When we still had mandatory military service in Germany, one could alternatively choose to work in social services for 1-1,5 years. I worked a year in a hospital as an assistance nurse. Others worked in youth centers, community center or retirement homes. That year was not a pleasant one, as Zivis (thats what we were called) got exploited by the hospital stuff (always getting the worst shifts, always getting the shitty jobs, being used for jobs we were not qualified to do and so on).
Despite that I honestly think it was worth it. It helped to find oneself to do something different before starting university and it also helped to improve social and medical services.
The only real criticism I have is the aforementioned exploitation. There should have been better mechanisms in place to prevent this. And maybe the payment should have been a little better. I think we got ~8€/calender day plus free board and lodging; this wasn’t great.
how to tell when someone has just had their 31st birthday
Over a decade ago, Obama proposed significantly expanding AmeriCorps, the tea party Republicans basically did everything they could to water down the expansion to amount to basically nothing.
I wonder if Twitter Republicans even know AmeriCorps exists…
Anyway, what we should actually do is mandate that everyone who earns double area median income for 3 years in a 5 year period has to spend 6 months working in a call center, retail, customer service, fast food.
Stop demonizing your neighbor. Demonize the 1%.
That income range still very much encompasses “normal” people who already pay a large share of income taxes.
Tax the super rich (both income and wealth), and redistribute that money via healthcare, education and social programs like UBI.
Yeah people don’t get this. Many of those people may agree with you and were simply lucky enough to get comfortable in life. They are certainly not the main contributors to inequality in our society.
I like to say it like this: I’m doing alright, but not “able to weather serious healthcare in America” alright. I think that’s a decent way to lessen the confusion of class divide.
Stop demonizing your neighbor. Demonize the 1%.
Even more than the 1%, the 0.0001%. An excellent resource to illustrate this point:
I feel like everyone should go through this at least once. It’s eye-opening. Even people who we generally think of as crazy rich, like the average hedge fund manager, are just a drop of water in a pond compared to the ultra-wealthy.
I made it to the trillions but I clicked the paper billionair link and then had to restart. Fuck that haha
From there it just talks about a lot of things we could do with a fraction of the wealth of the wealthiest 400 Americans. Things like ending homelessness in America, ending malaria worldwide, and many others. By mildly inconveniencing 400 people, who would still all be absurdly wealthy billionaires even if 60% of their wealth were taken, we could dramatically improve the world.
To be fair, we can’t get to higher taxes and social services without both mass labor organization and recent successful Socialist revolution, which is what allowed the New Deal to go through. Socialism is still a necessity, and that starts with organizing.
Anytime I’ve done some world building in my head for the great human empire :tm: it involves some sort of rotational labor period in each citizens early 20’s to give them exposure to a few different styles of work
It’s a nice way to give back to the community while also getting to see how the rest of the world lives
I’m sure there’s flaws with it but sounds a hell of a lot better than what we have now
I genuinely believe everyone should serve some sort of customer service role at least once in their life.
Except the American response to this would be to be extra shitty to retail workers since customers were shitty to them during their tour.
That’s not how walking a mile in someone else’s shoes work. It’s the opposite.
Many Americans believe that the new guys have to suffer, like they had to, and that it’s the suffering that unites us. Many don’t seem to be ok with being the last ones that suffer so the next don’t have to, which is seen as unfair. At least that’s been my experience living over here.
That’s a really unfortunate philosophy because at best it guarantees things never improve
Oh yeah, it’s very unfortunate, specially considering that saying about planting trees whose shade we will never enjoy.
It’s more like, “I had to walk a mile so everyone else should have to!”
That’s not how it should work, but it does. It’s a conservative thing to lack empathy. They struggled 20 years ago, so 1. It must be the same exact struggle and 2. Instead of making life better for all, they’ll actively contribute to maintaining shitty life for these “entry” people because that’s apparently just how it works.
They want $15/hr for flipping burgers? I only got $4! (inflation is meaningless, intangible, and not calculable)
They want more savings and less money? Stop buying coffee! (bespoke coffee has tracked way lower than inflation, making daily Starbucks pretty insignificant compared to rent)
They want more respect in customer service? Why, I dealt with all kinds of bullshit! (as demonstrated by their shitty attitude, with less working hours, better benefits, lower population density, less stripped work force, local management support, and a higher percentage of people speaking the common language)
It’s not walking a mile in their shoes, to them. It’s walking in very different shoes and assuming everyone’s shoes are the same. Just look at any meth overdose death story when it’s a nice white girl. She just made a mistake, or got tricked, or was down on hard times. If the case looks like their own daughter, there’s empathy. Anyone else? Victim’s fault.
Lol have you heard of hazing??
Yeah…I thought that as soon as I hit Enter.
What is this, academia?
I think if you could opt out of you really really didn’t want to do a particular job then it would be fine. Maybe if it’s a job that a lot of people dislike, like sanitation, you could provide an incentive to make it worthwhile - like you get the next season off.
Well I imagine it like high school electives. You get to pick from a selection and go through 3 or 4 until you’re ready to settle one some sort of career
I’ve had similar thoughts. Maybe not a rotation, but a compulsory period of service following high school that where people can select from a variety of public service assignments.
Compulsory service exists in many parts of the world and it is rarely good.
Forcing people to do work they don’t want to do leads to very unproductive environments that are also very open to abuse. Being forced by law to do the work has a tendency to create super unhealthy power dynamics.
