I strongly disagree. Forced labor is a form of slavery. It would be nothing less than the government taking possession of a person and forcing that person to work at tasks set by the government, with the threat of force to back it up. Otherwise, what would prevent these kids from walking off the job? Monetary penalties would simply penalize the poor while the rich bought their kids out. The temporary nature of the “mandatory national service” and the financial compensation do not make it any less slavery. The inability of the slaves to refuse to do the work in face of threat of physical force is what makes this slavery.
Not to mention there are countries on this planet that do have mandatory service, and they seem to be doing just fine. I have long been a proponent of mandatory service, and I have been suggesting on the dope frequently that a WPA/CCC program right now working on infrastructure would be a great way to get the infrastructure updated and provide minimum wage jobs for many currently unemployed. The government managed to do it without contracting private companies scoughblackwatercough once and they could do it again.
In Robert Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers”, there was a federal service requirement, but it was voluntary, not mandatory. The difference was that you didn’t have citizenship until you completed your federal service requirement. You couldn’t vote, hold public office or serve on a jury until you completed your federal service requirement. Please ignore the movie of the same name. It was a parody of the book. It was a given that any federal service job would at a minimum be unpleasant and it might be dangerous.
Most people didn’t do their federal service in the military and the percentage of population that completed federal service varied widely from country to country. IIRC the percentage varied from 3% to 90% depending on the country.
ETA: Never mind. I (hope I) misread.
It’s slavery in the same sense that taxes are theft.
You realize by the logic you are using forced labor imposed by governments isn’t ever slavery?
Well, it isn’t.
It’s something else, which under certain circumstances can be equally as horrible as slavery, or even worse. Just as taxes can be much worse than theft.
The problem is that the insurance companies aren’t going to talk to the “teenage enlistees”. They won’t even talk to a nurse, who is much more trained than an unskilled teenager. The insurance companies will only talk to the doctors.
This is a flaw I see at many points in your plan - you fail to understand that some of these activities, even if you see them as “menial”, can not be done by teenagers because of one reason or another, in some cases rules or regulations mandating they be done by highly educated people rather than the untrained.
So, rather than raise wages you propose conscript/forced labor? That’s not the free market. In the free market wages would rise until the jobs became attractive to the labor already out there. Except now "free market’ has been redefined to mean “if you don’t like the wages we’re offering we won’t let you make a choice to do something else, we’ll force you to do this work for crap wages.”
So… you’re going to have untrained teenagers process criminal evidence? And you think this is a good idea?
How about American society grows the F up and realizes that it needs to pay for certain things? Instead of forced labor raise wages. Instead of “subsidizing” this work make it so one can earn a living wage doing that work, instead of forcing untrained teenagers to do it while housed in dormitories?
Yeah, but the funny thing is, when the government hired people to build those they hired professional builders to do it, at a market wage. They didn’t draft teenagers. They didn’t conscript experienced builders and say “you will build it at this wage or else”.
I’m sorry you don’t understand that there is an actual cost to build these things properly. They aren’t cheap. The return isn’t immediate. And you do need actual, trained, experienced people to do some of it.
Right! They’ll learn valuable leadership skills because every single one of these conscripts will be the leader of a work crew! All chiefs, no indians! Just like Lake Wobegone, everyone will be above average!
Let’s just ignore the fact that, in many areas of work right now, employers aren’t looking for anyone, leadership skills or no. The problem for 14 million unemployed people right now is not lack of job skills or experience, it’s a lack of JOBS.
The Northeast has high speed rail. It’s called Acela, and it’s part of Amtrak. I don’t think people are clamoring for more of it, but if I’m wrong and they are, the problem is not that we don’t have people who can build the rail.
And “your money or your life” isn’t theft because you have a variety of options to choose from. 
That’s the real problem: what everybody wants is secondary.
I think I’m going to drop the military issue because it’s probably a wash - if you force every 18-year-old to choose between public service and the military, for the most part the military will get the kids who would have joined on their own under the current volunteer system. But I will point out that the issue with conscripts is not the same as not the same as with blacks and gays. The military didn’t want black or gay soldiers because of prejudice. The issue with conscripts is they don’t want to be there, so they tend to do a bad job. The military wants people who want to be there and who will do a good job. That’s true of pretty much any job: if you don’t want to be there, you will not do as well as someone who wants to be there. It’s the same issue Der Trihs has been raising.
You don’t need much of the support staff that helps run a campus.
Having seen the details of your proposal, I can tell lost jobs are not a major concern.
So why don’t we let the people who get paid to run these tests continue to do that job? That seems much more efficient. It’s the same as the Scantron and library book proposals: someone already does that job. Splitting the job between one librarian and one conscripted kid, or one teacher and one “volunteer,” might free up some time for the professional, but that doesn’t make this an efficient and sensible use of someone’s labor.
