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A comment on Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza. Parent comment

Re:Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the ... by gherkinnn on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @06:22AM (#29890086)
I knew the title, not its contents. Thanks.

From Wikipedia [0]:

> In the booklet's penultimate chapter, Butler recommended three steps to disrupt the war racket:

> 1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the means for war should be "conscripted" before those who would fight the war

> 2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it

> 3. Limitation of militaries to self-defense

Reminds me of a point Danny Sjursen made in his book Ghost Riders of Baghdad [1]. Paraphrasing (badly): Presidents, hawks, and other decision makers have no skin in the game. Their families are safe. They just rake in the dollars. In a conscript army, there is at least a chance that their sons too are sent to die. There might be an expectation that one has to have some experience before taken seriously in these matters.

Now it's just poor saps from the Appalachians. Unimportant people dying in unknown places. A small price to pay.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

1 - https://skepticalvet.com/

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Re:Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the ... by throwaway0a5e on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @08:26AM (#29891197)
>Reminds me of a point Danny Sjursen made in his book Ghost Riders of Baghdad [1]. Paraphrasing (badly): Presidents, hawks, and other decision makers have no skin in the game. Their families are safe. They just rake in the dollars. In a conscript army, there is at least a chance that their sons too are sent to die. There might be an expectation that one has to have some experience before taken seriously in these matters.

Important people not having their children in the armed forces is a modern thing. There was a point in time when commanding armies in the field was an all but required resume checkbox for someone in line to inherit the throne and there was no shortage of war back then.

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Re:Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the ... by gherkinnn on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @09:17AM (#29891672)
That was my understanding too.

Though I don’t know when or why it changed. Was it mechanisation? Or the development of standing armies? Entrenched aristocracy?

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Re:Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the ... by agumonkey on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @08:55AM (#29891470)
sharing the cost sounds like a better notion of democracy than sharing the votes
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Re:Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the ... by avgcorrection on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @08:59AM (#29891502)
What egalitarian times those were.
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