You are clearly not reading the novel very carefully.

Only one person is shown being discharged from the Mobile Infantry (which, as I pointed out in another post upthread, is not where everyone who volunteers for service ends up, only a small fraction do) in the novel. That is Hedrick, who is court martialed and sentenced to 10 lashes and a bad conduct discharge. But what does he do that leads to that?

Is it that he struck a superior officer? That's the "on paper" offense, but it's made clear in the novel that if he had just kept his mouth shut in front of Captain Frenkel, he wouldn't have been court martialed.

Is it that he did not unquestioningly obey orders? No, all that got him was a swat from Sergeant Zim. If he'd left it at that, nothing more would have happened.

The actual thing that got him court martialed and discharged was his failure to think independently. He failed to comprehend what was happening when Zim brought him to see the captain, and nobody brought up the fact that he had hit Zim, and the captain made every effort to not have that stated explicitly, so that he would not have to take official notice of it. If Hedrick had been able to think independently, he would have realized that nobody wanted to discharge him, and since he also didn't want to be discharged, it was perfectly clear what he should have done: accept administrative punishment and leave it at that. But, as Captain Frenkel says to Zim when they're discussing it afterwards, Hedrick was stupid; that's what got him discharged.

And just to drive home the point further, look at what happens to Rico when he makes a serious mistake during training (which in real combat would have got teammates killed) and is brought before the regimental commander (i.e., even higher rank than Captain Frenkel). He realizes what's going on and keeps his mouth shut, and is given administrative punishment and that's the end of it.

It was obvious that everyone already knew what actually happened. What was stupid was Hedrick forcing the captain to take official notice of what actually happened. (And if he did that because he actually failed to realize that the captain already knew what actually happened and was trying to avoid having to impose the full punishment, he was even stupider.)

> the officer privately conceded fault in his own management of the situation

Of course. Nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes. But owning your mistakes and doing your best to fix things so the same mistake doesn't get made again sounds to me like a good example to be setting.

> and thought the punishment system draconian

No, he didn't. He explicitly said that, once the system is forced to take official notice of something like that, the punishment has to be what it was; there's no alternative.

But what you seem to be missing here is that, as the system is described, it expects people to use individual judgment in how to apply the rules. That's what the captain was trying to do, and what Hedrick failed to realize. The system works precisely because it's not draconian: because people are expected not to slavishly apply the letter of the law in every case. But if someone is stupid enough not to realize all that and take the second chance that's being offered to them, then, as I just noted, the punishment has to be imposed.

> such service being a good idea as a minimum franchise requirement

So teaching people that you should take responsibility for your actions and fix things that are broken and anticipate problems so you can better deal with them doesn't sound to you like a good idea?

That's a brave argument to deploy when you've spent the rest of the post explaining to me that actually, lifetime disenfranchisement for Hendrick was necessary and appropriate because trying to take responsibility for his actions (as a non-officer) was stupid...

At the end of the day I believe access to the franchise shouldn't be dependent on servitude, and that "the punishment depends on whether you and your superiors are willing and able to cover it up" isn't a standard of jurisprudence to be aspired to or an important life lesson. Judging by your willingness to deploy increasingly inconsistent arguments to argue otherwise, I'm not sure we're going to reach agreement here.

So you think the only way he could take responsibility for his actions was to insist on telling what happened even though it was obvious that everyone already knew? Thereby getting himself punished and discharged? You don't think it would count as taking responsibility for his actions for him to accept a second chance, learn from the experience, and do better next time?

> I believe access to the franchise shouldn't be dependent on servitude

Volunteering isn't "servitude".

> "the punishment depends on whether you and your superiors are willing and able to cover it up" isn't a standard of jurisprudence to be aspired to

So you think the exact letter of the law should be applied in every case? No one should ever exercise judgment in applying the law? If so, I'll agree that that's a consistent position, but I don't think it's a realistic one, and I certainly wouldn't want to live in a country where that was how the law was applied. If you would, then you're indeed correct that we won't be able to reach agreement.

> increasingly inconsistent arguments

I don't see how anything I've said is inconsistent. But I agree that what I've said comes from a very different view of the world than the one you appear to have.

He did not failed to think independently. He failed to be appropriately submissive. That submission was being framed as independent smart thinking is quite usual authoritarian move.

The genre is one of speculating about the future of the human condition. Playing with political theory is an interesting part of it and provokes interesting conversations in threads like this one. That's the best part of good science fiction or political writing.

It isn't just about future technology.

You can't take lessons from it, because author is speculating so it projects right politics and is fun rather then accurate. Just like one will not build ship based on sci-fi tech.