Slavery is Wrong! Conscription IS WRONG!

[Hijiri Byakuren]

It's one thing to have conscription if the country's at risk of being invaded.

And those pretty much don't exist in the western world, as far as I know. Once you get to the level of technology and infrastructure the western world has, all-out war becomes basically a huge waste of resources with practically nothing to gain.

That was the point of my post.

[entropy]

Sometimes semantics is an important consideration. "Slave" is a word that can have multiple meanings. Here is a typical set of multiple meanings you will find in a dictionary:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... lish/slave

noun

    a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
    a person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation:by the time I was ten, I had become her slave, doing all the housework
    a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something:the poorest people of the world are slaves to the banks she was no slave to fashion
    a device, or part of one, directly controlled by another: [as modifier]:a slave cassette deckCompare with master1.
    an ant captured in its pupal state by an ant of another species, for which it becomes a worker.

verb
[no object]

    work excessively hard:after slaving away for fourteen years, all he gets is two thousand
    [with object] subject (a device) to control by another:should the need arise, the two channels can be slaved together

In almost every dictionary definition of "slave", the first meaning is that a slave is a person that is property of another person. Since that is the primary definition of "slave", I think it would be worthwhile to be clear what is meant by the term "slavery" in the OP.

The question of whether or not it is a good idea to draft people into government or community service involuntarily is an important one, for sure. I was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War (wasn't stationed there), so this topic hits home with me strongly. I think the legal justification for the draft in the U.S. was so vacuous that it should have imploded into oblivion from its vacuity. Here is the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

And yet in the Supreme Court ruling that is the primary precedent cited as sanctioning a military draft, the Court doesn't even bother to mention the Fifth Amendment as though it had no relevance. From that ruling:

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/nat-se ... -draft.htm [section 14]

The highest duty of the citizen is to bear arms at the call of the nation. This duty is inherent in citizenship; without it and the correlative power of the State to compel its performance society could not be maintained.

The Constitution only has the word "duty" in it to mean a kind of customs tax the government is allowed to impose. It never uses the word "duty" in the obligation sense of the word. So through legal sophistry the Supreme Court created a duty that isn't mentioned in the Constitution. They conjure up a "duty" and ignore the liberty guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment.

If the nation can't get enough people to volunteer to fight a war then that war isn't worth fighting.

[Jmpty]

I feel everyone should have to do some service for the country. If not military, it could be peace corps, or another similar service.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The argument that nations make concerning conscription is the people are paid wages for their labor. Now I don't agree with that argument but that is the arguement that makes it different from slavery.

And, actually, it was not uncommon for slaves to get paid by their masters.  It didn't happen all the time, of course, but those slaves that got paid were still slaves.  They were unable to quit.

[Plu]

That was the point of my post.

I assumed as much, but I still wanted to point it out :)

I feel everyone should have to do some service for the country. If not military, it could be peace corps, or another similar service.

You mean like paying taxes? :P

[entropy]

I feel everyone should have to do some service for the country. If not military, it could be peace corps, or another similar service.

You mean like paying taxes? :P

Well, somebody would have to pay more taxes because there are about 4 million young people in the U.S. turning 18 every year. If you wanted to have them do a year of service, it would conservatively cost at least $10,000 each person for that year (shelter, food, medical care, etc.). That's $40 billion for just one year. If you wanted to make it two years of service, the price would go up to $80 billion per year. Of course, you could fire four million public employees (or eight million for a two year program) and have the 18 year old's doing involuntary servitude to do their jobs instead which might even save money.

[Plu]

Most governments can't even get paid and trained people to do their jobs right, let alone letting some kids do it against their will :P

[Jack89]

I feel everyone should have to do some service for the country. If not military, it could be peace corps, or another similar service.

I think everyone should do some service for their country, but it should be completely voluntary.  Voluntary service is dignified and admirable, forced service is not dignified and is often met with contempt.  

My son volunteered for and is currently working with FEMA Corps.  I'm very proud of him because he wanted to help out and made the choice himself.  He has gained dignity and earned respect for his choice. You don't get that if you're forced to serve.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I pay my taxes, that is what I owe my country.  Nothing more.  Because people are using "country" as a substitute word for "government".

The government is the employee of the people hired to maintain order.  Taxes are the paycheck of the government.  Saying that people must render service to the government (don't say country, it's not honest) reverses the concept of who is the boss and who is the employee.

[Solitary]

I feel everyone should have to do some service for the country. If not military, it could be peace corps, or another similar service.

What exactly is your reason why someone should serve their country, and what do you mean by the term country? Do you mean serve the politicians and leaders that run our country, or what?  :-?  I went around and around with Marilyn Vos Savant on this and never got a reply I agreed with or made any sense. This is primitive tribal thinking in my opinion. Solitary

[mediumaevum]

Voluntary service is dignified and admirable, forced service is not dignified and is often met with contempt.  

My son volunteered for and is currently working with FEMA Corps.  I'm very proud of him because he wanted to help out and made the choice himself.  He has gained dignity and earned respect for his choice. You don't get that if you're forced to serve.

That's exactly why I am against any type of forced labor.

You can't have dignity and earn respect if you are forced to to something, because you would do it anyway to avoid a penalty.

We become mere robots, not humans anymore, if we have to serve our country or just about anything else involuntarily.

Some stuff needs to be compulsory, like paying taxes. But paying taxes is not forced labor, because:

1) You don't pay taxes if you don't earn any money. And often you only pay taxes if your income goes beyond a certain level.
2) You are not forced to get your money from a certain area or work. You choose where to get the money, by legal means, and there is plenty of sources to choose from.
3) If Negative Income Tax or Basic Income becomes a reality, all that talk about taxation is slavery becomes even more meaningless.

[GrinningYMIR]

If the country is truly threatened I think conscription is in order. I mean truly threatened though, like Poland on Germany's border in 1939, not something like Vietnam

It has to be a full-scale total war in which the countries' existence is threatened.

[Plu]

I think that even if the country's existance is threatened it isn't in order. If you have to make people defend their way of life, obviously they don't really care much about it and maybe you're better off fading from existance alltogether. If your country is really worth defending, you shouldn't have to conscript people, they should be lining up on their own.

[Jack89]

I think that even if the country's existance is threatened it isn't in order. If you have to make people defend their way of life, obviously they don't really care much about it and maybe you're better off fading from existance alltogether. If your country is really worth defending, you shouldn't have to conscript people, they should be lining up on their own.

My thoughts exactly.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

If the very existence of the country is in danger (think of a large country sending 1 million soldiers to invade a small country with a population of 50,000 people) then conscripting the entire population (which is nonsense anyway as that population includes small children and the elderly) won't do any good and merely increases the number of legal targets and turns fleeing for safety into desertion.

If two countries are closer in parity and it appears one will easily beat the other if conscription isn't used, doesn't that indicate that the people don't support their government enough to defend it?  The people have spoken - they find this invading army superior to the current government.  Otherwise they would have signed up without being forced.