This question was inspired by a post on lemmy.zip about lowering the minimum age to purchase firearms in the US, and a lot of commeters brought up military service and training as a benchmark to normal civilians, and how if guns would be prevalent, then firearm training should be more common.
For reference, I live in the USA, where the minimum age to join the military is 18, but joining is, for the most part, optional. I also know some friends that have gone through the military, mostly for college benefits, and it has really messed them up. However, I have also met some friends from south korea, where I understand military service is mandatory before starting a more normal career. From what I’ve heard, military service was treated more as a trade school, because they were never deployed, in comparison to American troops.
I just wanted to know what the broader Lemmy community thought about mandatory military service is, especially from viewpoints outside the US.
Just imagine if instead of millitary service, it was compulsary public service that actually benefitted society. Nursing, construction/infrastructure, farming, teaching/childcare, etc.
Its astrounding how much money is pumped into the military industrial complex when it could be used to fund to many other programs for public good.
But that would be sOciALiSm.
More hilarious when considering the US Military is an inherently socialist institution.
My sister and brother-in-law will go to the commissary, stay on base housing, get their paycheck from the US Govt., receive public Healthcare, and the GI Bill, then promptly go home and post on Facebook about how socialism bad.
Realizing the US Army is the most socialist institution I’ve ever encountered didn’t happen till years after I was out, lol
You want school? Get it! You want food? Get it! You want clothes? You already fucking got em
I’m not sure from the context of your comment with that “most socialist” line if you know or not but…
Socialism is the workers owning the means of production. End line.
Everything else is just how the society organizes itself. The US Army seeing to the basic needs of its troops is not socialism, it is the government doing things. Scandinavian countries providing maternity and unemployment benefits is not socialism. It is the government doing things.
The US Army is not socialism. Nor is any other professional military, not even the ones working for socialist states. They are organizations trading capital for labor to empower the state.
If you were a slave soldier, taken in a war raid, working for a monarch like the Janissaries, they would probably still provide you all of the necessities to function, even spending money to entertain yourself and maintain morale, and it wouldn’t be socialism either.
It’s socialism as described by the GOP though, which is why it’s so funny.
Yeah, but at the same time that’s how they logic themselves into “the more things the government does the more socialist it is, and when it does a lot of things, that’s communism.”
All that misinformation has a purpose, and it’s not to make the world a better place.
Socialism is the workers owning the means of production.
For instance, Trump’s plan for the feds to buy TikTok
Hell no.
The premise of M-L types who wanted the state to control production for the workers is that the government was the workers, aka the dictatorship of the proletariat. In doing so excess production would be traded within the system to provide things like healthcare and housing.
In theory.
That obviously didn’t work out too hot, but even that is different in theory from a fascist or otherwise oligarchal state controlling production for the benefit of the owner class with absolutely no pretentions of providing social services with the profits. They are proudly ripping up any social safety net they find as a matter of ideology.
Tl;Dr it’s quite literally the opposite of socialism when kings or oligarchs control and profit from the state owned enterprise. That is just the eponymous late stage capitalism, or neofeudalism/technocracy depending on the angle you want.
This exists in Austria. Males have to choose between 6 months of military or 9 months of public service. Interestingly enough the existence of the public service option has been a strong reason why people voted against removing the mandatory service some years ago.
Out of curiosity, what do they do for public service?
Driving ambulance cars and doing first aid, helping in kindergarten, retirement homes, homeless shelters, institutions for people with disabilities,…
The ambulance is probably the most popular position, you can also choose what you want to do to a certain extent.
This is exactly what I would want a compulsory service to look like.
Fuck the military, let’s build bridges and houses and schools, and cafeterias, and farms, and staff them. Roads and hospitals.
Nobody ever needed to make a fucking bomb
I think compulsory retail service would fix society.
Some places you can opt to do compulsory public service instead of military service.
AmeriCorps is exactly this, but it’s obviously not compulsory.
Does that still exist?
I fully support this. It would help on so many levels. Provide a cheap workforce to help with currently in demand stuff and fix shit, help young people get away from home, get a new view on life and get some starter cash, and mix people from all walks of life. I genuinely see no downside.
I don’t think that would be any better. It is still compulsory service and a violation of people’s individual freedoms to choose how to live their lives.
(and many countries do allow that as an alternative e.g. for conscientious objectors)
That’s too good of an idea to be usable, the powers that don’t want it would tell the nurses, construction workers and farmers their livelihoods were being undermined by slave labour.
My opinion is fuck no.
Morally? Fuck that shit. But, being a Finn and sharing a huge border with Russia, I see why it is a thing here and in a lot of countries.
As for America, your military seems to have enough people in it, and the US hasn’t needed to actually defend itself for a looooong time.
The US military has actually been short on recruits for a long time now due to the obesity epidemic.
I mean we could stop maintaining an invasion force in basically every corner of the globe simultaneously, but we aren’t filthy communists or whatever.
Huh, that’s new to me. But, on the other hand, it isn’t like America uses its military to defend itself, but rather just invade others.
I was one of the last people in Sweden to muster for conscription, I failed the first (hearing) test and was discharged.
This was just before conscription was ended, and about a decade later we have conscription again in Sweden.
