this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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You are basically talking about adding 2 years to high school, a full 50% increase in duration, with very little benefit compared to enrolling in college.
The questions I asked which you didn't bother to answer is why should they do this instead of higher paying work or college and why should we force people to do it.
Explaining again HOW you intend to temporarily enslave people eg make it part of school isn't particularly informative.
I think this is the main point of contention. I think it would be more beneficial for everyone to have broader hands-on knowledge, particularly in areas that are relevant to all of our lives (e.g. farming). Even if we don't end up making a living in those areas, we live in a democracy where we have a say in many decisions that would affect these industries. Knowing more means being able to make more informed decisions and being less vulnerable to grifters trying to sway you.
The fact that you think this doesn't justify slavery
We can agree that slavery is bad. As are many other things.
If we can make a choice that minimizes the total amount of bad, should we take it? I think yes.
If minimizing the total amount of bad involves shuffling things around so that there's more of some bad things and less of others? That's where it can be debatable, and I think that's what you're getting at. It depends on how bad you think each bad thing is. Perhaps you're more concerned about slavery and autonomy. I'm personally more concerned about equity and having a high floor to everyone's quality of life.
I think I haven't made myself understood so I shall try to explain better. If one simply stated that rich pricks who own farms could send busses around to kidnap young people to forced hard labor it should universally be regarded as a moral outrage. On the other hand the government doing the same thing to force them to sit in rooms and learn math and history is regarded as a universal good.
It can reasonably be said that the expected benefit to society is very high and the corrupt benefit is virtually non-existent. The reverse could be said of using young people as cheap labor. The corrupt benefit to rich private parties is massive as is the cost to young people who would mostly have to be shipped to places they don't live to give up 2 entire years of their young life during the most productive part of same. They would be starting college 2 years late, starting careers 2 years late, Buying houses 2 years late. Starting families 2 years late in an environment where it is already hard to get started during the time frame when its most healthy to have families.
Such a policy would be wildly unpopular and almost certainly illegal. If implemented it would probably lead to the downfall politically of any who started it and if allowed to go forward it would be a massive blow to the productivity and wealth of our nation which depends on sending such folks into productive fields whilst we import cheap labor to do our dirty hard jobs. As it should effect millions of families it should soon lead to nationwide protests and broad and destructive unrest.
Calling anything you intend to force young people "educational" is incoherent because it is fundamentally different to bundled them away from their families to work in the fields than to make them sit for an hour and learn math. It is in short one of the dumbest ideas ever expressed on the internet. It is spectacular not only in its stupidity but in how it manages to dress up something that would be so destructive in so mild a dress. It is the clark kent of stupid ideas stripping off his plain dress to zoom across the face of the earth in flagrant attire only to punch himself thunderously in his own nuts repeatedly.