Day Mossige, Conscription | Norwegian defense will not improve by forcing all young people to do a year of community service

Just a few weeks after the Stavanger Labor Party launched the proposal to impose a compulsory year in the community’s service on all the country’s 19-year-olds, many people have come forward wanting free labour.

A better suggestion is for everyone who supports such a totalitarian proposal to stand in line to take an unpaid mandatory year for the team.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a new threat for Norway, which we must take seriously. It is no longer enough to give 9,000 to the military and 500 to the Civil Defense every year, but from there to imposing a year’s community service on all the country’s youth is quite a long way off.

The man behind the proposal, Labor Party politician Dag Mossige, on the contrary sees the counterarguments as bad: – It is extreme liberalism that history has gone from, now it is the community that matters, said the Labor Party’s group leader in Stavanger City Council in NRK Debatten.

Here you can see more: Wants to force 19-year-olds into compulsory education

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Extreme liberalism to let young people choose their education and profession?

If it is extreme liberalism to let young people choose their own education and career, then I hereby stand out as an extreme liberal. But it is not the community that speaks at all when a Labor Party politician wants to order all the country’s 19-year-olds to an ill-conceived year of community service – called civil work 2.0 – for NOK 221 a day.

My counter proposal is simple: Give all the country’s 67-year-olds an unpaid compulsory year in the service of society, and include the proposer Dag Mossige in the same category. Work in agriculture and in nursing homes has been mentioned. The salary is free board and lodging and approximately NOK 6,500 a month.

When you are so willing to use other people’s time, it is a minimum that you put in your own time.

Low threshold for coercion against young people

If the proposal was adopted. now, so it would affect everyone who had several years of important youth destroyed by unnecessarily closed schools during the pandemic. As a last pat on the cheek before adulthood, the state greets you with 12 months of compulsory service.

Mossige made no secret of the fact that the service was to be compulsory and kept it open with punishment for those who refuse.

A gallup Norstat has made for NRK shows that the proposal has a majority among most people, while a clear majority between 18 and 29 years old are against it.

The strange thing is how easily the majority are willing to use coercion against young people – a coercion that people on the edge of retirement would be reluctant to be subjected to.

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Defense is fine, free labor is not fine

Interestingly, neither the Armed Forces nor the Civil Defense are interested in all the 53,000 young people who make up a Norwegian cohort. The leading institutions for preparedness want to expand the number from 9,000 to 13,500 for the military and a few hundred extra each year for the Civil Defence. There are therefore no contingency reasons for increasing to anything more than around 25 per cent of a cohort.

But isn’t it unfair that 1/4 have to do military service, while the rest don’t?

well, Firstly is it legitimate for a state to defend itself militarily, and the duty to participate in defense has long historical traditions and solid support among the population. How many will enter must be determined by the Armed Forces’ need for personnel and ability to receive them with uniforms, weapons, education and housing.

Second the obvious solution to the injustice is to make it more attractive for young people to choose to serve in the military. Higher pay, more free time and opportunities to take one. vocational training are good alternatives, as well as the opportunity to enlist for a normal salary.

Feel free to call it extreme liberalism, but in a Western democracy we arrange such needs with wages and orderly working conditions – and not with coercion that smells a bit like work brigades and emergency work that has been thrown on the scrap heap of history.

What serves society best?

Norway needs qualified labor in many sectors, but perhaps most of all in health and care. Many trained nurses have opted out of the profession because the pay is too poor, the responsibility too great and the working conditions too demanding. No one has so far come up with the idea that they should be forced to do a compulsory year for society, naturally enough.

Here, too, the solution is to make it more attractive to train as a nurse and offer conditions that make it attractive to be in the profession. If more people are needed, then the solution is not coercion, but to create more positions and orderly conditions.

It goes without saying, which is why it is so surprising that a large party team such as the Stavanger Labor Party is willing to investigate something reminiscent of youthful domestic social dumping.

Put the proposal dead, first as last!