Mandatory national service is a bad idea (that in addition to being bad on the merits would be hideously unpopular) and I can't believe any left of center person is contemplating supporting any version of it in the United States
If there are things that are worth doing by the government, they are things that are worth paying professional career civil servants to do. They will do a better job than corvee'd 19 year olds too!
Mandatory military service may be necessary in small population countries that face the possibility of an imminent conflict like South Korea or Israel but is otherwise a relic of a bygone era of warfare that involved armies made up of as many barely trained 18-35 year old soldiers as you could get
On the other hand, a non-military national service option that guarantees you a free education would be great – short of having a free college option for everyone.
Trump's guys are proposing it and I saw some "hey fuck Trump but maybe there's a version of this that doesn't suck?" takes floating through my timeline bsky.app/profile/ltre...
I'm guessing that forcing people who don't want to fight to be trained on how to topple oppressive governments might be more trouble than its worth in the long run.
Personally, if you want something done right you pay people for their time and make sure they understand what the commitment to service entails. The most surefire way to make folks in the military's day worse is to surround them with people who don't want to be there.
Service and job training with money for continuing education is readily available through Job Core already and, though I like the idea of the whelps of the scions of finance floundering about with shovels in the ditches with poors, it's not something worth violating the 13th and 14th amendments for.
I’d be more open to the idea if we framed it as a gap year so kids can try a few jobs, make some money, and stall until they know what they’d like to learn in college. Just not with guns.
Yeah, a voluntary gap year program that offers income and housing in return for public service work might be a really good thing for people that haven't discovered what they want to do with their lives at age 18.
Funny, you should say that. My kid and all the other kids on her Americorps team working at FEMA are from highly educated families, though about half of them have student loan debt. So they’re not from stupid wealth. But their parents encouraged them to get work experience & put those loans on hold.
I actually want a mandatory attendance to a national park kind of thing. Have the Feds pay for, and require, every citizen to visit at least one national park in order to learn some goddamn natural conservativism.
I think there’s some program that could be built that shows 18-20 year olds a wide range of career options so they can try their hands at different things. Then they have a better idea of what they like and want to pursue as a career rather than just going to college and getting an emails job.
The Trump GOP wants to force the kids of their opposition into an institution outside of the normal American legal system where they can imprison them, court-martial them and dishonorably discharge them at the whim of Trump with 0 legal recourse.
People need to understand what this actually is.
Yeah someone else mentioned this and I hadn't thought of that, with compulsory service they can get and keep the ones they want (reactionaries, conservatives) and drum out who they don't (liberals, gay & trans) to launder the military into a right wing force
It would never happen in the US, but what if it was paired with banning personal ownership of firearms? Remove the need for a well-regulated militia since everyone is part of the government's armed forces.
Where does mandatory Public service fit into this scenario? No military, but serving underprivileged populations, poor children, helping BIPOC organizations, etc.
If the military and government want to get more people to enlist the first thing they can do is make sure military bases can't sustain being surrounded by paycheck loan companies by paying service people a decent salary.
It's difficult but doable, depending on where you live. I was able to live okay in Arkansas on an equivalent of a Step 1 GS-3 salary. The South and, like, Baltimore are definitely doable on GS-9. Good luck living in CA or the northeast, though.
On the other hand, a non-military national service option that guarantees you a free education would be great – short of having a free college option for everyone.
I feel like most proponents of these kinds of things are less about them being an effective use of labor and more about using them as a means to cultivate certain subjectivities among the populace. Which given who's pushing it now is scary in its own way!
The best arg for it has nothing to do with wanting work done, but just creating cultural natl unity. Basically a remedy to educational/career tracking. I'm not sure I'm convinced but that's the arg, never heard it described in terms of free labor lol.
“Young people have a hard time entering the work force“ and “civic bonds” and “Infrastructure projects” are 3 separate problems needing different solutions
You could maybe convince me if the two-year mandatory service covered a broad range of programs that covered a wide range of public service WPA-CCC style but not military service, no. National service should include forced traveling productions of "Our Town" complete with stage and lighting training
Emergency management and response, food service at shelters, tutors in prisons, public works construction, forestry work, etc etc.
Job training, apprenticeship, and SERVICE.
Draft dodging boomers voting for a draft dodging boomer so that kids can experience the seminal college experience of living in Canada to dodge the draft.
Only argument I've heard in favor that sounds right in theory is this idea that a volunteer army creates a kind of toxic warrior class that would be defused if serving in the military was simply a part of citizenship rather than some kind of untouchable hallowed and entitled club.
