Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [38]
But this objection is not very convincing, especially if the alternative is conscription (with or without substitution). It would be odd to insist, on utilitarian grounds, that the cost to taxpayers of other government services, such as police and fire protection, should be reduced by forcing randomly chosen people to perform these tasks at below-market pay; or that the cost of highway maintenance should be reduced by requiring a subset of taxpayers chosen by lottery either to perform the work themselves or hire others to do so. The unhappiness that would result from such coercive measures would probably outweigh the benefit to the taxpayers of cheaper government services.
So, from the standpoint of both libertarian and utilitarian reasoning, the volunteer army seems best, the Civil War hybrid system second best, and conscription the least desirable way of allocating military service. But at least two objections can be made to this line of argument. One objection is about fairness and freedom; the other is about civic virtue and the common good.
Objection 1: Fairness and freedom
The first objection holds that, for those with limited alternatives, the free market is not all that free. Consider an extreme case: A homeless person sleeping under a bridge may have chosen, in some sense, to do so; but we would not necessarily consider his choice to be a free one. Nor would we be justified in assuming that he must prefer sleeping under a bridge to sleeping in an apartment. In order to know whether his choice reflects a preference for sleeping out of doors or an inability to afford an apartment, we need to know something about his circumstances. Is he doing this freely or out of necessity?
The same question can be asked of market choices generally—including the choices people make when they take on various jobs. How does this apply to military service? We can’t determine the justice or injustice of the volunteer army without knowing more about the background conditions that prevail in the society: Is there a reasonable degree of equal opportunity, or do some people have very few options in life? Does everyone have a chance to get a college education, or is it the case that, for some people, the only way to afford college is to enlist in the military?
From the standpoint of market reasoning, the volunteer army is attractive because it avoids the coercion of conscription. It makes military service a matter of consent. But some people who wind up serving in the all-volunteer army may be as averse to military service as those who stay away. If poverty and economic disadvantage are widespread, the choice to enlist may simply reflect the lack of alternatives.
According to this objection, the volunteer army may not be as voluntary as it seems. In fact, it may involve an element of coercion. If some in the society have no other good options, those who choose to enlist may be conscripted, in effect, by economic necessity. In that case, the difference between conscription and the volunteer army is not that one is compulsory while the other is free; it’s rather that each employs a different form of compulsion—the force of law in the first case and the pressure of economic necessity in the second. Only if people have a reasonable range of decent job options can it be said that the choice to serve for pay reflects their preferences rather than their limited alternatives.
The class composition of today’s volunteer army bears out this objection, at least to some extent. Young people from low- to middle-income neighborhoods (median household income of $30,850 to $57,836) are disproportionately represented in the ranks of active-duty army recruits.8 Least represented are the poorest 10 percent of the population (many of whom may lack the requisite education and skills) and the most affluent 20 percent