Should there be mandatory national service?

Mandatory service requirements are easily manipulated

Question: Should there be mandatory national service?
Position1 of 2›: No, mandatory service should not exist
Argument1 of 2›: Mandatory service requirements are easily manipulated

Mandatory national service requirements can easily be manipulated by the wealthy to avoid conscription and service. This would make mandatory service requirements affect certain populations disproportionally.

The argument

Mandatory national service can be very easily manipulated and evaded by wealthy people who can pay government officials to get out of serving. The wealthy in most countries around the world already evade requirements and get special treatment, whether through nepotism or aquiring tax breaks. A mandatory national service requirement would disproportionally affect low-income and minority communities. These communities would be put at the most risk and would make the most sacrifices. This system would stem more internal conflict within the nations. Citizens would be at odds with one another, and the biased nature of this system would not work. Not every citizen is equipped for national service. The quality of the military would be skewed if everyone was required to serve. Governments could manipulate this and use it to their advantage if they wished to weaken their nation's military to allow other countries to invade or to instill fear in citizens to gain power. For example, Hitler and Mussolini used fear tactics and a mandatory national service to grab power and create authoritarian regimes in their countries. Mandatory national service requirements are easily manipulated by the wealthy and disproportionately affect low-income and minority populations.

Premises

[P1]The wealthy can easily evade mandatory national service through bribery, nepotism or special treatment, as they already do with other obligations. [P2] This shifts the burden disproportionately onto low-income and minority communities, breeding internal conflict. [P3] Forcing everyone to serve also lowers military quality and can be manipulated by governments to seize power, as Hitler and Mussolini did. [C] Therefore, because such requirements are easily manipulated and unjust, mandatory national service should not exist.

Counter-arguments

Mandatory national service would have requirements that would make it difficult to avoid conscription. Circumstances would not be based on or persuaded by wealth. The training in these programs would make every citizen prepared to serve to the best of their capacity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise generalises from one draft in one country to conscription as such. Systems differ sharply: several states operate universal service with lottery allocation, published exemption criteria and rights of appeal, and evasion in those systems is low. Corruption is in any case an argument for designing a system well rather than for not having one — the same reasoning would tell against taxation, jury service and licensing. [Rejecting P2] The distributional claim reverses once the alternative is named. A volunteer force recruits disproportionately from lower-income areas and from places with weak labour markets, so the burden already falls unevenly; the case for a universal obligation is precisely that it spreads it. The premise compares conscription with an idealised nothing rather than with what exists. [Rejecting P3] The historical claim is the weakest part. Neither the Nazi nor the Italian Fascist seizure of power ran through conscription — both were built on paramilitary formations outside the state, and Germany's army was capped at 100,000 men by treaty across the years in which the party rose. Most modern service schemes are also not primarily military, with civil, medical and environmental placements absorbing a large share, which is what the fitness objection would otherwise bear on.