Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [37]
Most Americans favor the volunteer army, and few want to go back to conscription. (In September 2007, in the midst of the Iraq War, a Gallup poll found that Americans opposed reinstating the draft by 80 to 18 percent.6) But the renewed debate over the volunteer army and the draft brings us face-to-face with some big questions of political philosophy—questions about individual liberty and civic obligation.
To explore these questions, let’s compare the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and the market system. Which is most just?
conscription
conscription allowing paid substitutes (Civil War system)
market system (volunteer army)
The Case for the Volunteer Army
If you are a libertarian, the answer is obvious. Conscription (policy 1) is unjust because it is coercive, a form of slavery. It implies that the state owns its citizens and can do with them what it pleases, including forcing them to fight and risk their lives in war. Ron Paul, a Republican member of Congress and a leading libertarian, recently made this claim in opposing calls to reinstate the draft to fight the Iraq War: “Conscription is slavery, plain and simple. And it was made illegal under the 13th amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude. One may well be killed as a military draftee, which makes conscription a very dangerous kind of enslavement.”7
But even if you don’t consider conscription equivalent to slavery, you might oppose it on the grounds that it limits people’s choices, and therefore reduces overall happiness. This is a utilitarian argument against conscription. It holds that, compared to a system that permits the hiring of substitutes, conscription reduces people’s welfare by preventing mutually advantageous trades. If Andrew Carnegie and his substitute both want to make a deal, why prevent them from doing so? The freedom to enter into the exchange seems to increase each party’s utility without reducing anyone else’s. Therefore, for utilitarian reasons, the Civil War system (policy 2) is better than pure conscription (policy 1).
It’s easy to see how utilitarian assumptions can support market reasoning. If you assume that a voluntary exchange makes both parties better off, without harming anyone else, you have a good utilitarian case for letting markets rule.
We can see this if we now compare the Civil War system (policy 2) with the volunteer army (policy 3). The same logic that argues for letting draftees hire substitutes also argues for a full-market solution: If you’re going to let people hire substitutes, why draft anyone in the first place? Why not simply recruit troops through the labor market? Set whatever wage and benefits are necessary to attract the number and quality of soldiers required, and let people choose for themselves whether to take the job. No one is forced to serve against his or her will, and those willing to serve can decide if military service is preferable, all things considered, to their other alternatives.
So, from a utilitarian point of view, the volunteer army seems the best of the three options. Letting people freely choose to enlist based on the compensation being offered enables them to serve only if doing so maximizes their own utility; and those who don’t want to serve don’t suffer the utility loss of being forced into the military against their will.
A utilitarian could conceivably object that the volunteer army is more expensive than a conscript army. To attract the requisite number and quality of soldiers,