"Conscription, Is It Slavery?"

Came across this essay on conscription. Read the comments, good exchanges. (There are other essays on the site dealing with other topics that aren't MR-related; some may find them of interest, others not.) Excerpt:

'The one form of indentured servitude still legal for non-convicts in the United States is military service. When you join the military, you have fewer rights and freedoms left than did “indentured servants” in the Americas three centuries ago:

• You have masters whose orders you must follow without question.
• You are not allowed to “quit” until your contracted term ends (if then), unless your appeal to your masters and they agree, which is unlikely.
• They command labor from you, while you’re paid a token sum and given a minimal standard of food and shelter.
• You may well be doing it on the promise of training that can become a career once you are freed of the obligation.

So far, this describes an indentured servant in the Colonies in 1700, or a US soldier.

But unlike other indentured servants, as an American soldier you’re not allowed to sue your masters, not even after you leave.
...
But the difference between an indentured servant and a slave is simply that one chooses (if only through his actions) to be an indentured servant, and signs a contract agreeing to its conditions and to when it will end, as with volunteer soldiers, while a slave is taken by force and kept until his masters choose to release him.'