How about universal non-military service?

Great Debates
1

After reading this thread, I had this thought:

How about mandatory two-year service in what I can only describe as an “Internal Peace Corps” service? i.e. you graduate, you (maybe) get some time off (anywhere from between a week to, say, three months) and then you spend the next two years doing useful stuff.

By “useful stuff” I mean things like building/repairing houses, urban clean-up, volunteer work at hospitals/libraries/schools/anyplace else volunteers would be useful, working in local/state/national parks. Damn. I had a lot of other ideas for this “useful stuff” when I started, but now I can’t think of them.

No military service during these two years, but maybe a “basic training” period of a few weeks. The reason I’d ban military service during this time is to keep recruiters from selling military service as a way to get out of the universal service period.

No full-time college during this time, either. No school exceptions. If you want to take classes during your off-time, go for it.

What’s covered in basic training? How about team-work (why team-work is important, how to work with a team, and maybe just as important, covering when team-work is ineffective or counter-productive) and civics. Trying to teach a basic sense of empathy towards others. This, of course, should be taught in school - hell, it should be taught at home, before the kids ever go to school.

Successful completion of this program should be worth several credits toward something in college - Civics? Social Sciences? (doubtful)

I am not proposing this as a service that anyone owes to the government, but as a service that is owed to the nation - the people, not the government.

I am interested in debate on what this might do for the people involved, the rest of the community and the nation as a whole.

2

I used to work as the boss of a garbage truck operation. Good times. Lots of fun. Mandatory volunteers would displace like the guys in my crew, or alternately, not let them move up to more desirable positions that would be filled by the draftees.

All too much of this kind of thought seems to come from the idea that ‘Kids today, with their hair and their clothes! You call that music? It’s just noise! Turn that thing down’ -ism. I for one am not ready for a white belt with matching shoes just yet.

3

Only if we make 50 year olds do it too. I am uneasy about any move to take away more freedoms from the public. Normally i’m pretty liberal but forcing people to help bugs me, which is weird as I have no qualms about raising taxes to pay laborers but forcing people themselves to do the labor makes me uneasy. Same thing technically.

4

Aside from objecting to this on philosophical grounds (errosion of freedom), I have to ask:

  1. How much will this cost? You can’t ask people to “volunteer” and yet have no source of income.

  2. If the stuff needing to be done is so “useful” why aren’t people willing to pay to have it done now?

  3. Do you honestly think that a program like this won’t end up being a political football? Can people volunteer in a program run by a Church? Who decides what’s “useful” and what isn’t? Who gets exempt and how (you know there HAS to be some expemtions)?

5

This is one of the biggest hurdles I’ve got with it myself. Do you pay them? If so, who pays & where does the money come from? If not, isn’t it almost comprable to slavery?

Do they have the money to pay for it?

No, I don’t. [insert “rueful smiley” here]

Is it useful?

Vote on it.

The only exemption I could agree to would be medical, and how hard would it be to buy a doctor’s exemption?

6

Unnecessary. Everyone who earns an honest living is already providing service to his nation.

7

My Swedish buddy told me about how he had to do this, although I don’t think it was 2 years. That’s a long time for everyone to have to serve. In his case, he’s really not the military type (he might have actually registered as a CO), and spent his time as an airport fireman. He could ID a jumbo jet at a glance and tell you where the emergency exits were.

Anyway, this would end up being a HUGE argument in America. You’d have thousands of kids trying to register as church interns, which would be hotly disputed as “useful”.

There’s also the argument that there would be people who couldn’t get jobs to support families because the company was able to get free labor from the kids.

I can’t really see it happening.

