Ok, Scott explicitly made the argument that no country with mandatory service had any issues with what they had to do and that they don’t see draft dodgers. Miss me with this
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I think the idea is to have enough options that you could choose a form of service that the odds of you doing something you have moral issues with become minuscule or even nil.
If you choose the military, you know going in you may need to do something you could have moral issues with. Therefore, choose a different option like inner-city teaching or something.
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We’ve already addressed this though.
First, there would be non-military options.
Second, if you still felt strongly enough to not want to participate, it would not be compulsory, but as a result, you wouldn’t get the necessary benefits. Additionally, there could be some kind of social stigma attached to not participating, kind of similar to President Clinton being accused of dodging the draft. Being a draft dodger didn’t ruin his life, heck, it didn’t even cost him the presidency, but there was some kind of social stigma attached to it.
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Yeah, these are dumb too
Well, a contract is just a legally binding promise to do something, whatever that may be. Given how many people are assholes, contracts serve a necessary evil to get people to actually commit to doing what they promised to do.
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Service should not require physical labor either.
Why not an educational service where you train for 6 months then become a TA in, say, Detroit. And then thst service can count towards your degree program if you go into college.
Or a health and wellbeing service. Which might have you spending time assisting elderly and then getting a few weeks of training in emergency response and first aid? People who do this service might go on to a full medical career or use their certifications to be reserve responder personnel on standby during major disasters.
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We can’t legislate social stigma any more than we can legislate people not to hate each other.
The only two arguments I’ve heard to “what if you have an issue with whatever national service you’re forced into” are:
You have options as to what kind of national service you do - aka you made your bed, now you have to lay in it.
You can quit, aka opt out, and suffer the consequences which makes it: 1. not mandatory and 2. something anyone who can eat the consequences, may be inclined to just do so.
I’m largely in support of national service and I’m not even convinced by these.
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Social stigma is never soley legislated though. Even if there are laws, it also develops either naturally or by design. I don’t see why it couldn’t be engineered in this case the same way that war bonds were encouraged during World War II, just to pick a random example. The government would probably launch a prolonged advertising campaign, similar to what was done to discourage drunk driving, or smoking, or even wearing seatbelts. Those were all pretty successful.
You could always have the option to switch the kind of service you choose, if you don’t like it.
And as for people who can eat the consequences, as @DMLou already addressed this:
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How about making some form of service required to get any undergraduate degree from a university?
Full stipend for living expenses during it. It can be related to your degree program?
And a more minor form required to graduate high school. Again, fully paid for.
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As I said, I already agree with national service. I just do so because I think it’s cool and basically for no other reasons mentioned in this thread.
You present a third option, which is admittedly better than the first two which is, you can switch your national service. Details would have to be worked out but yeah, this seems like it’s not a bad idea.
As to manufacturing social stigma. Yes they have been effective before, we smoke less, and drunk drive less and wear seatbelts more, though we still text and drive. It’s not always super effective. If we went about it with massive campaigns that would certainly help.
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That’s a good idea for those people who want to go to university and possibly get a post-graduate degree, but there also needs to be something for those who don’t.
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Eh. They can optionally sign up for something like a new CCC.
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If we only did things that were 100% effective, nothing would get done.
Like with anything as transformative as this, we’re not going to solve the problem in a discussion thread on the internet. It’s too complicated and there are too many subtle details, especially given that most, if not all, of us lack the requisite expertise to come up with good policies on the subject.
However, it seems like while the implementation details need to be worked out, it seems like most of us think it is a good idea at least in concept.
Edit: I think as my vision goes with age, so does my typing…
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I’m not advocating for 100% effectiveness. At all, I’m not sure where you got that idea.
I’m just pointing out advertising won’t bring us a backdrop of Confucianism underpinning our social structure. We’re never going to be Korea.
Here’s where my criticism comes from. I’m someone who believes a lot of our current issues in the united states come from hate. Hate of our fellow countrypeople. This is an oversimplification obviously but reality is complicated and you have to look at it through some lense, so rather than look at through the lense of institutional discrimination, or leftist politics or whatever, I choose to start from hate.
So when viewed through the lense of ‘hate is the root cause’ I start thinking of ways to deal with all the hate and I come up pretty dry. It’s a tough problem. One thing I don’t think can do it is a national advertising campaign. Maybe you agree, I don’t know.
I then equate hate and social stigma and therefore my belief that a national advertising campaign can’t deal with the problem of social stigma.
Going to point out for the sake of it. We’re mostly old people here. Some of us might be imagining this is just for 18 year olds. I say thee nay. I say nobody getting exemptions for being old. Once the program starts, everyone who is still alive also has to do it to make up for the fact that the program wasn’t in place when they were 18.
If you disagree with this, then I say you are just supporting the idea because you think you won’t have to do it. I’m totally OK with me, my friends, my parents, my neighbors, poor people, celebrities, politicians, and the ultra wealthy all suddenly being forced to take a couple years to go do this thing.
Just like Jury Duty, your employer has to give you your old job back when you return, assuming they still exist.
In fact, isn’t Jury Duty mandatory service? We’re basically just saying, hey, there should be a two year Jury Duty at some point in everyone’s life.
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Pvt Naoza reporting for duty 
(it’s the only emoji with salute in it)
Also while I was given pause for a minute there when I considered I care about people other than myself, only for a moment. I don’t care that much. All I really know here is that I’m down for 2 years of mandatory service for me.
I didn’t think you were, I was just making a general point that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
The question of how do we deal with hate, and the (mostly) rural people who hate was why I created this thread in the first place. Besides whatever other benefits something like this would generate for the country as a whole, for the individual participants, it would force them to confront and co-exist with all different types of people, expose them to new places and new ideas. There’s a reason why cities are more liberal than rural areas.
Maybe it’s getting late in the day and I’m tired, but I honestly don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. It could be me. But my point about advertising campaigns and social stigmas was that the advertising campaigns would encourage a certain type of behavior and/or philosophy, and if you violated those, a social stigma would be attached, just like in the examples I listed above. Not everyone abstains from drinking and driving, but pretty much everyone thinks it’s a bad idea and you’re a terrible person if you do it.
The point I’m trying to make is simply… well I guess I disagree that advertising campaigns could change the american way of thinking about draft dodgers into the Korean way of thinking about draft dodgers.
We’re kind of at an impasse, you argument is, I think this would work and mine is I think this would not work. I respect your opinion and I hope yours is correct and not mine.
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In general, I agree with you completely, and in our little hypothetical world, that works. However, to let reality intrude on this little thought experiment for a moment, making the compulsory service retroactive to everyone, would make this dead on arrival in Congress. If Congress were to ever realistically pass something like this, they would have to say that it applies only to people 18 at the start, and then have the start date be a year or so in the future so none of the people who would be affected by this would be eligible to vote.
It’s a terrible and sneaky strategy to employ, but I think it’s the only way this could pass.
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