Interesting Comments on Forced (Or Coerced) Servitude
Interesting Comments on Forced (Or Coerced) Servitude
Much has been made by the new administration of the idea of national service and volunteerism. While service to one’s community is certainly admirable, it is not the federal government’s place to “encourage” or promote volunteerism. Moreover, there are troubling signs that national service could transition from voluntary to mandatory, or de facto mandatory, such as the requirement of service in order to be granted a diploma, or something along those lines.
Involuntary servitude was supposed to be abolished by the 13th Amendment, but things like Selective Service and the income tax make me wonder how serious we really are in defending just basic freedom. The income tax enslaves workers for nearly 4 months out of a year by garnishing what amounts to all their wages in that period of time. A military draft could demand your very life, without your consent. This should be unthinkable in a free society.
There is more of this on Ron Paul’s blog. I do not agree with all of his comments there. But, he is definetely correct in his views on the government requiring or coercing service (military or other sorts) from people. One of the reasons I refuse to rejoin an organization I belonged to and the events that it holds is the requirement of service at their events. To attend one of their events I already had to sacrifice a large part of my vacation time, a yearly fee, and a hefty fee. For me, the cost had already started outweighing the rewards. Government mandates for volunteerism to receive something will most likely do the same thing.
If we start requiring a service project for people to graduate high school, what will this do to the drop-out rate? Will more students start seeing a GED (or no diploma) as a better route than high school? If we start requiring a service project to receive federal funds for college, will young people decide it is not worth the bother? The majority of college students when I went to college already worked a job on top of their full-time class schedule, while receiving government grants and/or loans. How many will give up their dreams of a college degree as being impossible for them due to not having enough time?
I see no problem with encouraging volunteerism by the government as long as it is not tied to receiving something you need. I think an excellent way to encourage volunteerism would be as a deduction on the indvidual’s income tax (X dollars/hour up to a certain maximum). However, we need to be careful of making problems worse by tieing government benefits to service.