Arkady
President
There's a move to have women register for the draft. The gender issue doesn't interest me much, since I think it's obvious that if there is a draft, it should be applied fairly to both genders. The thornier issue is whether a draft makes sense at all.
It's one of those few remaining issues where you find a lot of liberals and conservatives on both sides. Liberals who object to the draft tend to do so on the moral grounds that forcing someone to kill and die for a cause he doesn't agree with is wrong, while liberals who support the draft tend to do so on the grounds that without it the real burden of our wars will tend to fall mostly on the children of the working class, since rich kids don't tend to go into the military (other than the National Guard, to dodge a draft), so a draft promotes economic fairness. As for conservatives, supporters of the draft tend to support it based on the practical issue of how to make sure we have an adequate stream of high-quality bodies to throw at our military adventures, while opponents see it as the ultimate example of Big Brother infringing on individual liberties.
In my case, I oppose the draft on the grounds that it distributes the burden of a national project unfairly. Think about it in terms of the alternative. The alternative is to pay enough that you get an adequate supply of quality volunteers. This distributes the cost -- it constitutes a net transfer of the wealth to those who serve in the military from those who don't. If the cause is sufficiently popular, you may not need to pay a lot. If the cause is unpopular, you'll have to pay a lot more, but either way, at the end of the day, the only people killing and dying for it are those who believed themselves adequately compensated to choose to take the risk.
In the big picture, the draft is a way for older people (who dominate the government) to force younger people (who do the fighting) to do the work for them at whatever price the older people feel like paying. It's like saying "you'd charge too much to do this voluntarily, so I'll just force you to do it at a price I dictate, and if you don't like it, you can go to jail." It's essentially a limited form of slavery. This is one of those areas where I'm more of a free-market guy: let the market set the price for the work. If the price ends up being higher than taxpayers think is worth it to them, then don't go to war.
It's one of those few remaining issues where you find a lot of liberals and conservatives on both sides. Liberals who object to the draft tend to do so on the moral grounds that forcing someone to kill and die for a cause he doesn't agree with is wrong, while liberals who support the draft tend to do so on the grounds that without it the real burden of our wars will tend to fall mostly on the children of the working class, since rich kids don't tend to go into the military (other than the National Guard, to dodge a draft), so a draft promotes economic fairness. As for conservatives, supporters of the draft tend to support it based on the practical issue of how to make sure we have an adequate stream of high-quality bodies to throw at our military adventures, while opponents see it as the ultimate example of Big Brother infringing on individual liberties.
In my case, I oppose the draft on the grounds that it distributes the burden of a national project unfairly. Think about it in terms of the alternative. The alternative is to pay enough that you get an adequate supply of quality volunteers. This distributes the cost -- it constitutes a net transfer of the wealth to those who serve in the military from those who don't. If the cause is sufficiently popular, you may not need to pay a lot. If the cause is unpopular, you'll have to pay a lot more, but either way, at the end of the day, the only people killing and dying for it are those who believed themselves adequately compensated to choose to take the risk.
In the big picture, the draft is a way for older people (who dominate the government) to force younger people (who do the fighting) to do the work for them at whatever price the older people feel like paying. It's like saying "you'd charge too much to do this voluntarily, so I'll just force you to do it at a price I dictate, and if you don't like it, you can go to jail." It's essentially a limited form of slavery. This is one of those areas where I'm more of a free-market guy: let the market set the price for the work. If the price ends up being higher than taxpayers think is worth it to them, then don't go to war.
