Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
If a country gets away with not having a mandatory military service, then it sholdn't have one. Forcing people (usually just men) to spend a substancial amount of time in something, they might have zero motivation to, is unjust.
That being said, I absolutely support the fact that we do have a conscription based army here in Finland. There simply is an existential imperative for an army that is wastly larger than what could be achieved with volunteers. Maybe an initial fighting force could be mustered, but we would have problems refreshing it throug years of heavy attritional combat. Like Ukraine could most likely never maintain a fighting force through volunteer only.
That being said there is an option of civilian service here in Finland. I hold no grudge against anyone choosing that option. I agree that the system is fundamentally injust. I just see no alternative.
What does the conscription look like in daily life? Do people just naturally transition from military life to civilian life, same as going from school to working?
In my day you would start either in July or January. I wanted to go get it over with straight after secondary school in July They pushed my start date to January, because everyone wants to start in the summer between classes.
So I went to university for a year and got a six month exemption because studies. Then I did my conscription for one year and straight back to year 2 of uni. It worked out nicely time-wise, and I didn't have to think about a summer job those two summers.
After two years of studies I was in a better place to get relevant work, anyway.