Regardless of your opinion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, you should wince when you read this letter in today’s Boston Globe:
THE EXTENSIVE news coverage
provided to the injury of ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman
Doug Vogt (Page A1, Jan. 30 and 31) is a testimonial to the misplaced
priority of the media.
These men are in Iraq not in service to their country but rather to
serve their media employers and the public who follow those media.
Were
the media to provide equivalent coverage to the fates of the brave
soldiers doing their duty in support of their country, they would be
doing a far more worthwhile service to this country.
This is not to say that Woodruff and Vogt are not to be respected
for doing their jobs in a highly dangerous environment. But the
significant overplay for these two gentlemen is a clear distortion of
the roles and priorities of news media personnel as opposed to the
military men and women who routinely place their lives in danger for
our benefit.
FRANK POWERS, Boxborough
Why equate "service to country" with service to government? Are only those Americans whose paychecks are drawn on the U.S. Treasury serving fellow citizens?
Of course, we can define "country" to mean only "government." But then what would we mean when we speak of fellow countrymen? Or when we speak of the U.S. being a free country?
In a society of free and civilized persons, everyone whose services are voluntarily paid for — or whose services are given freely to others and can be voluntarily accepted or rejected by others — serve their country, serve others, more surely than do those whose paychecks are drawn on government treasuries.
Pizza-delivery boys, tax accountants, emergency-room physicians, Wal-Mart greeters, construction workers, dog groomers, massage therapists, private security guards, Red Cross volunteers, and on and on — such people serve others. Their services are no less real than are those of any government employee you name. Indeed, because private-sector workers satisfy demands voluntarily expressed by others — unlike government workers who are paid from funds forcibly extracted from others — a powerful case can be made that private-sector workers truly serve their country far more surely than do government workers.
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this is probably more about notoriety, than it is about who works for whom. woodruff gets the press, because his name is newsworthy. if it were just vogt, the incident would have received much less attention. when the nfl/gi football player, i believe his name was tillman, was killed, he received much heroic attention from the press. on the other hand, once it was discovered, that he was shot by his own troops, the attention quickly faded.
You can't just group all government employees together.
Public choice theory dictates that politicians certainly serve themselves in policy actions which maximize votes. Public Union leaders advocate policy which increases union rolls and their pocketbooks.
Military servicemen and women certainly don't serve for the money. They get very little. Often the jobs are not glorious. Certainly they get a great deal of job training and experience, which is worth a lot. But generally, it's a safe bet to people enlist because they love their country.
Note that this doesn't say much about private service all together.
But again, rather than generalizing, perhaps we should break down private sector services. Entrepreneurs create wealth. Clearly that is a service to everyone.
Reporters often serve their country by bringing facts to the masses. That is certainly the declared mission.
MANY reporters and editors today do a disservice by not doing their jobs — by spreading only conventional wisdom and the assumptions of their class, rather than reporting the whole story. Iraq is a perfect example where probably the majority of reporters seek to portray military failure, which would be bad for the country (not just the government).
I'm pretty certain the letter is a reflection of the specific difference between not simple public and private workers — but particular self-serving private workers in the media, and particularly selfless public workers in our voluntary armed forces.
The following comment is absurd: "In a society of free and civilized persons, everyone whose services are voluntarily paid for — or whose services are given freely to others and can be voluntarily accepted or rejected by others — serve their country, serve others, more surely than do those whose paychecks are drawn on government treasuries."
I presume that as a free market libertarian you favor the decriminalization of prostitution and illegal drug use. There may be very good economic and policy grounds for this position. But the notion that a prostitute and her john "serve the country" renders the phrase meaningless. They may be serving their own personal and economic interests, but they are hardly "serving the country."
And what about people whose economic activities are in conflict with the very principles upon which our country is based, including the free market? Surely people who traffic in terrorist devices or crime paraphernalia are not "serving their country."
In short, voluntary economic activity is not, by definition, "good" or in "service" to the country. What a ridiculous position. Yes, of course, I agree that a person doesn't have to work only for the government to serve the country, but that's not what the article you quoted argued.
On the other hand, to deny that the members of the military — who defend the country and allow us to enjoy the very economic and political freedoms that this website is dedicated to — do not "serve the country" in a way that is far superior to reporters, or most of the rest of us, strikes me as completely untenable.