8

First off, I’d like to comment on the use of the word “volunteer” in the OP. Giving somebody a choice of where they are forced to do their community service doesn’t equal volunteering.
My post in the other thread actually covers my feelings towards any kind of mandatory service; rather then repeat it, I’d like to expand on it based on the specifics of the OP.
My objections to it are twofold, moral/ethical and practical.
First, the moral/ethical. I’m disturbed by the fact that people think we as individuals “owe” them (as part of society) anything. The only thing I owe the people is their right to be left alone and to contribute to society as they see fit. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be wonderful if everybody decided to help through volunteering for the good of everybody, but nobody should be forced to. The one asset we have on this Earth that is immutable is time. It doesn’t matter how many good works I do, the one thing nobody can give me is more time on earth then what fate/destiny/g*d/whatever has alloted me. Theft of my time to use it as I see fit is the one commodity that, once taken, can never be given back.
Now, as for the practical. I can’t think of a single way it would be advantageous to spend money forcing people to do things that they rather not do to teach them “lessons” that should have been taught already. Rather then trying to teach these lessons and give these advantages (if they exist), perhaps the money would be better spent on established programs to help at an earlier age.
To use a rather poor analogy, national service would be like trying to fix your car after years of neglect rather then using the money to maintain it in the first place.

Just my two cents, DESK

9

The most recent semi-serious draft bill included just this possibility. Military Service OR Non-military service.

Language:
To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes."

I am not advocating this.

However I think there is some DEEP THINKTM fear on the left and right that American youth have no equalizing hand that forces a common understanding of society - roles the Military, churches and social clubs (Masons, Elks, Bowling) played once the 20th Century saw the country urbanize and industrialize. Some see this as a problem. Some see it as enough of a problem to theoretically push mandatory national programs as those discused here.

I am not advocating this.

Here are a couple cites incl. Fritz Hollings way out the door shout in 2003
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26118

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/Issues/2005/03_17/features/specialprojects.xhtml

10

It would probably do good; it’s also politically, ethically and legally wrong.

A much better idea IMO would be to give stipends and college-loan-forgiveness for Peace Corps service so that 20-somethings who want to do something productive and idealistic for a year or two could do it.

11

Make it optional for both military or civil service, but only grant citizenship to those who opt to do it and you have…Starship Troopers! :slight_smile:

Basically its a bad idea. As has been pointed out, there are folks already doing this work…for a living. By putting it on the governments payroll you’ll be denying them that work. In addition, its hard to imagine that such a program, scooping up basically every youth that wasn’t ‘exempt’ (I think you are being naive if you think that those won’t grow…medical exemptions may be the start but I can pretty much guarentee they won’t be the last) wouldn’t cost a hell of a lot (again, as has been pointed out…gots to pay those folks something). Its also hard to imagine that a government run program with essentially a hostile work force wouldn’t be an inefficient cludgy mess, doing a very poor job for probably double the current costs.

-XT

12

Would I get any credit for time served previously? :dubious:

13

Besides that I’m going to propose an amendment for a Grandfather Clause.. :smiley:

14

I agree that the exemptions will be bought and sold in some fashion. If it’s only medical, then doctors will take bribes to write exemptions.

It just occurs to me that industry will throw a fit about this. If it’s supposed to survive a two-year gap in getting new college graduates because of the start of the program, many companies are going to have a very hard time.

I also really, really don’t like government programs for things that can be managed without them. I can’t think of a single thing the government does as a model of efficiency and job quality at the same time.

15
16

Hmmm… I don’t know anything about that one, so I’ll have to let it go.

I will offer one “branch” of the U.S. government that is pretty efficient: the post office. But I qualify that one because it’s responsible for its own funding, so it has a very ungovernment-like push to be responsible.

17

There’s also the fact that many people have to work after high school, and have expenses such as children or ailing parents that outstrip a government stipend. If they’re forced to work for $500/mo (a rough estimate of what such a stipend might run to) instead of searching for a better job at a private factory or something, they’ll really regret it and their family will suffer and how are they expected to build good public housing projects then? I also agree that it would have a detrimental effect on older laborers, who could not price themselves low enough to compete with the “volunteers.”

