Conscription does not automatically achieve that. For a lot of people their time in conscription is largely a waste, which is not a surprise given the lopsided economic incentives conscription produces.
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A lot of 18-year-olds' early jobs are pretty much a waste, where they earn little money, learn no useful skills, and their lack of experience mean they're not particularly productive to their employer of that firm's customers. At least to go by my own retail-sales experience.
I agree, but that means it should be real easy to make the military an attractive prospect for people in that situation. If you have to force people to work for you when competing against very little of money, skills, and experience there's something horribly wrong.
Even in Downtown Chicago during the high-crime 1990s, working in a Radio Shack or the bookstore department at Marshall Fields doesn't carry with it the expectation of a near-certainty of having to go through a combination of Fat Camp and the worst camping trip ever, plus a good chance of being shot.
Even for people young enough to still feel immortal and thus willing to risk the small chance of being shot or maimed, the hell of Basic Training/Boot Camp and the awful living conditions in a muddy foxhole or hot-bunking on a ship make even crappy 20s-bachelor shared apartment living look good.
Between transit fare to get to my job, dress shirts and ties to wear on the job, the fast food lunches and cigarettes I bought to deal with the stress of working downtown, and the books I bought from my bookstore employer because I was a reading freak, I barely broke even at that job.
Conscription probably doesn't give you a lot of marketable skills on the civilian market, unless cleaning and loading a mortar becomes a growth industry. And if no war actual shows up, your military skills are pretty useless even if you retain them. But hopefully you learn some teamwork skills.
*When it is badly organized*. It is a logistical exercise, for sure. That is exactly why conscription should be tailored to the capacity of training available - and planned around resources available and needed in the country in question.
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