Is this just things called “the draft”, or do other forms of national service or slavery to the national government count?

@DanPowell

Hi. No, not a "draft", if by draft you mean a random conscription for a specific conflict, like with Vietnam.

Slavery?!

I'm referring to a program of national service (probably military, but possibly other forms too) mandatory for all citizens within a period of time shortly after becoming a legal adult. Countries like South Korea, Norway, Singapore come to mind as examples, but of course there are many others.

Personally, I think a form of national service is a potential generational solution to the extreme political polarization among the United States citizenry. So, that's the spirit of what I mean when I say national service here.

@Ledger By “slavery” I meant the use of people to perform forced labor for the federal government under the carve outs of the 13th amendment.

And by “the draft” I meant anything. That would be called “the draft” by people discussing the issue, both random compulsory service and universal compulsory service and compulsory service with limited exceptions, but not a head tax or similar thing that only hard libertarians would characterize as forced service.

@DanPowell

Oh oh, so you mean would something like penal labor imposed on convicted criminals in the context of seeking to abolish it count as a YES for this question?

No, that's not what I'm referring to here. I'm referring to a form of national service common for all citizens (e.g. Norway or South Korea). Strictly speaking it wouldn't have to be mandatory - one could opt out by giving up their citizenship, but I digress.

What the hell is a "serious topic"? I have seen a lot of markets like this where the question is something like "will X become an issue in the election" and i feel like the probability depends extremely heavily on unstated resolution criteria.

@MattLashofSullivan Hi Matt. Nice to meet you. Since this is a recreational site with no real money at stake, I might be a little cavalier with my questions from time to time.

That said, an example of what I would consider serious might be the prompting of a stance on this question among candidates in a presidential debate; or at least one serious candidate (e.g. invited to a major presidential debate) making this issue a central part of their platform. Would you consider UBI to have been a serious topic in the 2020 election because of Andrew Yang? I would. So, something like that.

Yes, there is an element of judgement 🤷. Could I invest more time to come up with a more quantifiable metric? Probably. But see above about this being a recreational site. I've got kids and yard work and stuff like that to do too 🙂.

I'm open to suggestions, if you have any.

@Ledger nah this is good. I feel like a succinct way to have expressed this is just including one sentence in the description like "at least on the level of UBI/Andrew Yang in 2020"

@MattLashofSullivan 👍