Unlike some of your other ideas, I think you’ve at least identified an area of need here - the problem with infrastructure isn’t that we don’t have road builders, but someone does need to run these tests. The solution is to increase funding for these agencies and let them hire professionals who know how to do the job, not to take kids out of college and forcing them to do hard labor for minimal pay while taking DeVry Institute classes at night.
Your claim that “the increase in productive things being done that will have multiplier effect would likely cancel out any job losses.”
Brick,
The real cost of something is not its monetary cost. The cost of something is its opportunity cost i.e.: the utility of the next best use of the resources used to produce that good.
Usually*, the supply/demand ratio of a good (such as labor) sends price-signals which give information and incentives to economic actors about the opportunity cost of a good and the utility to which it is being currently put.
Hence, economic actors have an incentive to use inputs to produce outputs as long as the marginal cost is below the marginal gain which typically means that opportunity cost is below utility.
However, if the State forces someone to accept a given price, that price no longer signals the relative scarcity of the good, its opportunity cost and its scarcity.
If the gov’t forces someone to work for a company, that company has an incentive to use that person’s labor even if its opportunity cost is lower than its utility.
In short, your scheme distorts price-signals which gives economic actors inaccurate information and incentives concerning the opportunity cost and utility of people’s labor.
*We can get into the issue of non-excludable goods if you want and that’s an area where the State should intervene but your argument isn’t mainly related to this.
Correction:
“However, if the State forces someone to accept a given price, that price no longer signals the relative scarcity of the good, its opportunity cost and its scarcity.”
should read:
“However, if the State forces someone to accept a given price, that price no longer signals the relative scarcity of the good, its opportunity cost and its utility.”
Also:
“If the gov’t forces someone to work for a company, that company has an incentive to use that person’s labor even if its opportunity cost is lower than its utility.”
Should read:
“If the gov’t forces someone to work for a company, that company has an incentive to use that person’s labor even if its opportunity cost is lower than its utility because that company does not have to pay a wage which reflects the opportunity cost of that particular use of the employee’s labor.”
How can an employee “cost less” than minimum wage? Unless you actually are advocating slavery.
The problem is that it does not fit the definition of slavery AT ALL. Sorry, you but are out of gas on this one. You can dislike the idea as much as you’d like, but it isn’t slavery in any shape or form. Look up the definition of slavery. Do you honestly contend that countries like Norway and Israel are engaged in slavery?
Are you seriously trying to contend that no job on a construction site can be done by a teenager? I have known friends who had jobs like this during the summer as college kids. They spread asphalt, moved materials, etc. Asking for a cite for something that is obvious to anyone paying attention is pretty ridiculous. What makes you think the average construction laborer has any special expertise that could not be learning by a teenager in a year or two?
That is true in some cases, but untrue in others. Regardless, you are missing the point. Even if you want to contend that the specific example I mentioned is lacking, there is clearly work that can be done by enlistees that is currently not being done, or is being done by someone overqualified to do it.
Of course it’s not the free market. I never contended that it is. What you seem to be missing is the relying on the free market to get some of these things done has not worked. There are few other workable options if we want to have these things done.
They often didn’t. And that’s not just the government, it goes for the private sector as well. Many of the safeguards and standards we have today are relatively modern conventions. Take the transcontinental railroad for example. The Chinese immigrants who built much of the railroad were treated poorly and often paid less than their White counterparts. Even today, illegal immigrants that are here are often paid below market wages because employers can take advantage of their status. More to the point, we tend to forget that many of the great projects in our history exist only because the builders were able to access cheap labor for one reason or another. Sometimes, they took advantage of immigration status or a language barrier, other times they used the lack of a mandated minimum wage to pay workers a pittance.
The problem is that it does not fit the definition of slavery AT ALL. Sorry, you but are out of gas on this one. You can disliek the idea as much as you’d like, but it isn’t slavery in any shape or form. Look up the definition of slavery. Do you honestly contend that countries like Norway and Israel are engaged in slavery?
Are you seriously trying to contend that no job on a construction site can be done by a teenager? I have known friends who had jobs like this during the summer as college kids. They spread asphalt, moved materials, etc. Asking for a cite for something that is obvious to anyone paying attention is pretty ridiculous.
That is true in some cases, but untrue in others. Regardless, you are missing the point. Even if you want to contend that the specific example I mentioned is lacking, there is clearly work that can be done by enlistees that is currently not being done, or is being done by someone overqualified to do it.
Of course it’s not the free market. I never contended that it is. What you seem to be missing is the relying on the free market to get some of these things done has not worked. There are few other workable options if we want to have these things done.
They often didn’t. And that’s not just the government, it goes for the private sector as well. Many of the safeguards and standards we have today are relatively modern conventions. Take the transcontinental railroad for example. The Chinese immigrants who built much of the railroad were treated poorly and often paid less than their White counterparts. Even today, illegal immigrants that are here are often paid below market wages because employers can take advantage of their status. More to the point, we tend to forget that many of the great projects in our history exist only because the builders were able to access cheap labor for one reason or another. Sometimes, they took advantage of immigration status or a language barrier, other times they used the lack of a mandated minimum wage to pay workers a pittance. I think it’s important not to whitewash our history here. We have a society that was largely built on the backs of the poor and minorities who were systematically taken advantage of. While it’s not ideal to shift that burden to the young as a means of getting things done, a system can be created that benefits them and is far less exploitative.