Finally, as a government attorney who works everyday to ensure (as best I can) that justice is done, I have no hesitation in saying that my drawing a government paycheck does not diminish in the least the value of the service I am rendering to my country. Indeed, I am quite confident that I am "serving the country" more than many people who are employed in the private sector. For you to suggest otherwise is so stupid that it can be explained only by a doctrinaire adherence to libertarian ideology, not the real world.
I really enjoy this blog, and the economic common sense it offers. But sometimes you just fly off the tracks. This is one of those times.
I should instead have written:
"In a society of free and civilized persons, everyone whose peaceful services are voluntarily paid for — or whose services are given freely to others and can be voluntarily accepted or rejected by others — serve their country, serve others, more surely than do those whose paychecks are drawn on government treasuries."
The above does not imply that all of those whose services at inflicting violence on others are not serving others. Police officers and military soldiers are paid to stand ready to inflict violence upon those who have initiated violence upon innocent others.
But with this further explanation, I do indeed believe that a prostitute and a cigarette merchant each serves others no less than do honorable policemen and soldiers. The services are different, of course, at at the margin one might be have more value on the market than another. But why say or insinuate that only people who work for government — or only people employed by the military — serve their country? What's the point of being saved from criminals, terrorists, and foreign invaders if not for each of us to be left free to pursue our own peaceful purposes and pleasures as each of us judges best? And if the point of being free is to craft our lives peacefully as each of us chooses, why denigrate the commercial and industrial actions of those who assist us in fulfilling our peaceful goals?
Put differently, why elevate some people who help us fullfil our goals — honorable military employees, in this case — over other people who help us do the same?
Don't say: Oh, without the military, we'd not be free. Assuming this statement to be true, other utterly necessary tasks are supplying food, supplying water, making clothing, and building housing. Does a soldier "serve his country" more than does a (non-subsidized!) farmer? More than any of the countless people whose skills and effort are used to build housing?
I think, Don, that the key distinction here is that "serving one's country" by putting one's life on the line is FAR DIFFERENT than servicing a john! You're drawing a kind of "moral equivalence" here that is way, way overdrawn. Our soldiers aren't "serving the government," they're serving us, their fellow citizens, and they're doing so in a very dangerous fashion at (commensurately) little pay. Don't equate them with a fry cook or an engineer; it dishonors their service, which may ultimately entail the ultimate sacrifice. If the frycook stays at his oven, flipping burgers when the Huns attack, THEN AND ONLY THEN is your point valid in this case.
Oh, c'mon, Don. "I do indeed believe that a prostitute and a cigarette merchant each serves others no less than do honorable policemen and soldiers." Really?
In your response you seem insistent not only that all sorts of hardworking folks serve the country in their own way (I completely agree), but also that it is somehow wrong to suggest that there are meaningful distinctions or gradations among them. But of course there are.
Certainly, the operation of the market shows that all workers are not equal in the "value" they impart to others, and hence to the overall economic enterprise. This in no way "denigrates" the contribution of lower-valued workers.
So on what basis can we say that all persons engaged in voluntary economic activity, which the marketplace values unequally, nevertheless "serve the country" equally? This is illogical, even from a purely economic perspective.
At the same time, do you really believe that a soldier who is paid, say, $25,000 per year serves the country to a *lesser* degree than a "high class call girl" who makes, say, $50,000? Is it all about market return? This strikes me as deeply untenable, and renders the phrase "serving the country" meaningless.
Man is a political animal, not an economic machine. Economic activity is only aspect of human life. So how can it be measure of all human activity?
Lastly, who is saying that the only way to serve the country is to join the military or work for the government? I'm certainly not.
The person who equated serving one's country with soldiering in the military is Frank Powers, the gentleman whose letter in today's Boston Globe inspired my original post.
Frank Powers was using "serving one's country" in the way it's normally used, not the way you, and economist, are using it. Yes, we all "serve our country," but first we serve ourselves. Soldiers, on the other hand, if they were solely serving themselves in economic terms, would desert! That's why drawing an equivalence between them and Joe Workingstiff is so silly.
If occupational risk is the measure of serving one's country, then commercial fisherman are the ultimate servers — with night-shift workers at convenience stores and cab drivers close behind.
It might well be that the risk of dying in Iraq is today higher than the risk of dying while at sea on a commercial fishing vessel; I don't know. But even if this were true, then I ask: do soldiers in Iraq "serve their country" more than do military officers stationed in the Pentagon?
