Thousands of youngsters have joined the army since October 7 — and it is illegal to refuse. Sofia Orr is likely to become the first woman since then to be jailed for refusing military service, but believes it is ‘wrong to take children and make them into soldiers’
Any government/country is actually just a kind of service (you pay taxes and get different goods from it). Every person should have the right to choose the provider of this service (change the country) or completely refrain from it. It means that mandatory military service is no less than slavery. People are not guilty for being born in a country they don’t want to fight for (or that they don’t want to fight at all)
I think you are on the right track with your ideals of the world, but I also guess you kinda know that this is not how states operate. Of course there are different types of states, but if you think of democracies, they are also not service providers to their citizens. On the contrary. Democratic states are the abstraction of all the private interests of their citizens. This is what they protect and advance. What arises out of that is that occasionally these interests will suggest a war is what the nation desires.
I am not sure what this means, can you clarify a bit?
A democratic state allows its citizens to pursue their private interests. This is only possible though if this is happening in a legal framework, so that the private interests of one citizen don‘t infringe upon the ones of another. The outcome of this consideration then is the abstraction (the specific applied to the universal) of the free will of the citizens. We call it freedom and justice. Others call it the free market.
I do not believe in “nation’s interest”. That’s the thing that made USA an aggressive state. It also means that the minorities’ opinions are completely rejected. And yk politicians often like to do what people didn’t ask them to do. Democracy is good but the right of choosing the country and freely leaving one must always be there
yes, I also don‘t believe in the nation‘s interest, yet it somehow pretty brutally exists. Something‘s got to grow, somethings got to give.
This is why promoting peace and good ideas is important. If the society is informed, it can change the situation
At first you got to have a good analysis of how society and the economy works. Unfortunately this already is a tricky thing, because not everybody agrees.
You largely can choose the provider of this service, but they will also choose you (or not).
And you can not refrain from the service while being in the community of those that don’t refrain. In practice there are (nearly) no places where the community as a whole chooses to refrain.
If you’re in a country with compulsory military service, make yourself interesting for other countries and leave.
Really? I’m from the Middle East, took me fucking ages to “change the provider”.
Literally not an option for 99% of people.
Yes, most people are not interesting. True for Emi/Imi-gration as well as dating. And in both cases it’s tough to hear.
… so this isn’t really a viable solution.
deleted by creator
It’s complicated, but not necessarily. The US has a lot of agreements with other countries for you to avoid having to pay taxes for both countries. If you’re living in a country with one of those agreements, you can file with the US to claim you’ve paid taxes to the foreign government.
And the US doesn’t force you to renounce your citizenship, it’s generally other countries that don’t allow dual citizenship; Germany and Denmark for example don’t allow it.
It does if you don’t want to continue paying US taxes no matter where you live and work.
I don’t know about Germany, but that hasn’t been true of Denmark for nearly a decade.
I get the feeling that your source is located somewhere between your spine and the backs of your thighs.
I was wrong about Denmark. I did some research last year and apparently what I found was wrong.
But the US has Tax treaties, the FEIE, and the Foreign Tax Credit programs for expats to avoid paying US tax when overseas. But you still need to file with the US.
See here:
https://www.hrblock.com/expat-tax-preparation/resource-center/filing/20-things-americans-overseas-should-know-about-taxes-for-expats/