[aspenmayer]

I agree, and I think there are more nuanced and meaningful historical and especially modern reasons we encourage veterans to turn swords to ploughshares.

It’s reasonable to assume that the powers that be may find themselves in situations politically precarious if veterans aren’t able to provide for themselves and those they ostensibly fought for. Veterans know where real and metaphorical bodies are buried, they also know that at a nation scale, the internal problems that face first world nations are usually not logistical, but political. If not for fear of disrupting business interests, UBI in the form of food stamps, housing, and Medicare for all is possible. The veterans know this, because they are fed and housed and medically treated at scale during and after service. However, if everyone receives these same benefits also without service obligations, the ability to offer incentives to service is limited.

UBI is a thorny issue due to the complexities of implementing it piecemeal alongside the already-existing status quo. In some ways, a greenfield solution would be easier, but they call those revolutionary changes revolutions rather than evolutions for good reasons.

Some stray links for food for thought:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords_to_ploughshares

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

[JumpCrisscross]

> there are more nuanced and meaningful historical and especially modern reasons we encourage veterans to turn swords to ploughshares

Oh, I always thought it was a reference to the Roman practice of settling veterans on farmsteads [1].

> if everyone receives these same benefits also without service obligations, the ability to offer incentives to service is limited

I'm not sure we could offer VA benefits to every adult without massively raising taxes. (Also, we treat our veterans quite poorly.)

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41342861

[aspenmayer]

Citizenship and a form of retirement through service is a time-honored military tradition, it’s true.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586918

> I'm not sure we could offer VA benefits to every adult without massively raising taxes.

If we eliminated waste and slippage/loss and gained efficiencies of scale by eliminating private health insurance obligations except for high net worth, like is done in some countries like Australia, I think we could come out ahead actually, due to reducing the cost of employment borne by businesses, while maintaining or increasing health outcomes for those on public healthcare rolls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(Australia)

> (Also, we treat our veterans quite poorly.)

To our great collective shame. That being a veteran is essentially a greater risk factor for peacetime structural violence in the form of homelessness, food insecurity, and lack of health care is a travesty only eclipsed by the how commonplace these issues are among fellow countrymen who are merely civilians.

What is this grand democratic experiment even for, if we still suffer from the same failure modes as that which we originally fought to save ourselves from?

[JumpCrisscross]

> What is this grand democratic experiment even for, if we still suffer from the same failure modes as that which we originally fought to save ourselves from?

We treat our veterans poorly, but let’s not lose perspective, that’s still far better than most countries today or in history.

[photonthug]

Another comment mentions land grants and swords to plows in antiquity. Lots of those vets weren’t super happy with the offering at the time since it moved them out to the frontiers where they’d feel less threatening to the republic, sure, but idk, a actual land grant seems better than token assistance of a loan for housing that remains pretty unaffordable.

Education assistance is more substantial maybe, but then again that’s something much of the civilized world enjoys without the threat of being blown up by ieds far from home in a pointless conflict.

Indeed though, let’s not lose perspective, let’s take a hard honest look at things and ask ourselves whether we’re doing better or worse.

The military is one of the best available options to lift people up out of poverty and give them a better chance at life, and it always has been. but it’s also a chance at no life at all, and so if people are forced into making this desperate bargain then it is disgraceful and reflects badly on what we’ve actually accomplished with all the time since antiquity.

[aspenmayer]

Veterans in countries with free college and health care for all, such as Australia or many European countries have it better still, as they receive their veterans benefits, while allowing those who did not or could not serve to also live free from undue burden or peril.

I do take your point, though, and don’t protest too much. It’s less a matter of how much is enough for our veterans, but rather, how far we have left to go, one and all. In many ways, veterans simply arrived at the limits of political capital before the rest of us, and now that the problems veterans face are similarly butting up against many if not all in some form or fashion, we have economic capital concerns in the form of UBI that has become the stalking horse for larger structural issues largely left unaddressed facing us all.