And do commercial fishermen and 7-11 clerks serve their country more than do military officers stationed in the Pentagon?
As for gradations, I agree with Steven that some services are more valuable (at the margin!) than are others. I'm willing even to say that some are more important. A dedicated grammar-school teacher who teaches children to read, for example, is doing work more praiseworthy than a call-girl — even if the call-girl's market wage is higher than that of the teacher.
But ALL serve other people in their own way. I object to the insinuation that only military or government workers serve their country. I object to this insinuation because it is factually false.
Furthermore, Mr. Powers only suggested that the soldiers in Iraq were serving their country *more* than the reporters covering the war. I don't see where he said that the *only* way to serve one's country is to work for the government. On the contrary, he stated that the reporters would be serving their country better if they reported on the sacrifices of our troops with the same intensity of interest that they covered the story about the wounding of one of their own. He didn't say that the reporters should suit up in combat gear.
"I object to the insinuation that only military or government workers serve their country."
So do I.
But I also object to a discounting of "noble service," which is what you're doing. The commercial fisherman is doing what he does (a) to pay his bills, and/or (b) because he enjoys it. If it's too dangerous, he can quit. The soldier can't, both because he'd get into trouble, but mostly because most soldiers I know wouldn't think of deserting the mission. That's noble service. It's not nearly the same thing as taking on a dangerous occupation out of an economic motivation. Is it service? Yes. But not in the way a soldier serves.
Steven:
In the second paragraph of his letter, Mr. Power says Woodruff and Vogt were "in Iraq not in service to their country." As I read this claim, it strike me as a clear statement of his belief that serving ABC and ABC's viewing audience is NOT service to one's country.
Jabber: I understand that Mr. Powers used the "service to country" phrase in the common way. Perhaps I'm too hard on him for following standard practice. But it's the standard practice that I object to. I don't care if everyone else in the world believes that only those who work for government "serve their country" — I don't believe it. It's factually incorrect.
Don,
It seems that there are several people who believe that serving the government is a noble cause. And they are willing, at times, to accept lower monetary wages in exchange for the 'respect' of the society. You and I may think that this is a losing bargain but the fact that many people believe in it makes it true for them.
By pointing out that the emperor has no clothes you are bursting their bubble. In fact this con job has been perpetuated on young men (mostly) for centuries. You risk your lives for low wage and our women will admire and respect you and may be even sleep with you and the rest will treat you like royalty.
And you have the audacity to poke a hole in this mutually held agreement. It hurts. And you must be wrong!
Don, your larger philosophical point is fine; I'm okay with it. I think this particular example, as a seque into that point, wasn't a very good one. I think Steven is right, and it's where alot of economists go off the rails, and that's where we boil down all human activity into economic activity. There are noble pursuits that supercede economic ones. I don't see economic pursuits as necessarily "noble," simply because there is self-interest involved.
Had you taken issue with an article that feted some retiring congressman as having "served his country," I would've fully agreed with your criticism.
I don't know what the typical commercial fisherman gets paid. I suspect that it's less than the typical enlisted U.S. soldier is paid (counting both wages and fringe benefits).
Of course, the fisherman can quit more easily than can the enlisted soldier. But does this make his service less noble? The fact that he can quit his dangerous job at will but doesn't do so might support the case that the fisherman is more noble than the soldier (who, after all, must be obliged to serve out a minimum term).
Let me hastily add that I don't really think that the fisherman is more noble than the soldier — but nor do I think that the soldier is more noble (or more important, or more praiseworthy) than th fisherman.
Wow, Anshu. So serving your country in a military fashion is ALWAYS a "con job," huh? Your cynicism and naivete is breathtaking.
Right, Don. You're saying the soldier and the fisherman are equivalent, and that's where you're wrong, because the soldier volunteers KNOWING that the ultimate sacrifice may be required; the fisherman does what he does because it puts bread on his table. There is a distinction there, and if you can't see it…
Someone becoming a fisherman without knowing that there is a huge risk to personal safety is terribly irresponsible to commit to such a career. The same is the case for the soldier. In both cases, though, while the person in question earns pay for their work, their reasons may not be limited to the remuneration. In any case, is it safe to assume that the soldier is any less motivated to "put bread on the table" than the fisherman by enlisting?
This is a very interesting debate, and with each round of arguments I think the issue is becoming clearer.
I think there is an irreducible point of conflict here, where JABBER and I value military service qua military service more than Don and Anshu do.
