Used to be called starting a war. It’s working for Russia but you really need to have a draft/conscription to make it succeed. The wealthy pay a doctor to say they have bone spurs and the poor go die somewhere else. As a plus some wealthy benefit from an overheated military industrial complex
But there are side effects, such as generating more poverty by killing off the main income in families
That worked well enough back in ye olden days, but you don’t see it much in the modern world. Winning a war isn’t just about having enough people on the front line. It’s about what kinds and what quantities of weapons and equipment you can get to people that matters. A tiny country with a small population and an advanced industrial economy will wipe the floor with a country with an army of peasant conscripts 10x as large. Keeping the people in uniform equipped and fed is even more important than actually finding people to put into a uniform.
This matters because every person you send to the front line is another that can’t be on the home front working at a munitions plant, or working on a farm, or driving a train to transport war supplies, etc.
Unless your economy already has structural mass unemployment, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every draftee you throw away into the meat grinder is one more that can’t be supporting the war from the home front.
![[serious]](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/5797250b-b6ab-4ec4-aa5f-c41d66a011f0.jpeg){kind=link}
Used to be called starting a war. It’s working for Russia but you really need to have a draft/conscription to make it succeed. The wealthy pay a doctor to say they have bone spurs and the poor go die somewhere else. As a plus some wealthy benefit from an overheated military industrial complex
But there are side effects, such as generating more poverty by killing off the main income in families
That worked well enough back in ye olden days, but you don’t see it much in the modern world. Winning a war isn’t just about having enough people on the front line. It’s about what kinds and what quantities of weapons and equipment you can get to people that matters. A tiny country with a small population and an advanced industrial economy will wipe the floor with a country with an army of peasant conscripts 10x as large. Keeping the people in uniform equipped and fed is even more important than actually finding people to put into a uniform.
This matters because every person you send to the front line is another that can’t be on the home front working at a munitions plant, or working on a farm, or driving a train to transport war supplies, etc.
Unless your economy already has structural mass unemployment, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every draftee you throw away into the meat grinder is one more that can’t be supporting the war from the home front.
Starting a war only kills certain demographics, namely young poor people, as well as anyone who lives in a place that gets bombed.
Police handle other demographics.