Yes, the strongest woman will be weaker than the strongest man. Yes, it you take a sport like swordfighting, the best woman will be at the level of the 50th best man. But we're not talking about taking champions on a 1 on 1 duel here. We aren't even talking about fighting. What really matters in armies is endurance, and women are close enough to men on that that it shouldn't really matter.
And even if you want to think of war as a succession of duels, war have changed in the last century. Women are just better as shooting than men, especially when standing.
In fact, women tend to outdo men in extreme endurance competition. It’s part of the trade-off for a lower ceiling on absolute strength.
But yes, in modern warfare there are as many jobs if not more that require precision or some level of intelligence as those that require brute strength. Even if fewer of them are right at the front line, they’re just as important.
You don’t send a large percentage of women to the front line in wars of attrition because their deaths mean a greater loss of future reproductive capacity than men’s do. But the way countries like the US have waged war over the last 75 years (with a relatively small surface area of soldiers put directly at risk), that’s less of a consideration. The counterpoint might be a border war without massive air superiority on either side like the current one in Ukraine.
Not just endurance sports. Anecdotal evidence, but female rock climbers have been more skilled in my experience. Perhaps because the brute force escape hatch isn't as available.
Rock climbing is pretty weird. At the top level, it is clear male athletes have most advantages: height, and shoulder strength, that make routes designed for male very hard to compete on for most female athlete.
On the other hand, routes set for female athlete are also very hard for males to compete on. Some of them you can bruteforce (with strenght a la Janja, or with size), but some of them male joints just can't handle the rotations needed.
Still, a male athlete would do better on female route than a female athlete would on male routes imho (at the top level, at mine it just doesn't matter).
But when you're rock climbing in montains with people who have the same experience, yeah, women tends to do better. And even when you're the most experienced, women tends to get better faster especially when you're doing "multi-pitch climbing" (google translate on this, i hope that's right) for a few days in a row.
If enough people at position of influence fear that a war is coming, the fear itself will realize the anticipated event. Preemptive strikes will be the trigger.
There is some truth to, what was it, Soros' reflexivity.
United States is immune from conventional military attack, the only purpose of mass conscription is to create an expeditionary for invading other countries. You have to wonder whether this may be for Canada / Greenland at some point
Conventional being the key word. Yes, I know that usually is in contrast to nuclear warfare.
There’s really no motivation for China to attack the US (they have plenty of economic leverage and that would be far less costly to them than an invasion, and what would they even want with the territory of a conquered US?) but I suspect many of the reasons the US is assumed to be immune to invasion are far weaker in the face of an enemy with far more manpower and a near-bottomless supply of drones that also has the capacity to cut off our access to key parts, materials, and manufactured goods.
Draft registration is compulsory based on residency; registering someone in error has no consequences unless there is a draft, which seems unlikely (no draft since Vietnam, large differences in how the US carries out war since then). In the event of erroneous registration when there is an active draft, past procedure was to allow time to reply and object, including through court process, so an erroneous registration would hopefully not leas to erroneous compulsory military service and associated risks. Not registering has potentially life long consequences that you may not be able to fix after you age out of registration; moving responsibility off of young men and onto the government seems fair.
Voting has eligibility requirements (citizenship, felony status depending on jurisdiction of offense) and registering someone in error could induce them to vote while inelligible, which is a serious offense.
Automatic tax filing might be nice for easy situations, but there's lots of things the IRS doesn't know and can't realistically know. Like how much capital improvements did you do on your house, and maybe even how much did you pay for your house ... whenever the IRS doesn't know the cost basis, they helpfully assume it is zero and send you a big tax bill... Still for w-2 + 1099s with cost basis reported, it could be easier.
The US has no compulsory ID. Parents are not even required to register births; medical professionals are, though, and a lot of things become challenging without a birth certificate, so I imagine the vast majority of births are registered. It's only within the past few decades that children were registered with social security at birth, instead of later. My siblings and I were only registered when it became necessary to get a credit on my parents's taxes; my parents were registered when they began to seek employment.
I never registered for the selective service and never faced any consequences. Maybe this is a more efficient means of closing these gaps while simultaneously saving the government tons of money.
The point remains that I never registered. So either registration doesn’t matter or some other automated process did it for me. Therefore the process should just be automated in a single uniform way to save the government money.
You can't vote, but you can die for Israel.
Also, you can be automatically registered for the draft, but automatically registering people to vote is a culture war issue.