I also suspect (perhaps this has been made explicit in the past, I don't know) that Don and Anshu are opposed to our involvement in Iraq, and that this obviously influences the value they are prepared to attribute to military service.
But this dispute demonstrates, I think, my larger point that man is about much more than economics. Indeed, what we value in the marketplace, and the degree to which we value it, are strongly influenced by non-economic factors, e.g., geography, religion, culture, etc.
But this also points to the fact, I think, that the things we value in our society are not necessarily the same things that are valued in other societies — above all else the importance of individual freedom, economic, political, and religious. Hence the need for a military to protect our society from foreign aggression that threatens these values. And therefore the greater "service to the country" that the military provides as compared to purely private economic actors.
Seems logical to me, but I realize that Don and Anshu will not be persuaded.
"In any case, is it safe to assume that the soldier is any less motivated to "put bread on the table" than the fisherman by enlisting?"
Do soldiers serve ONLY to put bread on the table? Surely some do. If the economy isn't providing them with a better means to do so and they view it as their only option, that may well be the case. But let me ask YOU a question, voorhees: Isn't it awfully cynical to assume that soldiers serve ONLY because it puts bread on the table?
I know many school teachers who do what they do because they get enormous intrinsic (ie, unpaid) benefits from teaching children how to read and add. I consider that noble. Soldier Sam may be putting bread on his table, but by doing what he's doing he also finds enormous satisfaction in helping Iraqis vote for the first time in decades. That's noble service, and, because he's risking life and limb (unlike the teacher), his service SHOULD be honored even more than the teacher's.
I'm amazed by the cynicism here…
the iraqi insurgents who blow up our american soldiers believe, that they are serving their country. now, there are now so few young americans, who want to serve their country as part of the military, that the government is considering lowering its standards by recruiting former criminals. bush called military service the "highest calling" for young americans. how many sons and daughters from the present administration are answering this highest calling?
Great, "realist," now you go and introduce the "chickenhawk" argument. I think we'd better stick with economics here, folks. We can take the debate where "realist" takes it to some other thread, like, say, DailyKos.
I'll just close, "realist," by telling you that one of my students served 18 months in-country, and he told me that the vast majority of the Iraqis appreciate what we're doing, notwithstanding what our press is reporting. Also, how do you explain the remarkably high reenlistment rates? It's because the soldiers themselves believe in what they're doing. You can buy all the Leftist crapola if you wish, but I find it deliciously ironic that, on a blog that frequently pillories the press for its economic ignorance, many of you are happy to swallow what that same press has to say about Iraq! Several of you are being grossly inconsistent, perhaps even intellectually dishonest.
Jabber: I suspect that commercial fishermen are aware of the dangers of their jobs. But let's take a different example, one also that poses unusually high risks to life and limb: construction work.
Surely someone who volunteers to walk on open steel beams 500 feet above the ground knows that he might have "to make the ultimat sacrifice." Does this make his job — make him — more noble, more important, than the tax accountant and the software designers who will occupy the building when it is completed?
Suppose the high-rise construction worker's risk of dying is the same as that of a U.S. soldier in Iraq today. (I don't know if it is or it isn't — might be lower; might be higher.) If this risk is the same, why do you still think that the soldier's job is more important, more noble, finer, or more praiseworthy?
In both cases, the worker knows that he confronts an unusually high risk of dying or suffering severe injury while on the job. But he (or she) voluntarily accepts this risk. What's special about one of these dangerous and useful jobs that the other lacks?
Don, we're rehashing old ground here. When the construction worker FREELY CHOOSES to serve in his way, he does so because he (a) is being well compensated (and those guys/gals you speak of, 500 feet up on steel girders are VERY well compensated) and/or (b) he gets a kick out of watching a big building spring up out of nothing. His service is "noble" in its own way; I've never denied it.
The soldier, on the other hand, does what he does partly because he's paid to do it, and partly because he gets a thrill out of freeing an oppressed people, providing them safety while they vote, protecting them from zealots. Again, I see a clear distinction there. I think Steven W. is right; this is an irreducible point of conflict for us. I wish you weren't so cynical, and you wish I weren't so naive or idealistic…. So be it.
One more, somewhat different point. If, Don, you are so opposed to what we're doing in Iraq, on what grounds do you base your opposition?
