• LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    You are required to sign up but they usually only can enforce it in ways such as applying for a driver’s license or voter registration. Maybe more kids aren’t applying for drivers licenses and therefore aren’t signing up.

    • ValenThyme@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      if you never sign up you’re excluded from a number of government jobs such as at the post office.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s bonkers that you have to actively sign up for it. Canada had conscription on the books as an available tool but like… you never actively signed on or were penalized for not doing that paperwork. In 2021 they ended all mandatory military service and two months ago they removed conscription entirely. Not that it’s possible for conscription to not come back as technically it’s not actively banned, but if it did it would have to be written and implemented as law entirely from scratch and be re subject to the full process of new constitutional challenge and could now be subject to gender discriminations to strictly men as required by current civil rights .

          There’s something about coercing someone to sign their name to paper to register for conscription that feels wrong to me that just accepting a call to conscription doesn’t. Like they want to reduce your resistance to it by making it “voluntary”.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Many people don’t pay attention. My mother (63) didn’t know me or my brother were egistered when a conversation came up about it last year. Most people are so complacent in accepting every day life because they are worried about living day by day. The concept that a mother who is legally responsible for 2 kids didn’t know they both signed themselves to serve in the military at 16 is baffling from a stand back and look at it mentality. (Only two kids, both sign to give their life away while her and her husban(my father) are the only ones who legally could sign our lives away at that age.)

    • piecat@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I had to apply at the post office. I’m pretty sure there was a penalty if I didn’t, like a fine or jail

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        $250k fine, but they haven’t prosecuted anyone since the 80s, and even then, it was only a handful and typically only when the person went around bragging about it in protest.

        The bigger deal is being barred from federal employment, contracts, grants, and other programs. Some states may deny drivers licenses because of it. And it used to mean you couldn’t receive federal financial aid for college, but that changed in 2020.

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That was apparently repealed in 2020.

        Wish it would’ve happened sooner. There was some issue with my school’s financial aid office every freaking semester. A week before classes started, I would get a letter that all my financial aid was canceled for failing to register, and I’d have to go in and prove I had. After the 4th time, they finally took a photocopy of my registration and had me sign an affidavit and appended it to my file.

        • jake_jake_jake_@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          i did not know that, thank you for letting me know, it’s good that they repealed that, for my area it wouldn’t have made a difference for myself registering as our high school had all of the males do it as part of a civics class.