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by DominikR 3599 days ago
Why? I try to explore why we need mercenary armies in the first place. Why are not enough people volunteering? What makes them withdraw and what could this mean for our future?

There are many comparisons that you can draw between the US and fallen empires that had to rely on mercenaries before they finally collapsed internally.

The last time Western civilisation collapsed at a large scale (Roman Empire) it took the West almost a thousand years to recover from it.
1 comments
mytddu 3599 days ago
> Why are not enough people volunteering?

Because these particular wars are pointless and immoral? Your segue from briefly discussing mercenaries on to gender roles, marriage, Trump, the EU, etc. just doesn't follow. It's obvious that your steering the conversation toward a certain set of talking points. The last 3/4 of your comment probably would've been arrived at no matter the topic at hand.

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DominikR 3599 days ago
> It's obvious that your steering the conversation toward a certain set of talking points.

I'm obviously biased as everybody else is. So I interpret the direction our society is moving towards (and articles like these) according to this bias. You can enter a discussion or ignore my comment, it's up to you.

But what I'm definitely sure of is that we don't really need to discuss why needing mercenary armies is bad for a society. Most people will agree that mercenary armies are a bad thing.

It's better to discuss why we do we need them in the first place and what can we do about it. The article suggests legislation to ban this, but you can't simply legislate societal trends away that created the problem in the first place.

Someone will eventually have to do this job, it's just that there aren't enough persons willing to do it. So if you ban use of mercenaries some other entity will likely take power where we left a power vacuum. (like ISIS did in Iraq)

And if at some point we can't even find enough volunteers to provide internal security (which could happen) then we are probably all finished.

Edit: Btw I agree that most of these wars have been immoral and wrong.

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