National Service Requirements?

If it leads us to neo-Communism and a proper non-capitalist state, I’ll take it :wink:

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It won’t. It’ll lead to the further bifurcation of the classes and create a government mandated working class on whose backs the bourgeoisie will sit upon and reap the benefits off. State capitalism is still capitalism.

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It’s funny that you are simultaneously arguing for universal health care, something that actually works just fine in other countries, but simultaneously arguing against mandatory service, something which also works just fine in other countries. I don’t know enough about Finland, but I would wager that wealthy Finns aren’t dodging service. Mandatory service hasn’t created any of the problems you describe any of those other places.

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It’s extremely cool to be forced to oppress Palestinian children.

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No, but it is cool to be forced to repair the bridge in your town before it collapses.

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What has that got to do with anything we’re talking about? Not only is it a non-sequitur, it’s a straw man argument.

Okay, let’s assume you are right and they don’t. We may need to look at a greater good situation here.

People who are rich enough to avoid any sort of service requirements are a relatively small portion of the population as a whole. Rich people who actively try to game the system to avoid service are only a portion of all the rich people out there (though I’m not sure what that percentage is). We do see rich people in various parts of the world who serve out of a sense of duty and obligation, even if they can play the system to avoid it. We have Elvis and various major league baseball players who served in Korea and WW2, if I remember correctly. We have the British Royal Family who all served in the military at some point in their lives. Again, I don’t know how common they are, but they exist.

The problem we’re trying to address via national service are that many people who politically align themselves with the rich, such as the rural poor, often align themselves because they aren’t exposed to others and can be manipulated by the rich to think of “the other” as “the enemy” and therefore vote against not only their best interests, but the interests of “the other.” The hope is by getting them out of their little bubbles, they’ll be able to empathize with “the other” and realize that said “other” isn’t so different from them after all.

If a few thousand rich people relative to a population of 300+ million manage to avoid it but it ends up with a net positive by getting the majority of said 300+ million people to have better, more progressive political beliefs, I think it’s still a net positive, even if it’s not perfect.

Would I want those rich people to have to serve as much as the poor? Of course I would. Ideally I think it would be possible to find the right carrots and sticks to force them to do so. But even if it’s not, if they are such a small percentage of the population as to be statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things, I still think it’s probably worth it.

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Really? What rights do workers have when the state forces them to fix the bridges? Do they have protections? Unions? How do they strike against dangerous conditions?

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Service would probably get more people awake to the realities of the country which means the rich would hate this plan, not because they would have to serve, but because it would invigorate the public and lessen the divides among the 99%

The rich would hang or be absorbed wtihin a generation.

I think comparisons to Korean culture aren’t relevant since American culture does not have the requisite context regarding social responsibility (say a backdrop of Confucianism). Because if that were the culture here, the problems would be different problems.

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Israel has mandatory military service. Are you saying it’s a non-sequitur that you are forced to join the IDF and conduct raids of the Gaza strip if the govt. wants you to?

What rights did they have?

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If you go with Rym’s idea of your UBI being dependent on your service, it doesn’t have to be “mandatory” anymore and almost everyone will probably still do it. To combat the “rich people don’t need it” point, institute a cap on personal wealth at a few million dollars, but make the UBI not count towards hitting the cap.

I have no problem with the WPA, but it’s not mandatory service.

Perhaps not, but you were still required to do what the state tells you to do when you joined it.

Ok, so now imagine the exact same thing, but everyone has to do it for two years.

Absolutely I am. What do the Palestinians in general, and raids in the Gaza strip specifically, have to do with the general idea of mandatory national service?

I could also quit if I wanted to

Okay, but even in a non-government position, if you agree to a contract and then break the contract, there would be some penalty you’d have to pay, whatever that may be.

I think, I could be wrong, that he’s saying what if you have a problem, of any kind, with the national service you’re forced to do?