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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Applebaum tries to finger "elfin libertarian" Milton Friedman as "the most important figure". But the specific policies he attributes to Friedman don't seem so bad:

* end the draft, replace with well-paid all-volunteer military

* let international exchange rates vary

* evaluate regulations based on the cost-to-save-a-life

Does Applebaum want to bring back the draft? Put exchange rates back under direct political control (as is attempted in places like Venezuela & Argentina)? Have a purely "feel-it-in-our-guts" approach to regulation, without regard to whether the same $X million dollars in imposed costs could save 1 life in one case, or 100 lives somewhere else?

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There are reasons the draft can be a good idea.

When the military is only voluntary you get a military with specific ideas about foreign policy and how you see the enemy, whoever they are.

If you introduce the draft you have a more heterogenous military.

A draft raises the cost of war, making war less likely.

That depends on how easy it is to get out if it.

If the influential always go to the coast guard or whatever, war is less meaningful for those in power.

“That depends on how easy it is to get out if it.”

Exactly. That’s why I despise ppl whose connections got them out of the draft. For everyone of those punks, another one of McNamara's morons had to be drafted.

Mohamad Ali, on the other hand, he had the courage to go to jail.

Burn your draft card, escape to Canada, or simply refuse. But those who use university exemptions or bone spurs can go to hell.

Even though Ali had the courage to go to jail, by your reasoning in the previous paragraph, someone else “had to” be drafted in his place.

Perhaps you won’t go so far as to call conscription kidnapping, but you seem to sympathize at least a bit with people having scruples over being shipped off involuntarily to wage aggressive war. Now, you may admit that some are principled objectors, and others may simply believe that dirty work is beneath them. The more important question is whether the draft is just. If so, then any refusal by the able is wrong, and if not, we may not condemn resistance in any peaceful form.

The reality of deferments for the politically connected and most especially those for the children and grandchildren of politicians who vote for war makes utter propaganda the notion that disinterested philosopher-kings or a technocratic elite are merely acting to promote the greatest good for the greatest number.

Escaping to Canada increases the amount of McNamara's morons needed the same as a university exemption or bone spurs does.

The only difference between your methods is consequences for the person undertaking it, not those that have to replace them. You appear to want people avoiding being drafted to suffer. Pretty odd if you otherwise sympathise with them.

Does this argument back-test successfully?

Has the US suffered fewer war-fatalities in the era(s) where it had a draft (including the Civil War, WW1, WW2, & Vietnam), or in the era where it has an all-volunteer force (since 1973)?

Probably not but a lot has changed.

That’s almost impossible to compare due to advances in both weapons and protective equipment.

And yet, we have to try to make such comparisons to make such sweeping judgements as "a draft makes war less likely".

The quality of weapons and armor (and training and medical care!) also isn't independent of the draft/volunteer dimension. A all-volunteer-force may find it necessary to invest more in each, because fewer people will volunteer to be part of a military force that tries to win with raw & disposable strength-of-numbers.

So maybe the all-volunteer-force "raises the cost of war" even more, considering financial costs & second-order effects, and thus best deters war? It's possible, which is why such claims need to be evaluated against history, not just asserted.

I'm not convinced.

Assuming you even recruit the officer class from draftees, you're going to recruit the ones that think like you, or at least that you respect, which in practice means they know someone you respect, were taught somewhere you respect, in short they're probably from the same circles as you.

Plus if you don't want to join the military, are you really going to give a toss about contributing?

What specific kind of military do you get? The US military I was a part of was the most diverse group of men and women I have ever worked with in just any metric you can find.

I believe parent commentator was making a claim to lack of philosophical diversity, and that a voluntary military is more prone to prefer war over diplomacy.

I see the margin the parent commentator is trying to make, but feel it misses people who join the military to obtain gainful employment, get education, or numerous other reasons.

> but feel it misses people who join the military to obtain gainful employment, get education, or numerous other reasons.