As an amateur economist, and from that perspective, I base my support of that endeavor on the clear economic benefits that accrue to a society with democratic institutions, as strong rule of law, and free markets, all of which are being worked toward in Iraq. Seems to me that a guy who believes so vigorously in free trade would be supportive of bringing that incremental trading partner up to speed. So why aren't you?
Jabber: My reasons for opposing U.S. military intervention in Iraq are spelled out here:
http://cafehayek.com/2005/10/an_open_letter__1.html
I quickly add, however, that my insistence that soldiers are not the only workers who serve their country in no way rests upon my opposition to U.S. military involvement in Iraq. I would say the same about soldiers who defended Americans against unambiguously hostile invaders trying to come to these shores to steal our women and children. Such defensive military actions would have my full and heartfelt support — but I would still not reserve the "serving our country" honor only for such soldiers.
Don, thanks for the link. While I ultimately don't agree with it, I respect your thoughtful analysis therein.
From my earlier comment:
"In both cases, though, while the person in question earns pay for their work, their reasons may not be limited to the remuneration."
"Isn't it awfully cynical to assume that soldiers serve ONLY because it puts bread on the table?"
I am not assuming that soldiers serve only to put bread on the table, rather I'm suggesting that money could be (and for many, probably is) a factor for soldiers as well as for any other profession. In addition, if money were the only factor, there would be very few soldiers and teachers and lots and lots of patent attorneys (if only in the short term; the demand for patent attorneys would likely decrease dramatically due to nobody inventing anything and people becoming patent attorneys).
"I know many school teachers who do what they do because they get enormous intrinsic (ie, unpaid) benefits from teaching children how to read and add."
Yes, again, you make my point, people have their own reasons for doing things. I know a school teacher, in fact: I see him in the mirror every morning.
But, voorhees, "your" point has always been my point as well. Many people do things for non-economic reasons, among them teachers and soldiers. In that sense, in their service to others, we discredit what they do by equating them with Joe Lunchbucket, who mostly, if not exclusively, wants to collect a paycheck. I find an equivalence made here to be deeply cynical, because it reduces altruism's value to zero, and it is assuredly NOT zero.
The distinction is that the military is purposefully putting their life and limb on the line to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States … against all enemies, foreign and domestic". That is a higher purpose than simply providing economic benefits to their families; the values they serve, and the benefits they provide, far exceed the economic value of their time.
I realize this is an economics blog primarily, but every so often even libertarians need to take their economic blinders off.
It looks like the disagreement here is more about money to me. The idea is that the moral status of a job is directly proportional to the non-monetary compensation recieved for doing a job. Teachers wages are driven down by the compensatory effect of helping children directly. Soldiers wages are driven down by the value placed on things like honor (although alot of the fringe benefits are pretty awesome too). Look at the issue taken with the word "economic", that word is being substituted for monetary compensation. There's a gut reaction going on against monetary compensationm and it's being projected onto all "economics".
"There's a gut reaction going on against monetary compensation…"
Uh, Nathaniel, I'm not sure what you mean by that. My "gut reaction" is surely not against monetary compensation. I look forward to my monthly monetary compensation very much, thank you. My "gut reaction" is against, as I posted earlier, assigning a value for altruism to zero.
I haven't read through all of the comments, so this might have been mentioned before, but I think the relevant distinction here is intent.
Most (or at least "many") soldiers "serve their country" first, and view their salary and benefits as ancillary. Plumbers and prostitutes, on the other hand, perform their services for selfish benefit first, and whatever pleasure their customers derive from the exchange second (or not at all).
After Smith we all know that often the public benefits from the latter type of service more than they do from the former, but if we're trying to figure out which type ought to be lauded for selflessness and sacrifice, police and soldiers (at least those who have foregone better pay, easier jobs, etc.) ought to be recognized for that before for-profit enterprises.
I guess I came off a little over the top. But I meant the people tend to assign higher degrees of honor or service to jobs where people recieved a higher degree of their compensation through satifaction in providing service as opposed to money. And that would apply to teachers and soldiers very well. And there's a lot of interchanging the words economic and money going on here. "Soldiers, on the other hand, if they were solely serving themselves in economic terms, would desert!" But the economist interpretation is that the honor and joy of defending something important to you is an economic benefit. It is of value to the individual and the individual is taking economic actions to obtain that value.
I think I'm closest to Charlie (Colorado) on this one (which is not surprising). For me, the fundamental distinction is one of intent – those in the military have chosen that path with the intent of serving the country. Perhaps some businessmen have the same intent, but most of us do our jobs with the intent of making a buck (and other personal motives) – the fact that this serves our compatriots is simply an economic reality.
