S-2,
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Wrong. It stands to reason that a greater pool of qualified infantrymen would become available. Plenty of smart, healthy 18-22 males all over America's campuses.
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sure- i believe today's kids are better educated and wealthier than ever. if a draft is instituted today, i have no doubt it will be fairer and thus result in conscript troops a good deal better than the historical average. but i'm comparing quality here in terms of the all-volunteer force, and not with prior historical conscriptions.
recruit quality is also connected into how much the kids buy into the idea of military service. will the conscript be as motivated and eager to serve as the person whom volunteered? i have my doubts.
case in point: the taiwanese military. conscription has been a way of life since the ROC gov't came to taiwan in '49. there has always been a cottage industry there of ways to avoid conscription. and when THAT failed...well, one of the largest unmentioned drivers of taiwanese immigration to the US has been the fact that after one stays a certain period of time on the island (i believe the cut-off point is in the 8th grade), one must serve in the military before one is allowed to leave. thus we have the phenomenom of many immigrants coming with 7th grade kids.
then of the conscripts themselves, plenty of stories of bad morale and discipline. in one particular example, apparently the ROCA made it an informal policy to have conscripts run ROCA accounting- and they made sure to hire only people with no experience whatsoever. the logic of that was, conscripts with no experience would lack the knowledge to "shuffle" money, and would not be around long enough to learn that knowledge.
it's gotten to the point where taiwan, despite being threatened by a military a good deal larger than their own, is going to phase out conscription.