How would you vote ...

[minionofmidas]

"Keep only the draftees and sack all the professional soldiers" is presumably not an option?

[minionofmidas]

Slaves weren't paid wages. And could be corporally punished.

[minionofmidas]

No hard work in the army for draftees. Nor on most Zivi jobs. The most you can argue it's a waste of time. But most people leaving school don't really know what to do anyways (hence why the FSJ/FÖJ has become so popular ever since fewer people get called up.)

It's not comparable in any way or form to slavery, at least as the west knew it - and I'm including serfdom here.
It's also rather insulting not just to those not many generations away from having been slaves, but also to draft veterans. Or former Zivis, might I add.

[minionofmidas]

No, Antonio....I have a good lawyer. I didn't do military service

You dirty privileged...

Seriously though, I would also probably have tried any possible way to escape it.

Yeah it's pretty crazy, the way it works in Germany right now. Only about 50% of 18-year olds are declared "medically fit" to serve......and of those, only about 50% ever actually get a letter telling them to report for duty.

Unfortunately, I was unlucky on both

What do you need to be "mentally fit" to serve in the military ? I thought officers prefered when their soldiers don't think too much.

In Austria, about 15% of those drafted each year are determined "unfit" for service due to medical or psychlogical reasons, including me. That's why I had the luck to do neither service: military, nor civil service ...

Do you take a test or something like that to be deemed unfit ? How does than work.

Yeah, it's called the "Musterung", in which every 18-year old Austrian guy has to drive to the next military commando center, get rid of his clothes and is left only with either green or pink underpants. Then the medical and psychological tests start. I was ruled "unfit for service" because I have a congenital valvular heart defect (nothing serious though, but the military cannot risk taking people with heart problems, for legal reasons or so).

I don't think there's such a thing as a draft system that didn't have that. It was called the Physical Evaluation back when the US had a draft.