AI034 请指点

34. “All citizens should be required to perform a specified amount of public service. Such service would benefit not only the country as a whole but also the individual participants.

Should all citizens be required to perform a specified amount of public service? Such a problem seems to arouse controversy between divergent opinion groups.Some may contend that it is their own rights to determine whether they should offer public service. Basing on the fact that such service would benefit both the country and the individual participants, however, other people argue that all the citizens should perform some public service. Recognizing that a more proper solution to the question can only be achieved by incorporating all relevant aspects, I would like to advocate that citizens should not be required to provide a specified amount of public service.

The first reason that can be presented to support my position is that if we require all the citizens to perform public service, the whole society’s efficiency will be dramatically impaired. Specifically, there exist a wide range of professionals such as lawyers, accountants, engineers, teachers and dentist etc. Each of them works hard in his or her field and hence contributes a lot to our society. If they are all required to do some public service, some of them who have no time will undoubtedly have less energy and efforts to focus on their own work. As a result, their work efficiency and hence all the society’s efficiency will be severely hurt. At the same time, because they are less skilled at providing public service, they will inevitably show more inefficiency compared with government employees on providing public service.  

The second reason for my view is that if such a requirement is enforced, the work to monitor and regulate all the people’s public service work is difficult and not cost-efficient. Someone may contend that such a work is not necessary. However, if all the service they provide has no relevant organization to manage it , who can ensure that their work will not sometimes do damage to the public rather than bring /generate benefit?   

Last but not least, citizens have already paid taxes to employ government workers to provide public service. Therefore, whether they should do some public service work should be subject to their own decision. Whatever their decision is, we should respect their willing.

One argument against my contention may assert that public service will benefit both the country and the individual participants. Admittedly, it may be the case that encouraging a citizen to provide public service will contribute to the society to some extent. However, the assumption/premise of this argument is that such a work is carried out at every citizen’s own discretion. /voluntarily not compulsorily. Indeed, as mentioned above, if all the citizens are required to do  public service, the cost that such a requirement brings about will significantly outweigh the benefits.  

To sum up, due to the reasons and their supporting examples mentioned above, which sometimes correlate with each other to generate an integrated whole and thus more convincing than any single one of them, I conclude that citizens should not required to do public service work.

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