Those who choose to serve as solders, teachers, nurses, construction worker, police and fire fighters do so willingly without coercion. The choose to do so because thet believe / perceive the benefits (economic and non-tangible) to be the best for themselves.
Does this make them necessarily heroic? They have made a decision to embark on a career that will give them emotional and economic returns. That is why re-enlist remains as high as it does.
I am glad they have the freedom to choose a job / career that meets their economic and emotional needs, but excluding the non-economic benefits they accrue for their choice when comparing them to Joe Lunchbox is unfair to Joe Lunchbox. Joe has a different balance economic and emotional needs and perceives the soldering life as not providing sufficient benefits to him. That does not make him less noble or make his service to his country less valuable.
David Stevens, you acknowledge, as do I, that INDIVIDUALS assign a value to the intrinsic benefits of a job, which then affects the choices they make. But then you go where others before you have gone and argue that SOCIETY assigns a value of ZERO to those same benefits by equating what they do with the purely extrinsic benefits of Joe Lunchbucket. I find that deeply cynical.
David,
But the question is, can we say that one individual's ranking of preferences should be praised more as "service to one's country" than other rankings of preferences. I think we can.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that one who sacrifices wealth, status, and leisure explicitly so he can serve in the military is "serving his country" more than one who doesn't think of his country at all when ranking his employment preferences–even if his country benefits from his work more than it does from the soldier's work.
It's a nice benefit that we all are made better off by the work of those who don't think of us when performing their labor. But it wouldn't be reasonable to say that those people are "serving us" in any relevant sense.
In fact, as we all know, all exchanges occur because each party to the exchange values what the other has more than he values what he has. The taxi driver isn't "serving" me when he drives me home. He's serving himself. And I'm serving myself by taking the ride. It's true that the soldier receives "psychic income" that makes up for any salary cuts he takes so he can serve, but it's precisely that psychic income that show he is "serving his country."
In other words, the fact that the soldier values service to his country the same way others value money, status, or leisure is why we'd reasonably say that the soldier "serves his country" more than others do.
I agree with Nathaniel and Greg that the total income earned by a soldier and a plumber are sum total of psychic and monetary income. The problem is that acknowledging the psychic income somehow equates the soldier to a plumber which is upsetting to the soldier. It is like convincing a mother that when she works part-time to take care of her children- she is no more and no less generous than the father. So there you have it- there are hundreds of categories of jobs where a part of income is psychic income. And we can offend all of them- mothers, soldiers, stay-at-home dads, old age home nurses, green peace volunteers, etc. by insinuating that their acts provide them with psychic income.
I think protecting your country is noble, raising kids is noble, taking care of old is noble and protecting the environment is noble. But so is working at a grocery store. The only difference is that the impact of working in a grocery store is dispersed over several people including the sick, the old and young where as the nurse takes care of a few people so its easy to identify the beneficiary.
Yes, being a soldier is noble. And that is why people are willing to trade the psychic income of nobility for lower pay and higher risk.
Anshu,
I agree that being a soldier is noble, but I disagree that that's the reason most soldiers sign up. If it were, Professor Boudreaux's analysis would be spot on. Because I don't think it is, I disagree with him. I believe it is a sacrifice to sign up for the military. It's a sacrifice of income, leisure, stability, and relative occupational risk.
For some, the psychic income of the selfish reasons (e.g., to be known in the community as a soldier; as an investment into a future political career) makes up for the sacrifice. For others, it doesn't. And for this latter group, I think it's safe to say they are "serving their country" (i.e., "NOT serving themselves").
First, I just want to say that I love it when Don stirs things up like this.
As for the substantive issue at hand. . . . It seems that what folks are essentially arguing about here are positive externalities. The anti-Dons (for lack of a better term) feel that the pro-Dons' equating soldiers with ironworkers ignores the positive externalities thrown off by what soldiers do. (Positive externalities being benefits not reflected in the market price of the good or service.)
What's interesting is this: If we think of the "market price" of military service as including both money and the various non-monetary goods the soldier gets (not least of which is the kind of praise and honor that the anti-Dons are demonstrating here), then arguably there is a zero positive externality. In other words, society "pays" the soldier salary/benefits (s) PLUS various forms of honor (h), and the soldier agrees to provide his service in exchange for that combination of s and h. Thus, the very fact that anti-Dons take a strong & vocal anti-Don position tends to compensate the soldier for what would otherwise be positive externalities (i.e., the anti-Dons' assertions add to the soldier's h).
