While Starship Troopers concerned a soldier, it's important to know that Heinlein emphasized that military service wasn't the only path. From https://archive.org/details/starshiptroopers0000robe_r5e7/pa... :

> But if you want to serve and I can’t talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that’s your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, shall have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship—but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren’t just glorified K.P. You can’t all be real military men; we don’t need that many and most of the volunteers aren’t number-one soldier material anyhow. Got any idea what it takes to make a soldier?” ... we’ve had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will either run ’em home with their — tails between their legs and their terms uncompleted . . . or at least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they’ve paid a high price for it.

and from https://archive.org/details/starshiptroopers0000robe_r5e7/pa... :

> if you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find some- thing silly enough to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe. The only way you can fail is by having the: psychiatrists decide that you are not able to understand the oath.”

Embassy staff and Peace Corp members both risk their lives (even hypothetically) for their country. Anglican missionaries risk their lives (even hypothetically) for the state, under the authority of the state's established religion. The nurses in US federal-run hospitals, nurses risk their lives doing dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that definitely risk their lives.

All of them would be citizens, right?

That said, Heinlein magically waived corruption away. Who gets to decide if a candidate should serve as, say, a combat pilot in the National Guard rather than be deployed overseas as an infantryman? And is it possible to pull strings so a powerful politician's son gets preferable treatment?

Bear also in mind that many people enter the military not to risk their life but to get, for example, college money or training for a career. They risk their life in the same way that a lumberjack does - death is a calculated risk, and not, as Heinlein argues, evidence that the soldier has the "emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part . . . and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live."

Remember, that book also says the only way to train children is to beat them - a brutal practice I wish were prohibited in the US as it is in 65 other countries. https://endcorporalpunishment.org/countdown/

> If you can vote to spend a life, even indirectly, you should have some skin in that game too.

The US has been at war for nearly its history, and glorified war to boot. Heinlein trained to be a military officer. What would happen if the US fought no wars? What happens if there is not enough skin to lose? If there are no enemies to fight?

More specifically, how would that work in Iceland? No standing army, a Coast Guard with three ships and four aircraft, the ICRU with "200 people, of whom about 30 are active at any given time" says Wikipedia.

Do the ~10,000 members of the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue have enough skin in the game that they should be allowed to vote?