You're right. But I wonder what kind of "politics" they would adopt when needed if they didn't feel the rest of the army has one way of thinking.

The issue you identify is a good reason why our system of government, which places an elected, term-limited civilian as the commander of the military, is extremely clever. We end up with an effective military, but have a counterbalance to a military acting as a hammer constantly looking for nails.

The people involved are certainly imperfect (and some are more imperfect than others), but we're always just a few years away from a course correction if the electorate sees fit.

a voluntary military is more prone to prefer war over diplomacy.

The military gets no say - wars are declared, or not, by elected politicians. What you say is only true in countries where the military runs the government.

Military officers advise politicians. It seems silly to believe they have zero sway over political opinions.

I never saw it as „the military“ being more prone. But rather the general public. As in a voluntary military, they (their families) are likely not involved with the military personally. While having the draft ensures most everyone will be - on a family level - impacted by a war or peace decision.

Diverse on many metrics I'm sure, except probably economic class.

Western militaries for hundreds of years have been working class soldiers and upper or at least upper-middle class officers. The middle-middle class is very underrepresented. This is true even today.

Is there a survey or study of the demographics? I'm genuinely curious about how it currently looks because I have a hard time believing the upper crust bothers with this sort of thing any more. Service just doesn't seem to carry the social weight it once did, and there are plenty of stories of rich kids dodging deployments and the like.

Based on the data here, the grandparent is wrong. Maybe they were historically correct, but today the three middle quintiles of economic class is over-represented https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military (Look for the graph titled "Neighborhood affluence for 2016 recruits")

Yes that's all true at the bottom. The top is still career military and they very much set the culture, tone, and policy.

Yes, but they don't hold the rifle, in case it matters.

Absolutely. A draft would also force Americans of all backgrounds to interact with each other in an environment that builds cohesion. It would also give even the most powerful of Americans skin in the game when it comes to starting wars.

This only works if there isn't an out for folk with bone spurs.

How widespread were those sort of shenanigans back when the draft was on, do you know?

Wasn’t the last president who has served bush senior? This would mean it‘s rather common in some circles.

Barack Obama wasn’t old enough to serve in Vietnam, so he wouldn’t have needed to dodge serving. In about 20 years, provided the draft doesn’t get reinstated, we’re likely to have more presidents who never served.

> A draft would also force Americans of all backgrounds to interact with each other in an environment that builds cohesion.

Every American presidential election has a side show about the candidates military record and a meaningful number appear to have dodged their service - current president included.

A draft cannot be made practical and fair unless you are going to have an Army of 1945 proportions. Otherwise, you might need one in ten draft-age men, and the business of choosing which becomes even more open to manipulation.

You do not think a truly random selection process could be implemented with integrity?

Or we could, you know, just go to school and work and interact with one another the way we already do. Rather than trying to force people to give up years of their short lives via a draft.

Which school? Do you think the inner city kid goes to school with the Palo Alto kid? The Appalachian kid? The son of illegal alliens? We live in bubbles and we wonder why we can't make sense of each others realities.

Seriously what is with people thinking the draft will somehow be a great unifer or that it is an appropriate propagator of values? Veterans were lynched for wearing their uniform. The Kennedys lost family in wars and yet JFK started the Vietnam war.

I think we should just accept that the hypocritical institution is dead after Vietnam and stop trying to use it for power fantasies over society or advocacy - its only function is to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as it makes reasonable ideas grossly unreasonable.

I propose a civilian service academy and civilian service, which would achieve most of a draft's goals without the military. American infrastructure could use it, among other benefits.

I talk about it in episode 138 in my podcast: http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-monologues-volume....

General McChrystal wrote about it in Time Magazine: Every American Should Serve For One Year https://time.com/4824366/year-national-service-americorps-pe...