NPG: Would the young people in your scenario be allowed to unionize? If not, how would that be legal (considering that almost all government workers are in some kind of union and the government is not permitted to bring in strikebreakers)? But if so, how could we keep the stipend low enough that we wouldn’t be paying them the wages of current labor forces, wages that would be coming out of taxpayers’ pockets? What happens to workers who are injured or disabled on the job?

I do think it’s a good idea at its base, though; it’s just fraught with all kinds of legal and ethical and especially economic problems. We should at least be encouraging kids to take a year off before they go to college; that’s something I wish I would have been allowed to do.

18

Not to mention that you are hurting people by taking away resources from the industries that provide the goods and services people actually want and need and putting them to bullshit “feel good” work.

To do what? Get baked and backpack around Europe?

What? We don’t have enough uneducated minimum wage employees who could do all this crap? I went to school for civil engineering. Are you suggesting I should be forced to clean up scrap wood at a building site instead of designing them?
Dirty Hippy “There would be one guy who like…makes bread…and another guy who protects people”
Stan Marsh “…you mean like…a baker or a cop?”
Dirty Hippy “All I’m saying is there should be a place where people can live together and give service in exchange for other peoples services.”
Stan Marsh “…yeah…it’s called a TOWN.”

19

Effectively we have a similar thing. Officially military service still is the default, but objecting has become so frequent and unproblematic that it is more or less a choice. In recent years objectors are actually more sought-after than soldiers.

There are medical exceptions, but those are only granted as a result of your (military) physical examination. If necessary, they will refer you to specialists of their choice and give you an appointment on the same day.

Basic pay is identical to military recruits, but bonuses work differently.

We were not allowed to unionize or go on strike. Actually I worked during a strike of the employees at the hospital were I served. After all, it’s not regular employment, it is a service. Soldiers aren’t allowed to go on strike either. We were allowed to elect spokesmen who would represent us at the agency for the service, but we never bothered.

Of course the political circumstances are different because the draft has been the norm for centuries, with the exception of a few years after both world wars.

20

There is a system in place in Korea where every citizen must serve their government for 2 years of their life. It has to be two consecutive years, but they can choose when to go. I think the age is between 18 and 32 or something. Service is not just military, though military is a huge part of it. Those with other skills and those who (i guess) “luck out”, don’t enter into the Army.
Besides military, the government needs scientists, firemen, policemen, agents, etc. Think of almost any job that the US Government might offer… accountants, file clerks, etc. There are tons of ways for people to serve their country.
Here’s the kicker… they get paid only about 35 dollars a month. So this is a HUGE money saver for the government. If the person wishes to pursue the same career after their mandatory service is up, they can do that. Then they’ll become a boss or supervisor and will get paid a real salary. All NCOs above SGT, are those who opted to stay in the military. All the police and fire supervisors are those who decided to stay cops, etc.

It’s a pretty good idea and seems to work well here. It’s not “slavery”. Most people knock out their service right after high school, or (if they want a more specialized position to serve in) after college. And considering how many hours they go to school during their Senior year of high school, 2 more years of ‘mandatory attendance’ in something isn’t too big a deal. They’re already used to no free time.

And it’s not like 50 year olds are “exempt”… they served when they were younger. Everybody serves. Granted, to implement such a program in the US would exempt people presently over 32, but after that generation passes, every would have served or be required to serve their country.

I’m just offering information and showing how it could work, and where it works WELL. I don’t necessarily think it’s something we should do in the states, but IF we did, it should go similar to this.

So it would be two years mandatory government service. The job would be based on Aptitude Test Scores, Specialized Skills/Education, Needs of The Government and Preference of the Citizen. All those things put together would determine the individual’s job for the two years. And they would only be paid a nominal salary, like less than a hundred a month. They would rely on their family during such time, just like people do through-out high school and sometimes college.
I dont think it’s mandatory for females in Korea, but in the US it damn sure better be. : D