Let me sympathize with you, brickbacon, if that’s any consolation. I’m not sure if Dopers condemned it because it seems too right-wing or too left-wing, but they sure enjoyed turning it into a caricature of itself. Given the large number of unemployed young people, I suspect you’d yourself conclude that the program would start as voluntary but shrill Dopers had to pretend the goal was to replace skilled laborers with unwilling slaves. :smack:
I like the idea, suitably modified, but given the opposition here it’s easy to believe there is no chance America will adopt this good idea anytime soon.
Obviously there would be much flexibility in the program. Qualified students could get free medical school in return for a promise to work for some years at National Health clinics or hospitals. (I think many countries do do this successfully, though it would be harder in a counrty with no National Health. :smack: ) I’m sure creative thought is required to find the best way to apply unskilled labor to road-building, etc. It wasn’t wrong to assume some Dopers would be qualified to flesh-out the plan but, apparently they just wanted to voice shrill opposition.
Sometimes I think there’s a grain of truth in some of what right-wingers say about leftists. 
Acela is hardly high-speed rail. It doesn’t use dedicated tracks, and does not actually achieve what most high-speed rail services do. Second, there probably isn’t a shortage of people to build such a thing, its that the cost is too high. It’s not a supply issue in many cases, it’s a cost issue.
Actually, there stated reasons were often unit cohesion. So forgive me if I don’t really care too much what they SAY will be a huge problem.
Do you think Israel and Norway have this problem? If not, why not? If so, why don’t they get rid of mandatory conscription?
It does if it allows the teacher to spend more time teaching students. This is a pretty basic thing here. If a doctor could spend all of her time diagnosing patients or doing research, it would be a more efficient and sensible use of their time than if they are paying bills or dealing with getting reimbursed.
Second, in many cases, people are not doing the jobs I am proposing enlistees do. Take for example the backlog of rape kits. If you can eliminate an administrative position in order to hire another trained lab tech to process the kits, more work can me done. Similarly, if a hospital can lower its labor costs by using enlistees, they can process more patients, lower costs, and provide better care.
And how exactly can I cite something given that job losses and the gains in productivity are unknown? Honestly, you can disagree with my hypothesis, but asking for a cite for something that is clearly hypothetical is stupid.
The idea isn’t to get maximum utility from their labor, it’s to lower the overall cost of their labor to bring it below a threshold established by a cost-benefit analysis. Say building a new highway will spur x amount in economic activity resulting in y extra tax revenue. So long as y is more that what we’ve paid the laborers, I don’t see where there is a problem. Can you explain why is that a problem in a sector with minimal competition from the free market? Having enlistees build a highway, for example, wouldn’t affect the costs of building a private road assuming the program didn’t result in significant job losses increasing the supply of skilled workers. Since a private company building a private road doesn’t have access to enlistees, their costs will remain roughly the same. The labor pool (18-20 year-olds) would not be available to the private sector, so there would not a negative signal sent to the market wrt to wages, right?
What do you think it means, “we don’t have the money”? It means, we look at the price tag, we look at our wallets, and decide we don’t want it.
What exactly is the difference between raising taxes enough to pay for what we say we want, and forcing teenagers to work for free for us? Conscripted labor is worse than higher taxes.
Let’s put it this way. Why not, instead of teenagers, make everyone put in two years in the labor battalions when they’re 40. It makes much more sense–these 40 year olds will have years of experience in the work force, they’ll have the skills to get the work done. You could sure get a lot more accomplished by drafting 40 year old construction workers than drafting unskilled 18 year olds.
Why is it fair to require teenagers to perform national service, but not 40 year olds?
Why do you think construction workers command high wages? I’ll give you a hint: because construction worker are skilled workers. There are a few spots on a construction crew for kids to haul loads and hold signs and sweep floors. But not many. They need electricians and welders and carpenters and machinists and operators and masons. Not ditch-diggers and street sweepers. Why exactly do you think we build roads with 20 guys with trucks and tractors rather than 2000 guys with picks and shovels? Because it is cheaper to build a road with modern techniques. You at least need to provide room and board for your labor battalions, and probably a small wage. How much do you think room and board for 2000 teenagers is going to cost, vs salary and equipment for 20 skilled workers?
With one small exception, that’s precisely what he wants to do. He thinks people who have the right to say no are too expensive, that’s why he wants to remove that right. He even seems to think that undermining our hatred of involuntary servitude is a good thing.
If you can provide a definition of slavery that doesn’t hinge on involuntary service, I’m willing to reconsider. Otherwise, my point stands.