In my Defining Ideas article last month, “The Draft Is Still a Bad Idea,” I made the case against a traditional draft to obtain military manpower. A related proposal is for a universal draft of young people, male and female, that would give them a choice between military and civilian service.
That kind of draft is also a bad idea. Some of the arguments against such a draft are the same as the arguments against a military draft. The distinctive features of a universal draft also bring other issues into play. The bottom line, as I shall show, is that a universal draft is even more objectionable than a limited military draft. A universal draft, like a military draft, would violate young people’s freedom to choose their occupations and would take no account of the losses to these young people. In addition, a universal draft would, by definition, take away the freedom of many more young people than a military draft would. Also, as some officials in the military have recognized, a universal draft could make it more difficult for the military to get its desired amount of high-quality first-term manpower.
These are the opening paragraphs of my latest piece for the Hoover Institution, “Forced National Service: Worse Than The Draft,” Defining Ideas, August 2, 2024.
Another excerpt:
The suggestion of harsh measures for young people wasn’t unique to William James. In the famous December 1966 conference on the military draft, a conference that attendee Milton Friedman saw as a turning point towards opposition to the draft, noted anthropologist Margaret Mead called for drafting women as well as men. She recognized that there was a special problem with women that didn’t exist for men: women can get pregnant. (It’s too bad that Mead wasn’t around to explain that fact to Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, in her confirmation hearing, said that because she was not a biologist, she could not give a definition of a woman. Anthropologist, not biologist, Margaret Mead had no such difficulty.)
Read the whole thing.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Aug 2 2024 at 3:24pm
Speaking of bad ideas:
…dude, dude, dude….
Recent media have contained some discussion of JD Vance’s exposition on “childless cat-ladies,” and the fury this remark unleashed among ladies who have found themselves unable to get pregnant. Some of these ladies even had the temerity to call themselves women.
This discussion of “women” seems gratuitious. Let’s not follow in Vance’s footsteps.
Don Boudreaux
Aug 3 2024 at 8:40am
nobody.really: In what conceivable manner is the passage that you quote from David Henderson’s piece remotely comparable to what J.D. Vance said about childless cat-ladies? And in what way is it gratuitous, especially given that David is discussing a point raised by a woman? I honestly have no idea what connection you see here, or even imagine here, between the two.
nobody.really
Aug 2 2024 at 9:12pm
Turning to the broader merits of the post: This is one of those classic libertarian arguments–when evaluated through the lens of the individual, it seems compelling; when evaluated through the lens of a group, it seems less so. But if you do not acknledge the relevance of considering issues from the perspective of a group, you will not acknowledge any shortcoming to the argument.
Specifically, David Henderson offers sound arguments about the price of compulsory service. But I suggest he offers less argument regarding its benefits.
Admittedly, if we look at a military draft solely as a means to staff the military, then I guess he makes a credible showing that an all-volunteer force is a superior substitute. But if you look at a military draft as a means to promote social cohesion for a group under stress—as often happens during a period prompting a military draft—it is less clear that an all-volunteer force provides the same benefits. Arguably the sight of Elvis going into the army bolstered the sentiment that “rich and poor, we’re all in this together!” Permitting Elvis to simply decline to serve might have achieved a better outcome according to all the variables Henderson measures, but maybe there are other variables. After all, the Vietnam War draft let smart people evade service by going to college–so that produced a better outcome, right? The Vietnam Era was also the era that broke the back of US social cohesion. But if you don’t acknowledge the relevance of society, you might not notice.
Likewise, Henderson condemns William James’s apparent callousness in proposing compulsory civilian conscription, emphasizing the policy’s cost. Regarding the benefits that William James hoped to achieve, Henderson is silent. But I’ll hazard a guess.
I embrace the view that societies rejected polygamy as a means to shift the supply of women down the social hierarchy, thereby domesticating men who would otherwise form attachments only with other single men and form gangs.
