At the end of October, the Bundeswehr said it counted 181,383 soldiers in its ranks — that’s still some distance from the target of 203,000 that the German military hopes to reach by 2025. This has given rise to concern in times of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has once again reminded Germans how quickly conflicts can erupt in Europe.
Since taking office at the beginning of 2023, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has been thinking about ways to make the Bundeswehr more attractive as a career. He said he has received 65 concrete proposals from his ministry on recruitment and reforming training methods.
Another term for “mandatory service” is slavery.
Absolutely not. Being required to perform service instead of living in your mom’s basement, unemployed, getting stoned and drunk for a few years while you concoct hyperbolic statements about mandatory service is not slavery. You are not forced into service based on sex, color, religion, economic status (sort of, as explained), or used to raise someone else’s profits while you get nothing.
Service should be paid. You should be able to fill out a wish list for the jobs you want or might qualify for. You get to leave, uncontested, when you’ve completed service. That is not slavery.
Just because everyone gets forced into it doesn’t mean it’s not forced labor
by your logic the North Korean people aren’t slaves, so North Korean labor is fine, got it.
They don’t get a choice, do they? And comparing a totalitarian kleptocracy to mandatory service is absurd.
Slavery isn’t always life-long, and it isn’t always done to just one group. Indentured servitude and serfdom are forms of slavery. It’s forced labor against your will and with no way to avoid it if you’re subjected.
Mandatory service means forcing you to work at the point of a gun.
This sounds hyperbolic, but what happens when you refuse and simply want to keep living your life freely instead?
You are given a prison sentence, and if you refuse that, in the last consequence, the state reserves the right to use deadly force to make you comply.
You can ad-hominem every young person as useless basement-dweller, assign beautiful words to your forced labor, use bad comparisons, and pay people to do it.
It doesn’t change the fact that you want to force people to work, and their only other option is prison (where they will also be forced to work) or death.
What?
Oh. so that’s ok then? lookit you simultaneously saying slavery isn’t THAT bad, but OMG mandatory service is SLAVERY.
You’re full of shit, that whole reply is. Maybe some countries are extreme, but it doesn’t have to be like that, and it’s stupid to paint with such a broad brush about mandatory service. If someone’s country is pointing guns at citizens to pave a road, that’s a problem with the country, not the service.
I explain my reasoning in the following paragraph.
I’m not saying slavery isn’t bad, I’m saying the term slavery applies even to forced work that is temporary.
And please explain what you think will happen if someone refuses to do this mandatory service OR go to jail for their refusal?
What would you consider school? Grades K-8 are compulsory.
School isn’t work. And you don’t get sent to prison if you don’t attend.
I think quite a few students would beg to differ. And you do get sent to juvenile detention centers iirc. The parents certainly can be jailed.