Likewise, I think 2 years of public service or military should be compulsory. The truth is we do need a defense force given the world, but it’d also be nice to have americorps or something expanded to fit the service option. Make military service more enticing than the other, I don’t care, but provide room and board, and a spending allowance at the very least for both.
What’s the equivalent today? Volunteering? Summer jobs?
Military service
Americorps and the peace corp are a thing, but I’ll admit, I’m not sure how much of a thing?
Great, I would love to have some free research assistants! Oh wait, these plans invariably only concern manual labor (real work TM).
“Make America Great Leap Forward Again”
I for one will be sowing all my seed incredibly close together, the plants will grow stronger together. Also all birds are now counter revolutionary, get out your noisiest banging pans my dudes.
Also, how do I invest in pig iron futures?
Didn’t they try this already on like teenagers or college students or something? Didn’t it go horribly wrong?
+3,000 student athletes in The A-Team. And yes it went horribly wrong. Some students started unionizing immediately.
“Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, ‘What did we do?’ The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees.”
Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe’s fine hairs made grabbing them feel like “picking up sandpaper.”
The farmers sheltered them in “any kind of defunct housing,” according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Thank you!! I was trying to find this but was struggling to find an article about it.
I’m bookmarking this article. Probably gonna use it a lot these coming years.
Yeah, can’t wait to see what a bunch of bored teenagers and twenty somethings will do to our food supply after the first couple of seasons fucking around. Forced labor also doesn’t mean quality labor.
Authoritarians never learn that forcing people to act like they want doesn’t work.
RFK Jr has seriously proposed sending drug addicts, which he defines as people taking prescribed medication for mental health reasons, as well as your more stereotypical hardcore drug addicts… to basically agricultural work / detox camps.
No meds, no phone, live in a barracks, do farm work… while you and everyone else are cold turkey quitting heroin, or fentanyl, or ritalin or zoloft or wellbutrin.
That sounds like a program ripe for abuse.
Thankfully, that will never happen. /heavy amount of sarcasm
Its actually been done before and most teens quitted or were fired within weeks because of the inhuman working conditions. The quality of the work they would do is completely irrelevant.
I imagine it would be similar to the authoritarian practice of forcing teenagers to attend school: it really depends upon how it is organized and executed with additional variations in response based upon the individual.
It sounds better than forced military service.
The trick is just that everyone has to do it. Without exemptions for rich, influential etc…. (Ofc. not disabled, pregnant etc…)
You will quickly find all the rich have bone spurs which prevents their service.
Now get back to the fields peasant.
The thing about forced labor is that quantity is its own quality.
You can also use certain government controlled documents as an incentive. For instance, it was common in the Soviet Union to use agricultural service as a requisite for graduation.
Maoism is a conservative doctrine tbf
True, but labor rotation is also common in anarchist communities
It does make sense and the issue here isn’t communal service periods but for making it only the young which “by chance” makes it so almost everyone who had any hand in it wouldn’t have to do it ever.
If it were every citizen had to do some form of labor for some period I don’t think anyone would have much of an argument.
And in Marxist circles as well.
Mao is turning in his grave over this misappropriation. If Maoists read Mao’s Oppose Book Worship, they wouldn’t be Maoists.
Yeah, we should go back to an agricultural economy, like 200 years ago!
We still live in a world with mandatory military service in many countries. I’d trade it for that.
But otherwise thanks, I’d rather have neither.
I think all citizens should have to go through the military’s Basic Training when they hit 18. No need to do the 4 years of service if they don’t want to, but do have to make it through boot camp, even if you want to go to university.
I have a better idea, NO
👍
I dunno… being trained in individual and squad movement tactics might come in handy over the next 4 years. Firearms training too, that in restricted states can let you skip classes you’d otherwise pay for is cool too, and would be handy for a lot of peeps.
I could not possibly resist the intrusive thoughts that come with carrying a rifle.
As a scientist (i.e. someone who went through a lot of academia) who’s strictly opposed to taking a gun, especially in the name of a state, hell no.
A better idea would probably be to advocate for peace, so that people wouldn’t have to learn these things to begin with.
Military is not productive labor, it’s just draining countless lives and resources in the name of some guy’s fucked up ambitions.
Not really talking about the guns part. More the working out, the team building, the discipline. When I did basic training we only had like 1 or 2 days for training with guns. I was in the navy tho.
All of those can be taught in a civilian way, ideally in school. As much as I personally hate exercising, schools do need more PE and more sports and civil service events that would tie people together. Discipline, too, is part of a solid school background, although, and this is the problem with the army too, it must not be confused with obedience.
Holy shit, Horseshoe Theory IS real
Silly “leftists” when Conservatives reinvent Maoism: 😱
Seriously though, horseshoe theory is nonsense.
Turns out that the “Great Leap Forward” is actually circular.
Great idea from Soviet Union. Just ask them, how this turned out.
Pretty sure the quota system and the complete govt disregard for ag-science was to blame, and not the Labor force for that one.
I honestly unironically support it. Lots of people should go touch some grass sometimes. It gives you some movement, builds an understanding for where our food “really comes from”, and connects people in a way similar to the military, but less targeted on warfare.
Sounds good. Too bad the rich and politically powerful will be able to dodge, just like they dodge the draft.
Would’ve done me a lot of good when I was young that’s for sure.
