[ChuckNorris89]

> you can only assess the popularity of something when it becomes a free choice rather than obligation.

Democratic elections and referendums have assessed this and the majority of the population has voted in favor of this system. For better or worse, that's democracy for ya'.

[buran77]

Not sure it's so simple. Most of the voting population is past the age where this affects them and people (I must admit I fall in that trap quite often) have the mentality that "it was done to me and look how well I turned out, so I'll do it to them". The only way to see if people want it is to give them the choice when the time comes.

> the population has voted

But as you said earlier, it's the same population and elected leaders who let critical systems and services degrade to the point where they would stop working without forcing children to work. Even agreeing this doesn't put the people in a bad light decision-wise, in this position it's no longer a choice but a necessity. Hence my incessant question whether the government's statement that "services will fail without child work" is supported by some study or it's just a scare tactic to get people to vote a certain way.

Yes, democracy is about getting the people's vote of confidence. How you earn that confidence is outside the democratic process and could be as simple as "feed them BS".

[panick21_]

I can only say from the Swiss perspective, critical system and service are not degraded and the system would work perfectly fine without a few 10000 civil service works. And I don't think this is true for Austria either.

> Yes, democracy is about getting the people's vote of confidence. How you earn that confidence is outside the democratic process and could be as simple as "feed them BS".

In Switzerland getting people vote is about much more then confidence as we vote regularly on actual issues, not just on people or parties. And because its Concordance system all parties share a certain amount of confidence form the population.

The political discussion about mandatory military services are certainly happening and have been for a very long time. Generally, in a conservative society you need to have a really convincing reason to change something, and in Switzerland at least nobody has come up with a great alternative that convinces many people so the system stays as it it.