This is what we have in Finland; basically either: 1. Military service ranging from half a year to a year. 2. Civil service for a year. 3. Half a year prison sentence. 4. Exemption for medical reasons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Finland

That is oxymoronic - the purpose of the draft is to have military warm bodies without having to pay or get volunteers.

Infastructure work's limitations are based on funding and skilled labor - not a mass of gruntwork.

Friedman also defended a negative income tax which essentially was a form of UBI.

Within that context, negative income tax was sought to replace welfare, social security, Medicaid, etc. Is that the case with UBI?

Many UBI supporters still view one of its main benefits the simplification & unified replacement of all such programs.

Now, those programs are complicated, involve a lot of overhead, often underutilized, and create unintentional disincentives to work when the "marginal tax rate" (in taxes or lost benefits) sometimes goes over 100%. Offering a simple & big-enough UBI instead can fix all that.

(A UBI can also replace minimum-wage laws and most if not all unemployment insurance. And perhaps, many workplace regulations, because a citizenry where everyone can say "this job sucks, I'm outta here" can be a better check on abuses than the current system of compliance-surveillance, regulatory-fines, and court-cases.)

UBI can also be inflated away to nothing. It's a neoliberal scam.

So can all the other forms of welfare.

No, not all. For example not a positive right to healthcare.

UBI is transparently an attempt to redistribute tax income to private companies such that no opportunity for profit stays with or is limited by government. UBI would mean no more Medicare stipulations, no more existing conditions protections. Just your ten grand a year or whatever and a bunch of private companies who have what you need, at whatever price they set.

Good point; after posting I wished I'd said "...cash welfare", because of course in-kind transfers of goods and services would be immune to any amount of inflation.

Indexing the UBI amount to some basket-of-subsistence-consumption could likely address this concern.

(The handling of existing-conditions is a regulatory issue orthogonal from UBI. I'd prefer a UBI replace all "income-supporting" programs – including things like food stamps and housing vouchers – and also obviate many rules premised on the idea that the threat-of-privation captures people in bad jobs/relationships. But "structure-of-market" or "acceptable offerings" or "required minimum standards" regulations are a separate matter.)

> Have a purely "feel-it-in-our-guts" approach to regulation

That is exactly what they want. The modern world of cost-benefit analysis and economic modeling has been unkind to the whimsical. They want emotions, narrative, and oratory--not reason and data--to guide policy.

Frankly, there's very little difference between the two when the ones making the yardstick are also the ones being measured.

Statistics and measurement are insidious like that. Sometimes you're just not measuring the right things, or the way you are measuring just tells you exactly what you think it should.

What does GDP mean to a worker making only enough to afford to pay medical bills or the rent?

What does * per capita do to assuage the suffering of the mother of 3 working 3 dead end jobs and living out of her car?

What good is the S&P500 closing up 6 points when most can barely afford to put more than what there company matches into the market?

What does anything the Dow does mean to anyone who's retirement on Social Security barely covers what they need to merely remain alive?

Economic modeling seems like it has done one and only one thing well.

Create work for economists to do.

Vietnam ended the draft.

Friedman’s worst idea that remains in vigorous implementation was automatic income tax withholding. He poured jet fuel into an engine of runaway state growth but is somehow remembered as a libertarian.

And look at the meager thanks Friedman gets from those like Applebaum craving ever-greater tax revenues!

He was an economist during an era where progressivism explosively grew the administrative state and really didn't have any checks. They were enabled by war.

What you're talking about was one of his biggest regrets.

> "It never occurred to me at the time that I was helping to develop machinery that would make possible a government that I would come to criticize severely as too large, too intrusive, too destructive of freedom. Yet, that is precisely what I was doing. [My wife] Rose has repeatedly chided me over the years about the role that I played in making possible the current overgrown government we both criticize so strongly."

[1] : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/16/post65...

Unfortunately evaluating regulations based on the cost to save a life would be considered heresy in certain circles. Not spending the entire GDP to save one more life is ideologically incompatible with a lot of people's beliefs.

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