Now, there may be soldiers for whom s plus h is still not enough. These would be soldiers who really would rather be ironworkers, who don't want to be soldiers even given the current s and h being offered, yet who nevertheless become soldiers because they feel that the country needs them (or for some similar kind of reason). Those soldiers really would be providing a positive externality (assuming you consider what the military is doing at the time to be good), because the market price (s plus h) is less than the benefit conferred by the soldier. But my sense is that there are not many soldiers in our country's current overseas adventures who fall into this category, because the country has not been expressing much of a "need" for this kind of sacrifice. (The situation would be quite different, for example, if we were being invaded.)
If, then, there are no positive externalities involved in most military service today (i.e., the service is worth s plus h), what the soldier does is no "better" for society than what the ironworker does, whose work also creates little or no positive externality.
But simply by saying that, I may be reducing the amount of h that goes to the soldier, thereby giving rise to a positive externality. So I (generally) keep quiet.
Sorry for the length of this. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, my late father, whom I greatly admired, served as an enlisted man in Europe during the Big One and saw action at the Bulge.)
What if the average young male in the early 1940s view of military service was…. that beach in France doesn't sound like fun and hey, I can make just as much money twisting a wrench at the garage down the street without leaving my wife and kid behind? In other words, what if all young men viewed miltary service in the way that Dr. B and many other libertarians do? Would we have had to pay much higher salaries? (What do Halliburton mercenaries earn compared to an enlisted soldier these days?) Would we have needed to institute a draft? Would we have defeated Adolph Hitler? Would we be speaking German right now?
Take away the pride, the patriotism, and the honor(I'm a left-liberal who opposed the Iraq war from day one, btw), all well deserved, that go along with military service and wages would have to do what… double? Triple? How happy would libertarians(or anyone) be with their new tax bill?
Steven M. Warshawsky is obviously intelligent but I think he has completely dropped the ball in his comments.
1) Whether the author is libertarian or favors decriminalization of certain activities is irrelevant. So is the fact that you are a government employee.
2) By insisting that your work for the government is valuable, you completely miss the point. The author's claim is that because government salaries are not subject to the degree of competitive pressures faced in the private sector there is a weaker guarantee that the work being done is worth the cost. Government can survive such inefficiencies while the private sector ultimately cannot.
3) You say that the author is insisting equal value be placed on different types of workers in response to a post that included, "…at the margin one might be have more value on the market than another". Please read the post, or avoid straw men, or both.
4) You repeatedly assert the author's position or statements he makes are absurd or ridiculous or untenable without explaining why. It is not self evident. Please explain.
5) You pull out the old chestnut that economics isn't everything, a claim always (yes, I mean always) made by people who have not the first clue about economics. As usual, this claim is accompanied by a list of things it is believed economics ignores, demonstrating the writer's implicit belief that all economics is about money. For the record, economics is taking account of everything you list and whatever else matters to people, since the unit of analysis is utility not money.
Sorry to have a go at one poster, but I really think Steven got everything wrong from start to finish in this debate and this needs to be said. I believe Don, and comments by Nathaniel, are spot on.
The following comment "Soldiers, on the other hand, if they were solely serving themselves in economic terms, would desert!" is obviously incorrect because it doesn't explain why these people went into the military in the first place.
Ben,
It's a little odd to call someone out for using straw men arguments in a post that responds to only the weakest arguments against your position. Isn't it?
Greg
Gee, Ben, you are SO smart. Thanks for coming down from the Mountaintop to share your wisdom with us. Let me rephrase the sentence that say was so OBVIOUSLY wrong: "Soldiers, on the other hand, if they were solely serving themselves in FINANCIAL terms, would desert!" There, satisfied?
Soldiers (and teachers, and nurses, et al) do what they do because their UTILITY (happy?) is met by the intrinsic benefits of the job coupled with the extrinsic benefits they get. Steven (and forgive me for speaking for you, Steven) and I and others have objected to drawing them as equivalent to Joe Lunchbucket simply because that would assign a value of ZERO to those intrinsic benefits from a SOCIETAL perspective. They clearly are NOT zero from a personal perspective, and they are clearly NOT zero from a societal perspective. As MjrMjr points out, how much would we have to pay these folks if they were paid "what they were worth" in FINANCIAL terms?
