Some objections to using Markets in allocating military service

                      Some Objections To Using Markets
                        In Allocating Military Service 

Objection 2. Civic virtue and the common good

   This objection says that military service is not just another job ; it's a civic obligation. According to this argument, all citizens have a duty to serve their country. Some proponents of this view believe this obligation can be discharged only through military service, while others say it can be fulfilled through other forms of national service, such as the Peace Corps, or Teach for America. But if military service (or national service) is a civic duty, it's wrong to put it up for sale on the market. 
   Consider another civic responsibility --- jury duty. No one dies performing jury duty, but being called to serve on a jury can be onerous, especially if it conflicts with work or other pressing commitments. And yet we don't let people hire substitutes to take their place on juries. Nor do we use the labor market to create a paid, professional, "all volunteer" jury system. Why not ? From the standpoint of market reasoning, a case could be made for doing so. The same utilitarian arguments raised against drafting soldiers can be made against drafting jurors : Allowing a busy person to get out of jury duty by hiring a substitute would make both parties better off. Doing away with mandatory jury duty would be better still : letting the labor market recruit the requisite number of qualified jurors would enable those who want the work to have it and those who dislike the work to avoid it. 
   So why do we forego the increased social utility of a market for jurors ? Perhaps we worry that paid jurors would come disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that the quality of justice would suffer. But there's no reason to assume that the affluent make better jurors than those from modest backgrounds. In any case, the wages and benefits could always be adjusted (as the army has done) to attract those with the necessary education and skills. 
   The reason we draft jurors rather than hire them is that we regard the activity of dispensing justice in the courts as a responsibility al citizens should share. Jurors don't simply vote : they deliberate with one another about the evidence and the law. And the deliberations draw on the disparate life experiences that jurors from various walks of life bring with them. Jury duty is not only a way of resolving cases. It is also a form of civic education, and an expression of democratic citizenship. Although jury duty is not always edifying, the idea that all citizens are obligated to perform it preserves a connection between the courts and the people. 
   Something similar could be said of military service. The civic argument for conscription claims that military service, like jury duty, is a civic responsibility : it expresses, and deepens, democratic citizenship. From this point of view, turning military service into a commodity---a task we hire other people to perform --- corrupts the civic ideals that should govern it. According to this objection, hiring soldiers to fight our wars is wrong, not because it's unfair to the poor but because it allows us to abdicate a civic duty. 
   Some argue that the U.S. armed forces today have many of the attributes of a mercenary army, by which is meant a paid, professional army that is separated to a significant degree from the society on whose behalf it fights. This may not affect the motives of those who enlist. The worry is that hiring a relatively small number of our fellow citizens to fight our wars lets the rest of us off the hook. It severs the link between the majority of democratic citizens and the soldiers who fight in their name.
   Proportionate to the population, today's active-duty military establishment is about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. This makes it relatively easy for policymakers to commit the country to war without having to secure the broad and deep consent of the society as a whole. History's most powerful military force can now be sent into battle in the name of a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. The volunteer army absolves most Americans of the responsibility to fight and die for their country. While some see this as an advantage, this exemption from shared sacrifice comes at the price of eroding political accountability : 

     A hugely preponderant majority of Americans with no risk whatsoever of exposure to military service have, in effect, hired some of the least advantaged of their fellow countrymen to do some of their most dangerous business while the majority goes on with their own affairs unbloodied and undistracted.

   One of the most famous statements of the civic case for conscription was offered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712--1778), the Enlightenment political theorist. In The Social Contract (1762), he argues that turning a civic duty into a marketable good does not increase freedom, but rather undermines it :

     As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march to war, they pay their troops and stay at home. . . In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means of money ; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view : I hold enforced labor to be less opposed to liberty than taxes. 

  Rousseau's robust notion of citizenship, and his wary view of markets, may seem distant from the assumptions of our day. We are inclined to view the state, with its binding laws and regulations, as the realm of force ; and to see the market, with its binding laws and regulations, as the realm of force : and to see the market, with its voluntary exchanges, as the realm of freedom. Rousseau would say this has things backward --- at least where civic goods are concerned. 
   Market advocates might defend the volunteer army by rejecting Rousseau's strenuous notion of citizenship, or by denying its relevance to military service. But the civic ideals he invoked retain a certain resonance, even in a market-driven society such as the United States. Most supporters of the volunteer army vehemently deny that it amounts to a mercenary army. They rightly point out that many of those who serve are motivated by patriotism, not just by the pay and benefits. But why do we care about their motivation ? Even as we relegate recruitment to the market, we find it hard to detach military service from older notions of patriotism and civic virtue. 
   For, consider : What, really, is the difference between the contemporary volunteer army and an army of mercenaries ? Both pay soldiers to fight. Both entice people to enlist by the promise of salary and other benefits. If the market is an appropriate way of raising an army, what exactly is wrong with mercenaries ?
   One might reply that mercenaries are foreign nationals who fight only for pay, whereas the American volunteer army hires only Americans. But if the labor market is an appropriate way of raising troops, it's not clear why the U.S. military should discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality. Why shouldn't it actively recruit soldiers from among citizens of other countries who want the work and possess the relevant qualifications ? Why not create a foreign legion of soldiers from the developing world, where wages are low and good jobs are scarce ?
   It is sometimes argued that foreign soldiers would be less loyal than Americans. But national origin is no guarantee of loyalty on the battlefield, and military recruiters could screen foreign applicants to determine their reliability. Once you accept the notion that the army should use the labor market to fill its ranks, there is no reason in principle to restrict eligibility to American citizens --- no reason, that is, unless you believe military service is a civic responsibility after all, an expression of citizenship. But if you believe that, then you have reason to question the market solution. 
   Two generations after ending the draft, Americans hesitate to apply the full logic of market reasoning to military service. The French Foreign Legion has a long tradition of recruiting foreign soldiers to fight for France. Although French law prohibits the Legion from active recruiting outside of France, the Internet has made the restriction meaningless. Online recruiting in thirteen languages now attracts recruits from throughout the world. About a quarter of the force now comes from China and other Asian countries. 
     RECRUITING FOREIGN TROOPS WILL CONTINUE.