I wish this were hyperbolic. Sadly, the memes have become reality (was it always reality?)
I'm genuinely perplexed as to why this story was flagged.
As multiple commenters have pointed out, this is actually not new(e.g you get registered when you get your driver's license).
I wonder why flagging brigade on HN has such a thin skin when it comes to anything even remotely critical of the current govt.
This isn't as big of a deal as people are hyping it up to be. This (and things like including women) has been talked about for a while now. Men have been required to register for selective service during all recent times. This just saves you the trouble of going to the post office to fill out the form (or maybe it's online finally).
Now all that Social Media, Google account data, online banking info etc. comes home to roost.
Unlike Vietnam, one can no longer hide from government in times of unrest.
Perhaps that's the wake-up call privacy needs.
No biggie, you can always develop bonespurs!
> you can always develop bonespurs
I've looked into it, and this ailment is weirdly linked to the wealth of your parents.
Ah, that's the Rich Man's Burden, it weighs heavily on the bone (spurs).
> Unlike Vietnam, one can no longer hide from government in times of unrest.
That's true but you can leave for Canada or Europe.
For a total of 90 days in a rolling 180 day period in case of the Schengen area. That's a bit less than needed.
> A vast majority of US states and territories also automatically register men for selective service when driver's licenses are issued.
I think a lot of people either (understandably) forgot or didn't pay attention to the details of when they got their driver's license, or we have a bot problem spreading toxic propaganda.
The majority of men are already registered. I agree this is not controversial.
usually things are controversial in context.
its bizarre when people act like the preceding day, week, month, etc has no bearing on the weight of activities. same with who makes the decisions and their biases
if you want to present the history of why now, go ahead but acting like a gollygeewhiz LLM about it is bizzare and incurious.
Will trans men and women be automatically registered too? Since the US military has previously kicked out all trans people
Not sure about US but since another comment linked to an article about Germany, there you cannot avoid conscription by changing gender.
The fact that conscription is gender based should be challenged in the courts. Either there is equal society or not
>The new rule, proposed by a government agency, would see men being registered automatically rather than being asked to do so themselves within 30 days of their 18th birthday.
Honest question: Why is there no such auto registration for women?
Women are currently not required or allowed to register for selective service. It doesn't make sense to automatically register them for something they're not allowed to register for.
Because it's a polite fiction that men and women are equally capable and expendable at warfare. Successful and enduring human societies practice traditions around warfare that reflect this.
It's more that women are the less expendable gender. If you send the women to die on the front lines, who is going to birth the next generation to replenish your population?
I mean, the mongols were probably the most successful military, taking on armies five times their size with better metalworks. They used women as fighters. Japanese Bushi ('samurai' class) also had women in their ranks, and Celtic traditions had women not only serving in the army, but very often as arms teachers (military instructor), and sometimes war leaders. Some of the army leaders who troubled Rome the most were women. You can also take a look at the Vikings if you want a fourth example.
The fact is, western military traditions it sexist for no good reason. Yes, the strongest woman will be weaker than the strongest man. Yes, it you take a sport like swordfighting, the best woman will be at the level of the 50th best man. But we're not talking about taking champions on a 1 on 1 duel here. We aren't even talking about fighting. What really matters in armies is endurance, and women are close enough to men on that that it shouldn't really matter.
And even if you want to think of war as a succession of duels, war have changed in the last century. Women are just better as shooting than men, especially when standing.
In fact, women tend to outdo men in extreme endurance competition. It’s part of the trade-off for a lower ceiling on absolute strength.
But yes, in modern warfare there are as many jobs if not more that require precision or some level of intelligence as those that require brute strength. Even if fewer of them are right at the front line, they’re just as important.
You don’t send a large percentage of women to the front line in wars of attrition because their deaths mean a greater loss of future reproductive capacity than men’s do. But the way countries like the US have waged war over the last 75 years (with a relatively small surface area of soldiers put directly at risk), that’s less of a consideration. The counterpoint might be a border war without massive air superiority on either side like the current one in Ukraine.
Not just endurance sports. Anecdotal evidence, but female rock climbers have been more skilled in my experience. Perhaps because the brute force escape hatch isn't as available.
Rock climbing is pretty weird. At the top level, it is clear male athletes have most advantages: height, and shoulder strength, that make routes designed for male very hard to compete on for most female athlete.
On the other hand, routes set for female athlete are also very hard for males to compete on. Some of them you can bruteforce (with strenght a la Janja, or with size), but some of them male joints just can't handle the rotations needed.
