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[AcertainLiz]

893. No, but I did see the movie with my boyfriend a couple weeks ago

All I remember was crappy cgi bugs and bad acting. Want me to read 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. "

Yeah you're probably right, this is basically what they did in Germany and still do in Austria. How would you structure such a system?

"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. "

Of course I'd allow deferments and exemptions, just not very liberally.

"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?"

I think it'd be crappy pay obviously, but that wouldn't be the point.