But bigamy laws were not the entire solution to this problem. The 1900s also struggled with “the boy problem.” Harvard’s Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone and The Upswing) noted that —
Likewise, James was an ardent pacifist and nobody’s fool. He gazed around his environment and observed nations preparing for war. According to him, history reveals that people pursue wars because they can; while contemporary norms compel us to articulate some different rationale, these are always mere rationalizations. James reasoned that humans had evolved through periods of extreme testing exemplified by war—and that men would inevitably demand an opportunity to demonstrate manliness. If given no other outlet, they would eventually demand war. Desperate to avoid this fate, James proposed that all young men channel this drive toward peaceful, yet extreme, exertions. So yes, the hardness of fishing in December was a feature, not a bug.
As it happened, the world did not adopt William James’s proposal. Instead, it hosted the Great War. But hey, at least we didn’t compel kids to fish in December.
True, a draft—even for peaceful purposes—impinges upon autonomy. But there’s some evidence that WWI impinged upon autonomy, too. If you start from the premise that autonomy is the state of nature and requires no maintenance, a draft will seem like a cruel abuse. If you start from the premise that autonomy is a highly artificial state requiring a great deal of maintenance, you may draw a different conclusion.
Now, DOES a uniform military draft promote a sense of togetherness? WOULD compulsory service give young men an opportunity to discharge a need to prove their manliness? Perhaps not. But my point is that there are variables that cannot be evaluated looking solely through the lens of the individual. If we don’t consider these collective interests, we’re not really wrestling with the arguments presented.
Craig
Aug 3 2024 at 10:08am
“Specifically, David Henderson offers sound arguments about the price of compulsory service. But I suggest he offers less argument regarding its benefits.”
If I could run a company and draft people into service, the benefit I would receive would be obvious. The issue though is that if there is a benefit to be had then simply bid for the labor on the open market. Compelling them to do one thing prevents them from doing another, preferable activity. You’re simply supplanting your judgment with the individual’s judgment. As between me and you who are you to tell my son what to do with his life, well you’re nobody really, right? 😉
nobody.really
Aug 3 2024 at 12:30pm
Everything hangs on what you regard as substitutes—which variables you regard to be endogenous to your model, and which you regard to be exogenous.
If you think that, in the absence of compulsory service, you son will simply be able to make his own choices, then that would generally seem to be a more desirable option. (But maybe not always. People sometimes conclude that their kids would benefit from having fewer choices and more discipline—and joining the military has long served as a kind of commitment exercise.)
If, like William James, you think that community service is a component in maintaining social cohesion, and a collapse of social cohesion may result in your son being killed (or recruited) by roving bands of youths, or may result in the rise of demagogues crying for war, then you may regard community service as the lesser of evils.
The William James article basically asks, “What abridgements to your liberty would you countenance if it would avoid WWI (and the resulting bloodshed, horror, destruction, taxes, and draft)?” If you value liberty, it is not clear to me that “none” is the optimal answer.
Craig
Aug 3 2024 at 1:09pm
“What abridgements to your liberty would you countenance if it would avoid WWI ”
Great question for France, not the US. The US currently has the largest defense budget, two friendly neighbors, massive oceans and nuclear weapons. Nobody is coming, they never were coming, they’re never going to come. The problem is that the US has an extensive overseas empire with bases everywhere out on the limes of the empire. And now they’re experiencing a shortage of volunteers for multiple reasons, one of which is the economy has been doing relatively well, endless wars and political divisiveness/culture wars itself. So today we’re not preventing WW1 and we’re not preventing an invasion of the US.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-recruiting-and-confidence-in-americas-armed-forces-is-so-low-right-now#:~:text=A%20recent%20Gallup%20poll%20found%20confidence%20in%20the,set%20to%20fall%2015%2C000%20recruits%20short%20this%20year.
At this juncture, you want the recruits? Make the military attractive enough to the recruits you think you need and pay them until it hurts.
nobody.really
Aug 3 2024 at 1:35pm
Nobody was coming–but nobody booked his flight through Delta, so now it’s anybody’s guess.
nobody.really
Aug 3 2024 at 6:52pm
To clarify: Yes, I think the autonomy we enjoy does not simply arise from nature, but is the result of a highly artifical system (liberalism) that requires constant maintenance. That’s a foundational assumption for my arguments.
And it could be wrong–or at least incomplete. This blog has exposed me to Public Choice arguments questioning how much we can expect from the people maintaining liberalism, and “spontaneous order” arguments quesioning how bad things might get in the absence of this maintenance.