Still, a male athlete would do better on female route than a female athlete would on male routes imho (at the top level, at mine it just doesn't matter).
But when you're rock climbing in montains with people who have the same experience, yeah, women tends to do better. And even when you're the most experienced, women tends to get better faster especially when you're doing "multi-pitch climbing" (google translate on this, i hope that's right) for a few days in a row.
There are roles other than infantry in war, right?
Maybe because according to the same government philosophy a woman's place is in the kitchen or something?
It would require an extremely unpopular change of law. I also believe women should be available for conscription.
I'd love to but have these bone-spurs, ouch.
It's just a change to the already mandatory registration. It doesn't mean they are going to call up the draft.
>It doesn't mean they are going to call up the draft.
Are you aware of the concept of "boiling the frog"?
2027: "It's just calling up the draft. It doesn't mean they are going to be sent to the frontline."
It's going to be much more useful to register all drones, robots, and AI systems once they reach 18 years of age.
Nations should be led by example, someone who is a draft dodger shouldn't be allowed to become a president.
Yet, here we are.
Then Clinton would've never been president, and where would the fun have been in that ??
Why? This seems so anachronistic. In the age of drones and AI, manpower is not going to be your limiting factor.
War hysteria is on peak. [0]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-w...
If enough people at position of influence fear that a war is coming, the fear itself will realize the anticipated event. Preemptive strikes will be the trigger.
There is some truth to, what was it, Soros' reflexivity.
United States is immune from conventional military attack, the only purpose of mass conscription is to create an expeditionary for invading other countries. You have to wonder whether this may be for Canada / Greenland at some point
Conventional being the key word. Yes, I know that usually is in contrast to nuclear warfare.
There’s really no motivation for China to attack the US (they have plenty of economic leverage and that would be far less costly to them than an invasion, and what would they even want with the territory of a conquered US?) but I suspect many of the reasons the US is assumed to be immune to invasion are far weaker in the face of an enemy with far more manpower and a near-bottomless supply of drones that also has the capacity to cut off our access to key parts, materials, and manufactured goods.
Yes, I suppose it makes no sense to have bases all over the world then.
[dead]
Weird we have this technology but not the technology for automatic voter registration, or automatic tax filing...
Draft registration is compulsory based on residency; registering someone in error has no consequences unless there is a draft, which seems unlikely (no draft since Vietnam, large differences in how the US carries out war since then). In the event of erroneous registration when there is an active draft, past procedure was to allow time to reply and object, including through court process, so an erroneous registration would hopefully not leas to erroneous compulsory military service and associated risks. Not registering has potentially life long consequences that you may not be able to fix after you age out of registration; moving responsibility off of young men and onto the government seems fair.
Voting has eligibility requirements (citizenship, felony status depending on jurisdiction of offense) and registering someone in error could induce them to vote while inelligible, which is a serious offense.
Automatic tax filing might be nice for easy situations, but there's lots of things the IRS doesn't know and can't realistically know. Like how much capital improvements did you do on your house, and maybe even how much did you pay for your house ... whenever the IRS doesn't know the cost basis, they helpfully assume it is zero and send you a big tax bill... Still for w-2 + 1099s with cost basis reported, it could be easier.
In many countries, having citizenship means you are registered to vote. It is pretty convenient. Just show your ID card and you can vote.
The US has no compulsory ID. Parents are not even required to register births; medical professionals are, though, and a lot of things become challenging without a birth certificate, so I imagine the vast majority of births are registered. It's only within the past few decades that children were registered with social security at birth, instead of later. My siblings and I were only registered when it became necessary to get a credit on my parents's taxes; my parents were registered when they began to seek employment.
It is also worth noting that in these countries it is significantly less hassle and lower monetary costs to get an ID card than in the USA.
Everything for Israel!
I never registered for the selective service and never faced any consequences. Maybe this is a more efficient means of closing these gaps while simultaneously saving the government tons of money.
No student loans? No government job? There are consequences but they're easy to resolve.
I never had problems with any of those.
You were probably registered when you got a drivers license.
The point remains that I never registered. So either registration doesn’t matter or some other automated process did it for me. Therefore the process should just be automated in a single uniform way to save the government money.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697670
Is this democratic?
Democratic means giving all citizens a say in government. What are you trying to convey with the word?
[flagged]
in the future no sign-up will be required for misguided adventurism in the middle east and beyond!
What if my name is Claude? Am I exempt?