Compulsory Public Service

"All citizens should be required to perform a specified amount of public service. Such service would benefit not only the country as a whole but also the individual participants."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Some say, "freedom is not free". That citizens owe their country a debt, that they should think "what "they can do for their country" rather than "what their country can do for them". The stated opinion is an extension of such sentiments, and I do not agree with it.

Supporting an inefficient, corrupt Government cannot benefit anybody. If military junta of Myanmar mandates that all citizens be required to perform a specified amount of public service, I cannot see how it would benefit the impoverished country or the participants. The citizens who barely manage to survive cannot be expected to pitch in while the well-off will bribe their way out of the situation. Such a proclamation would not amount to anything more than forced labour in disguise. If one thinks that this is fine, one may as well legitimize Pol Pot's worker camps in Cambodia that worked people to death in name of agrarian utopia! Such a blanket and generalist statement is not universally applicable.

Even for countries where Governments are better, say for countries in the European Union, expecting hard-working, tax-paying citizens to chip in while the Governments is entangled in bureaucracy does not sound that good to me. Most European countries have high taxes that are used to support generous welfare schemes. Citizens, who may be already caught in supporting a family and a mortgage, may rightly feel that their hands are too full to do anything more. I find it hard to digest that a government may expect a law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying and over-stretched citizen to do more. Wouldn't the people be better off contributing to the economy the way they do?

Concluding, patriotism and hysterical propaganda are  not the same. A citizen has every right to disagree with the functioning of the government and living a free life. He cannot be forced to contribute to public services if he feels he is already doing so by paying his taxes and being a good citizen. The only time that this may not be true is during a time of national calamity like attack of an enemy nation. Barring such extra-ordinary circumstances, there is no strong case for the government to force its citizens to work for it. If anything, it would just highlight the inefficiency of a government that is willing to exploit its own people.