My dog is probably getting tired of hearing me talk on the phone during our walks–and the authors of this blog are likely wearying of explaining the rudaments of Public Choice and spontaneous order to me. So if you know of talking books about Public Choice or spontaneous order that you would recommend, you would earn thanks and a few wags from many quarters.
And if you work for some fancy-shmancy organization with a recording studio and a lot of spare time, consider recording some talking books….
Dylan
Aug 5 2024 at 6:05pm
Nobody,
I just wanted to say this was a great comment. Helped me see this issue from a different perspective, which is always appreciated. Thank you.
MarkW
Aug 12 2024 at 6:43pm
But if you look at a military draft as a means to promote social cohesion for a group under stress—as often happens during a period prompting a military draft—it is less clear that an all-volunteer force provides the same benefits.
Why would a group of volunteer recruits going through basic training experience any less social cohesion than a group of draftees? After all, the volunteers *want* to be there, while some of the draftees very much do not. Your argument is like saying a college sports team would be more cohesive if made up of a randomly selected group of student who were force to play (on pain of expulsion) rather than those interested in playing the sport. One what possible grounds would the team of conscripts be better OR more socially cohesive than the team of volunteer athletes?
But the bigger problem is your thinking like the ‘man of system’ for whom young people are pieces to be moved around the board to achieve your desired social goals. I think that’s chilling and shameful. You don’t own them. Society doesn’t own them. We abolished slavery. Even the young should be treated like free people.
nobody.really
Aug 13 2024 at 8:38am
I failed to make myself clear. I did not mean to focus on cohesion for those in the military (although we should pay attention to that, too). I meant to focus on cohesion in society at large. A society with higher social cohesion might have lower crime and the ability to embrace a diversity of views. A society with lower social cohesion might have roving criminal gangs, and have greater suspectibility to demagogues who drive the nation to war; both these scenarios are hazardous to autonomy.
If you fear your society is losing social cohesion, what would you do about it? Some would say, “Do nothing! I don’t acknowledge social dynamics. I am an autonomous individual, entirely unaffected by those around me.”
Others might conclude that social cohesion does matter. And some subset of that group might conclude that getting people to engage in some common activities might help promote social cohesion. These activities might include any number of things–from standing for the national anthem, to attending schools, to participating in (near) universal national service.
I noted that Israel has such a service–as does Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland, among other nations. Perhaps this just proves that leaders in these countries are ‘men of system’ for whom young people are pieces to be moved around the board to achieve the leaders’ desired social goals. Perhaps these leaders are chilling and shameful. But for better and worse, Israel manages to hold together under a lot of stress–and even manages to maintain a birth rate that exceeds its death rate. So there might be something to learn in that.
MarkW
Aug 13 2024 at 11:38am
The few nations that have universal service are small and/or in potentially dangerous neighborhoods. And I know somebody personally who had to go back to Korea to do his military service (or else not be able to travel to the country to see his family for 10 years). He HATED it. Draftees were poorly paid and poorly treated. It was definitely not a solidarity-boosting, team-building exercise for him.
But the US is neither a small country nor in a dangerous neighborhood. Not only that, we have a truly massive budget deficit. We really couldn’t afford to pay every young person a year or two’s worth of salary unless we paid them virtually nothing. It would be an enormous financial burden just to feed and house them for that period even if they were paid nothing at all (e.g. temporary slaves). Maybe you could work them hard enough building their own shacks and growing their own food to break even, but I doubt it. Even from a practical, financial perspective, it’s just a terrible idea.
MarkW
Aug 3 2024 at 6:38am
The changes I worry about are first, the extension of draft *registration* to women. That ostensible improvement in fairness would, unfortunately, open the door to other more worrisome changes since the unfairness of the existing system acts as something of a brake on actually using it. Once women were included, I don’t expect that we’d see an actual compulsory draft (at least not during peacetime), but a series of ‘nudges’. For example, federally backed student loans might become contingent on signing up for the military or national service. And this would likely count as a form of ‘public service’ to qualify for accelerated student loan forgiveness. And the kinds of things done during national service would almost certainly be politicized, depending on which party was in power.