There are two main advantages to universal conscription in my oppinion.
- It gives the population unity, it is a unifying experience that you have in common with everyone, this creates a stronger society.
- It gives the population a general understanding of guns and military action, this is useful in war as people are already familiar with the basic concepts of firearms handling and military tactics, ok, they won’t be as good as professional soldiers, but they understand the concepts and that is a good foundation to build uppon.
So many people in the US join the military. I don’t really see a unifying experience happen over the pond besides PTSD…
6 percent. That’s the percentage of the US population who are veterans. I don’t think a military only mandatory service would work in the US but we don’t have the same effect just based on a volunteer military.
Fair point, my experience is from Sweden where we have had peace for 200 years or so
I’m all for mandatory military training. Deployment is a separate issue.
A lot of countries make that distinction. Everyone goes through basic but you have to volunteer into a deployable job.
It depends on how it’s done.
First, there has to be a compensation. Generally speaking free college gets tied to it a lot. In the US a mandatory service isn’t getting off the ground without it.
Second, there needs to be multiple avenues of service. It cannot just be military. To be honest, the military can’t handle the number of conscripts. There’s about half a million every year. So spreading that out into other service avenues such as a construction corps, EMTs, hospital helpers, legislative staff, libraries, etc, is required. (The specifics are obviously up for debate)
I do believe a mandatory service brings people together and strengthens a country. But it’s just not possible for a large country like the US to do military only mandatory service.
I declare everything I want to happen mandatory.
My response to the title: No
If I am being forced to, I will try to steer it towards any non-combant service like IT or (if necessary) social service.
I think mandatory public service would be good, with an option to choose non-combatant military roles
I’ve thought a required 2 years military or 1 year in a customer service job like retail right after high school would make fast change to people’s attitudes and empathy.
I worked retail on a military base, you’d think they’d be better behaved that civilians, but they aren’t. Especially the Chief’s wives.
No, I won’t be addressing you by the rank of your equivalent to middle management husband.
maybe not, but from what i’ve seen the consequences are more fair, you don’t get 10 years in prison for doing dumbshit, you get 1000 pushups, or bathroom duty for a year, weird stuff like that. the only thing i really hated about the military was the E1s trolling high school hallways picking up underage girls. that shit was fucked.
Yeah it’s weird that people always ask this question in terms of military service.
As an Australian I have no interest in “defending” a country that’s rampant with shit stain politcans, their oligarchs, along with their supporters and retinue.
Cumpolsory military service my sweet asshole.
Compare Switzerland. Everyone after secondary school gets a year learning how to work as a team and practice interdependence.
Seems like it’s working really well for them, as they have more guns per capita and almost zero mass shootings. Maybe that’s the thing they’re doing right?
Personally I don’t have an issue with it as it’s the only chance I and other poor kids had for entering college.
Switzerland was an inspiration for much of the american laws I believe. The second amendment used to say “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”. The American got rid of the militia (the training) and kept the guns, now we have chaos.
I had the idea that mass shootings were more of a cultural phenomenon exacerbated by the media. I mean, we don’t have them in my country either. And although some older people have gone through compulsory military training, it’s been slowly rescinded for the younger generations so it makes me wonder if that has any effect on people’s willingness to go on shooting sprees.
I’m not for it but if mandatory service were a thing the population would be more hesitant to go to war knowing their flesh and blood might be included
The elite pay the politic to not let their precious off-spring be conscripted.
And if they can’t they will probably be send of to a foreign boarding school.If we have 100 percent service and they don’t serve then they don’t get the rights of citizenship either.
Sure, but it will never be 100% because there are medical excuses. And they will get someone to sign a paper saying they already served and were discharged because X. Where X is something serious enough for them not to get called back but not serious enough to be immediately noticeable or too harmful outside of the military, e.g. poor eyesight, torn ligament on the leg, etc. So their kids still won’t serve.
That’s why you do other things too. Ambulance drivers, library helpers, school assistants, construction corps, etc…
Yeah but the elite are a very tiny fraction of the population. I’m talking about the general population.
Conscription is slavery if the people are not under imminent threat.
Conscription will always be used as weapon of the rich against the poor.
Conscription will never affect the children of the rich as much as it affects the poor.
Conscription does demystify military service and can teach useful skills.
Balancing these and other factors is always the trick.
I’d prefer a voluntary military service in a society that strongly encourages people to sign up for short service periods and doesn’t lock them in for years as an anti-abuse measure, as a training program for a more popular citizen militia defense scheme.
I read a novel written by a Vietnam era draftee.
There was a scene where two draftees were talking about ending the draft. One was against it because it would mean that all the people in the Army would be ‘lifers’ and lifers were the ones who were quickest to massacre civilians.
Hunter Thompson wrote about it once. His opinion was that when he served, a lot of upper class families sent their sons to the Army. That meant that they were meeting and working with all types of people.
My personal take is that it’s a good thing, if there’s a non-military equivalent, something like FDR’s CCC
Fortunate_Son.wav
Change “military” to “national” and I do, with appropriate exemptions for disabilities. There’s usually something a person can do for public service, even if it’s keeping a dying patient company.
It’s against human rights, and severely fucked-up
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