6/30       Whenever I watch celebrity news I hear so and so is guilty in the
           court and have to perform community service. They don't get fined or
           go to jail, but have to perform community service. What's so bad
           about serving your community? I mean, isn't it noble to serve food
           for the homeless, paint houses for the poor, and clean up highways
           trash? Imagine the United States drafting men between 18-25 to
           perform mandatory community service for just one year. We'd
           have a huge [free] labor force to clean up grafitti, recycle
           cans, and other wonderful things that make our community more
           beautiful. In our ever increasingly busy digital lives, we rarely
           have time to even help ourselves, let alone help others out. We
           are increasingly isolated from one another, and have very little
           understanding on this "sense of community" that our grandparents
           talked about. Perhaps incentives and rewards should be given to
           those that help our community, to make everyone's lives better.
           Community service is an honor performed by those who honor community
           and brotherhood. It is sad and ironic that criminals have the honor
           to serve our community. Just my two cents for today.   -2 cents guy
         \_ For reasons I won't elaborate on, I had to spend some time cleaning
            up trash with the other "community service" people in People's
            Park at one point.  There is actually a pretty huge pool of
            people who have "community service" hours to do at any given time.
            Several of the people there had 1000 hours of service they had to
            do.  I was, as far as I could tell, the only person there who was
            actually working.  Mostly people would just show up and loaf around
            all day, then get double that number of hours signed off for by
            the dude who runs the park.  If the dude who runs any given park
            doesn't want to be corrupt, people just migrate somewhere where
            it *is* corrupt.  Of all those community service hours that get
            handed out by judges, very little real service gets done (although
            I busted ass cleaning up the park).
         \_ This is a fairly old idea.  This was called a 'subbotnik' in
            USSR (only this was done on Saturdays, hence the name 'subbota =
            saturday'.)  You should ask someone who participated in a subbotnik
            what they think of it. -- ilyas
            \_ why didn't you participate in a subbotnik?
               \_ I was too young. -- ilyas
              \_ Switzerland requires you to serve the military or perform
                 substitute service (community service). Maybe John can tell
                 you all about it.
                 \_ Yes, and it's pointless, a waste of money, bad for the
                    economy (by forcing people to take a large, unproductive
                    gap between school and work, and by forcing employers,
                    including SMEs, to subsidize long absences), and exposes
                    young men to drugs and cigarettes.  In the abasence of
                    enemies or funding for all these recruits, there are many
                    make-work projects to occupy the ~60% or so who don't
                    manage to get out of it.  It's state slavery; totally
                    pointless and philosophically repulsive.  -John
            \_ One might obtain a somewhat less grim view of such matters by
               looking at the Works Projects Administration established in the
               US during the great depression.  I believe modern Germany has a
               similar program where one may choose between military or
               `alternative' civilian service, but don't know much about it.
               Also, why constrain this sort of thing to men only?  That seems
               backwards and silly.  That said, if you're going to encourage
               community service, I don't think picking up trash and cleaning
               up graffiti are particularly inspiring tasks or the most useful
               application of that sort of workforce.  What made the WPA cool
               was that it took on really ambitious projects.  Even if you take
               all this into account, I don't know how much it's going to do
               for instilling a sense of community in people.  I know there's a
               geographic component to this: Many of my grandparents'
               present-day friends are people they grew up with on the same
               *block* in Brooklyn.  They joined the service together.  After
               the war they settled on Long Island together.  In their later
               years, part of the group moved to the same communities in
               Florida.  Of your friends today, how many lived on the same
               street you did when you were young?  Do you still keep in touch
               with your friends from high school?  Personally, I think my
               sense of community is as strong as my grandparents, just
               oriented along different axes (e.g. cultural vs. geographic).
               -dans
               \_ I think the CCC also did something similar in the same time
                  frame.
         \_ Why community service? Because we supposively live in a classless
           society. Billioniares pay the same amount for a moving violation
           as the average Joe. Community service forces the culprit to give
           up time, which means the rich don't get off easy and the poor
           aren't forced to pay fines. Both beat jail which puts the burden
           on society. All of this is separate from enforcing a draft
           (military or community works) or volunteerism. Much of the
           reasons behind why not lay with the relationship of citizens and
           government and society in general. And those discussions get ugly.
           \_ Where is the claim made that we live in a classless society?
              There have never been, and perhaps never will be a classless
              society. -- ilyas
              \_ I never claimed it was a classless society in reality.
                 It's just one of those things that American democracy
                 aims for. Probably a silly thing to put in the motd...
                 \_ I think the best you can say along these lines is
                    American society was in part a rejection of solidified
                    class lines of European society.  I don't think the
                    founding fathers were specifically aiming to create a
                    classless society, merely to reject aristocracy in the
                    European conception of the word.  Classless society is
                    probably impossible, and almost certain undesirable,
                    as a goal.  Even an ant colony has 'classes.' -- ilyas
                    \_ Yes, and we should never seek to surpass the utopian
                       efficiency and elegance of ant society.
                       \_ If you seriously want to make men into an
                          ant colony, you should read Hellstrom's Hive.
                          Also, a certain quote from John involving a baseball
                          bat comes to mind.  Do you actually maintain American
                          society has a classless society as an explicit goal?
                          Do you have a source for this claim, or are you just
                          making stuff up to suit your agenda? -- ilyas
                          \_ I think you were trolled.  -John
                          \_ I think you're being needlessly pedantic.
                             "classless" in the context of government applies
                             to equal treatment under the law, one-person-one-
                             vote, etc. I think this type of classlessness is
                             an explicit goal of American society; that people
                             have equal opportunity etc. --!op
                             \_ When someone talks about a 'classless society,'
                                especially if they talk about ant colonies
                                being utopian in the same breath,
                                I understand them to be using the common
                                definition the Marxists use.  I don't think
                                I am being pedantic at all, I think you
                                misunderstood the previous poster. -- ilyas
                                \_ I didn't write the "ant" comment, but I did
                                   write the original "classless society" one.
                                   The original thought was towards the equal
                                   treatment of Man under law as opposed to
                                   a more communistic "equality of Man" ideal.
                                   The followup use of "American democracy"
                                   was an attempt to point in that direction.
                                   Apologies to those who may have been misled.
              \_ What kind of "classes" do chimpanzees have?
                 \_ Chimpanzees have a society?  (Actually, to the extent that
                    great apes are social animals and live in hierarchies you
                    may well say they have 'classes.'  So do wolves.  An
                    interesting question I thought about recently is why do
                    all functional wolf packs have at least one Omega).
                      -- ilyas
                    all functional wolf packs have at least one Omega).-- ilyas
                    \- I have discovered a remarkable proof for this but:
                      (0. Hola)
                       1. it requires the Axiom of Choice
                       2. the motd is too small to contain it.
                       3. ok tnx.