Mark Barbieri
Aug 3 2024 at 8:59am
If I we could ban it with a constitutional amendment. Maybe something like
nobody.really
Aug 3 2024 at 11:59am
Lest anyone be confused: The argument that the 13th Amendment applies to the draft has been rejected for the past 100 yrs. But with a new Supreme Court–who knows?
R R Schoettker
Aug 3 2024 at 5:20pm
The 13th amendment’s clause ‘involuntary servitude’ plainly and clearly excludes a military or any other conscription. That the third branch of government has rejected that fact only demonstrates that the constitution is an impotent parchment barrier and that for the State, law means whatever those who hold power want it to mean.
T Boyle
Aug 16 2024 at 5:47pm
The Supreme Court has ruled that “interstate commerce” requires neither commerce (even in the broad sense of an interaction), nor more than one state. Sometimes, Supreme Court rulings go against the clear, simple and clearly intended meaning of the Constitution.
In the case of the draft, it could be argued that the military impressment exception was customary and was therefor an implicit exception. That is, if you had said to one of the drafters “well, except for military impressment, obviously” that they might have said “obviously”, and that this would mean that they implicitly intended an exception for the military. However, the same argument could be made for punishment of crime – and yet, the drafters included an explicit exception in that case. Therefore, because they did not list any other exception that might have been customary or common, they were explicitly excluding other such exceptions. Usually, the Supreme Court follows this type of logic. But not always.
As I understand it, one of the reasons the Vietnam draft was ended was that pro-draft officials were afraid the Supreme Court would rule it violated the 13th Amendment (which it obviously does), and wanted to avoid such a ruling and keep the option alive for the future. Of course, another reason was that the military, caught in an unpopular war and flooded with unwilling personnel, was drowning in a morale catastrophe.
Robert Simmons
Aug 3 2024 at 1:01pm
Good stuff. However, you need to think about this a bit more:
“She recognized that there was a special problem with women that didn’t exist for men: women can get pregnant. (It’s too bad that Mead wasn’t around to explain that fact to Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, in her confirmation hearing, said that because she was not a biologist, she could not give a definition of a woman. Anthropologist, not biologist, Margaret Mead had no such difficulty.)”
Without even getting into contentious areas like trans, you seem to have in mind a poor definition of woman. Many woman can’t get pregnant, and many girls can.
Mark Brophy
Aug 5 2024 at 4:47am
A girl by definition is a female who is too young to reproduce.
Robert Simmons
Aug 5 2024 at 9:22am
I looked around a little, and don’t see that definition, can you share a source? I guess if you’re right it would mean we can stop worrying about teen pregnancy.
R R Schoettker
Aug 3 2024 at 5:05pm
While the author most effectively refutes the ‘national service’ notion, I fear it remains the desire of the majority of those in the State bureaucracy as well as the public. This attitude, this need, to extract ‘service’, by compulsion if necessary when mere social pressure is inadequate to that end, is the defining characteristic of the herd beast and is indicative of a profound contempt for the very concept of the individual. It is the creed of the tyrant and the slaver. The idea is unequivocally and unapologetically expressed in the following quote.
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole…that above all, the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual…we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man.”
— Adolf Hitler
I clearly remember seeing a mere paraphrase of this statement in a piece of campaign literature for the John McCain presidential bid years ago. Regrettably it seems one of those bad ideas that never die.
BC
Aug 5 2024 at 4:51am
Without compulsory national “service”, young people’s activities are left to the vagaries of markets and spontaneous order. A universal national service system allows the government to centrally plan all young people’s activities in a coordinated fashion, assigning people to jobs based on their abilities and giving them stipends based on their needs. That also allows for greater equity. As James notes, national service also allows for centralized “character molding”. Without it, the job of molding young people’s characters is left to parents, teachers, coaches, and other adult role models and mentors. While many of those adults are undoubtedly of fine personal character, such a distributed system does not ensure that everyone receives the same uniform character education. A government-run national service system allows everyone to benefit from our politicians’ moral character building expertise.
No wonder many of the advocates of national service pointed to Communist China as a model. We could also draw lessons from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and other central planning success stories…
Monte
Aug 5 2024 at 10:12am
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except congress.” – Mark Twain
LOL!!! Thank you! The most wasted of all days is the one without laughter.
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