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[Prophet 451]

884. Did you just read "Starship Troopers"?

Military service for citizenship is a big theme in the book.

Taking the idea for generally: I think defaulting to military service is a mistake. The US doesn't need more soldiers. Your military is already ridiculously colossal. What I think would work better would be a term of national service where you could choose from a few options. Off the top of my head, you'd have options of the military, the peace corp, a civilian engineering corp to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure and maybe a couple of other things. That way, if you don't want to join the military, you spend your two years teaching math in the third world or building low-income housing or something.

I also don't think it should be tied to citizenship as some people, such as the severely disabled, would be unable to do their service.

That said, I would question how you're going to pay these people. Your average squaddie is already underpaid and you can't force them to do service for free (that really would be slavery) so where are their wages going to come from?