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[Donald Ian Rankin]

17. No, and no.

The former because it can't be substituted for by anything else, and the latter because it can be paid in any form you choose.

What is immoral and anti-freedom is to demand that particular individuals supply a particular good or service, when the same thing could be achieved by demanding that they supply a certain value of goods of their own choice (i.e. taxing them), and using that to pay volunteers to perform that service.

Volunteer juries would not be able to substitute for conscripted juries, because they wouldn't be as representative of the population, so it's OK to conscript juries.

In a crisis where certain skills are vital to the nation, it's OK to conscript people with those skills.

But if you can achieve a goal by taxing people and using the taxes to pay volunteers then that is better in every way than conscription. It's better for the people who would rather have less money than be forced to supply the service, and it's better for the people who would rather have more money and have to supply the service. It's probably also better for the recipients, because professionals tend to be better at most things than conscripts, but that's not always the case and only a second-order effect. By comparison, conscription harms all those involved and benefits none of them.

The only argument for conscription in place of taxation and hiring is the paternalistic, anti-freedom argument that conscription people will make them into Better people, and you know better than they do what is best for them and should be allowed to make their choices for them for their own good. And I'm absolutely fine with forcing people to do/not do things for other people's good (c.f. taxation, banning murder etc), but I'm very, very hostile to forcing people to do things for their own good against their will; I think that whenever possible choices like that should be left to people.