From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!leichter
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: The Draft and Involuntary Service
Article-I.D.: yale-com.264
Posted: Mon Nov  8 23:21:45 1982
Received: Tue Nov  9 08:24:10 1982
References: purdue.437

Several people have made the same comment about my statement concerning not
getting enough people to "take the job" of serving in the Army.  The succinct
version of this argument is the old "Suppose they gave a war...and no one came?"

I think this is a naive argument (though valid in certain cases).  First of
all, no one wants a sewage plant or a highway build next door to their home,
although everyone wants to use such facilities.  It is exactly because of
this fact of human nature that societies find themselves having to enforce
the rights of the group above the rights of the individual IN SOME CASES.
(Note that a libertarian approach provides no solution to this problem, it
simply disguises it.  It makes no difference to me whether it is the state
or a private business putting up that sewage plant; and a libertarian state,
if it expects private businesses to build sewage plants, somehow must allow
my wishes to get overridden - by defining property rights that stop my inter-
ference, for example.)

Now, war is a little different.  We have to distinguish two cases.  If there
is actually an active war going on, I would certainly worry about its morali-
ty if many were unwilling to serve.  (How many of you will argue, though, that
the Civil War was immoral because a draft was used?)  One would certainly hope
that in time of need, volunteers would appear; but experience shows that it
takes a HUGE stimulus to get people to volunteer.  There is a continuous
gradations from "unwilling to serve" to "will serve if called" to "will
volunteer", and the last is rarely reached.  (Be honest, now:  If you KNEW
you wouldn't get caught, would you pay ALL your income tax?  Are you a
volunteer or something weaker?)

Anyway, when the situation calls for preparedness, not an active war, it
is a fact that few will volunteer.  What we have today is not so much a
volunteer army as a hired army.  Why do we need anything at all?  At one
time, it was reasonable to put together an army from scratch in a short time.
Given the marvelous sophistication that years of military technology has
brought us, this is no longer practical.  To have an army at all implies a
commitment to maintain a certain level of professional service that can
become the backbone of a full army in times of need.  Many countries operate
on this system - Israel, Switzerland - but, interestingly enough, they also
have universal conscription, since they have learned that even with the
professional backbone, building an army from "totally raw" recruits is
just too time-consuming.
						-- Jerry
					decvax!yale-comix!leichter
						leichter@yale