Gratitude toward Veterans by Kershnar Stephen;

Author:Kershnar, Stephen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Arguments Against the Draft

The draft is morally wrong. The same features that make it wrong today made it wrong in the past. First, it tramples on liberty. Forcing men to serve in the military is like forcing them to serve in some planter’s cotton field. It is a form of forced labor, although it is orders of magnitude less harsh and wrong than the chattel slavery that characterized America’s past.

Second, the draft is inefficient. The United States can always fill its recruiting ranks by paying market wages to induce people to join. A draft does not make the military cost less; it just transfers the cost from taxpayers, who would normally have to pay market wages, to the young drafted men who have to pay the cost of soldiering without being paid a fair wage. This is no different than the government confiscating lands for public schools without payment rather than buying out the owners. That is, the draft allows citizens to externalize the costs of war. When people do not bear the costs of their decisions, they are likely to act in an inefficient manner.

The various deferments and exemptions further direct people into areas that they prefer not to be in and do not put them to the most efficient use. Here I am assuming that the free market rather than the government is better at picking out the most efficient use of people’s labor. I also assume the same is true for their personal decisions. During Vietnam, for example, there were deferments, exemptions, and lower prioritization for education, war-industry work, teaching, marriage, and family.[24] Many people made decisions on these matters to lessen or eliminate their chance of being drafted that differed from what they would have decided were the draft not in place.

Given that a draft was in place, the one draft mechanism that was efficient was allowing Civil War draftees to buy out of fighting by paying for a substitute or commutation. Purchasing a substitute benefits both the draftee and, ex ante, his willing substitute. Both benefit because the former prefers not fighting to a sum of money and the latter prefers the opposite. With a sizable enough commutation fee, it would also likely benefit third parties (for example, U.S. citizens). This policy was discontinued in latter wars.

Third, the draft is riddled with unfairness as the government has to decide who is expendable. For example, during the Kennedy administration, married men with children were put at the bottom of the call-up list and married men with wives but no children second to the bottom.[25] The administration apparently thought single men more expendable. The same sense of expendability led local draft boards during World War I to more often conscript poor men. During that war, some religions were allowed conscientious objectors (for example, Amish and Quakers), others were not.[26] Non-religious objectors were also not recognized. Apparently, the poor and people of some religions were more expendable.

Fourth, wartime drafts, especially ones with the many deferments and exemptions for

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