No, because in all times the elites don’t have to fight, while the plebs must die for [insert abstract concept].
I think mandatory military service is likely a good thing for a population (maybe not the individual). With a highly trained population, volunteering would likely increase and reduce the need for conscription during times of war.
The benefits of military service for young adults are numerous. Discipline, exercise, comeradity, professional exposure, etc. Could reduce some of the mental issues we see due to isolation through technology. Of course I’m taking in peace time.
I don’t need military service to find all of those benefits as a man. I didn’t need to find them when I was a young man either. Those things exist already. Capitalism has all the incentives to analyze community building, isolate portions of said communites and sell it back to you. Military service is one of those “solutions” to a problem being created by that very concept I described. Young people are being sold isolation for a cheap, yet heavy price.
Also it’s extremely ignorant and frankly childish to assume that a military (such as the US Empire’s) isn’t causing death and destruction at all because it isn’t “officially” at war. These young adults absolutely shouldn’t bond over drone striking children just because the US Empire needs blood.
Conscription is a dogshit concept. There are no benefits just profit.
If in service of national infrastructure projects or search and rescue yeah maybe.
If to die in a far off jungle/desert I’d as soon shoot my CO
Only if The Nation I live in is so ideologically in synch with my own beliefs that I’d be willing to volunteer. In other words I’m fine with people being forced to fight for what I believe.
I’d say it depends on the country, I could understand if the country’s military is a self defense force like Japan’s military for example. In my particular context, I live in US and I hope to see that conscription never happens again, we have an insatiable military industrial complex and war machine. We have 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad, we even have one in Syria near the oil fields and we were never invited there. Plus we have a long history of interventions that have gone awry, including the more recent ones like Libya back in 2011, we made the situation even worse. All conscription would do is just serve our imperialism.
