this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Heinlein gets shit on for this, but his "citizenship through service" idea always made sense to me. Yeah you have rights, can work a regular job, and have all the benefits we traditionally associate with "citizenship" by simply being a legal resident...but if you want to vote or hold office, you need to spend a few years contributing. Maybe that's military service, or maybe that's working as a teacher in a low-income area. Regardless, voting is a privilege that SHOULD be earned by contributing to the society you want to impact FIRST.
Nope, it's a terrible idea.
Who defines 'service'? Who assigns 'service'? Who decides you have done enough 'service'? Who decides who is capable or not capable of 'service'? What happens when two different officials have different ideas on the above? What happens when different administrative regions have different ideas on the above? What happens when different regions have different numbers of Voters? What are the health risks of 'service'? What the health risks of the jobs that aren't 'service'? What about people who are incapable of doing 'service'? What about people who choose not to do 'service'? How are resources distributed between Voters and Non-Voters? What about political issues that largely only affect Non-Voters? What happens when the Non-Voters vastly outnumber the Voters and rightfully decide this is a crappy system?
I suggest the game Shadowrun if you want a look at a world where the Certified Citizens are a small minority. It's not pretty.
It's a direct democracy, so generally Citizens decide what constitutes "service"...or at worst "representatives" (if we'd building off the framework of the idea). As far as administrative regions vs. federal..well, assuming we have a system that's not broken and janky like this one, I think we could manage. As far as weighting things like "health risks", yeah that's a serious weakness here...but not an unaddressable one.
What I see is a world where we aren't screeching about "immigrants" because most folks are similarly just residents. And residents have every right and protection as a citizen...aside from voting or holding office. I see a world where the responsibility of such power also comes with commitment to building society...rather than simply being born, whining, and burning everything down in a tantrum...as we basically see now with bourgeoisie white folks.
Don't throw an idea away just because it isn't immediately a panacea to every broken aspect of our current system.
You're right, they wouldn't screech about immigrants, they'd screech about Non-Citizens. Who all happen to be a certain skin color or ethnicity for some reason. Remember that some official has to sign off on your Citizenry Service. Guess who is going to be judged more harshly?
History is extremely plain. If a group does not have concrete representation in the political process, their rights are trampled - or at best overlooked. Residents would extremely quickly NOT have the same rights. What about this is hard to understand?
Look, bud, what you're talking about is literally the goal of facism. Don't score an own goal for them, yah?