Nowhere in your nitpicking diatribe against Steven have you addressed that question. Is the soldier's service equivalent to Joe Lunchbucket's? I and others say "No, it's worth more," and Don and others say "Yes." The disagreement is perfectly valid; your smug arrogance is not.
Given the miltary recruiting effort's emphasis on skills training and future college tuition payments, I believe many in the current military are there for primarily financial considerations, or at least future financial considerations. I wouldn't discount the intangibles entirely, but the current situation in Iraq certainly seems to have hurt recruiting efforts.
"Many people do things for non-economic reasons."
MISNOMER!!!!!
Many people (everybody) do things for non-monetary reasons.
While I fear boring whoever is left on this thread with my attempt at a rebuttal to Ben's main points, here are my thoughts:
I mentioned the libertarian point in my first post simply to introduce an example — the legalization of prostitution or illicit drug use — that I think puts the lie to the notion that everyone engaged in voluntary commercial activity is "serving the country" equally.
You're right, Ben, I take it as self-evident that whores and drug dealers do not serve the country as much as soldiers or cops or teachers or criminal prosecutors — no matter how well-compensated they might be in the marketplace. If this makes me a simpleton in your eyes, so be it.
I mentioned my government service to make the point that IMO what I do everyday does more to serve the country than what many people do in the private sector. I never said I was saving the world, or that what I do is more beneficial than *all* private sector activity. It obviously is not. But surely there is at least *one* person in the country whose private economic activity does not benefit society as much as my work.
This example was offered to rebut Don's original post that not only are all people who engage in private commercial activity "serving their country," but that private sector actors are *always* doing more beneficial work than those "whose paychecks are drawn on government treasuries." I think this last point is ridiculous on its face. You may disagree, but, frankly, the burden of proof on this point lies with you and Don.
Yes, I think Don made several absurd remarks, including that "a prostitute and a cigarette merchant each serves others no less than do honorable policemen and soldiers." This only makes sense if the sole measure of "service" is voluntary commercial activity. I think this tautology completely miscontrues the much richer and more complex meaning of "serving the country."
Lastly, I believe I have a least *some* clue about economics. You make the point that economics encompasses literally *everything* that goes into human decisionmaking. Wow! That's impressive, but truly nothing more than another convenient tautology.
IMO you've poured so much into the "economics" cup that it has become devoid of any analytical or explanatory power. Like Marxism, apparently, "economics" as you understand the term can be invoked to explain anything and everything.
So then, the question remains, does a high priced call girl (or reporter) "serve the country" more than a lower-paid soldier ("at the margin" or otherwise)? What say you, and why? I say no. If you think that demonstrates my utter cluelessness about "economics," I guess there's not much more I can say.
Interesting thread, this one. It's also intriguing to see those who feel it's possible to "distill" the motivation of the soldier or nurse or teacher to "utility" and "non-monetary goods". I wonder: Do these "distillers" (For lack of a better word) ever undertake good simply for its own sake? Are these folks so internally calloused and jaded that they perceive everyone must act in such a way as to seek compensation for each and every action – irrespective of whether said compensation is monetary or non-monetary?
(Ansu, your banality with regard to "psychic income" is simply beneath contempt. What a load of rubbish.)
While passifism in lib circles is well known, and often much-deservedly derided as being cowardice, this entire contruct of Dr. Boudreaux's calls out a major flaw in lib thinking: That we're all essentially whores and there is no such thing as selflessness. If this is what being a lib means…thanks, I'll become a DemoNcrat.
Having served in the Army and in a successful private career, I'm quite familiar with both Joe Soldier and Joe Lunchbox. I'll state categorically that there's a "calling" in the Armed Forces that does not exist in Dr. Boudreaux's world. To those here who denigrate the service of the dedicated men and women in the Armed Forces (Mind you, not ALL of them ARE dedicated – some are there for purely economic reasons) shows the shallow and base nature of the accusator's soul. To further intimate that these folks seek "non-monetary" compensation demonstrates both a breathtaking level of intellectual arrogance and moral hypocricy.
I would have a very difficult time accepting that an individual economic actor, working in her/her own best interests, "serves" the nation (Notice I did NOT say the State). Said economic actor serves his/her own needs first, and in true economic fashion, *happens* to serve the nation by contributing to economic progress. Note that this "service" is purely coincidental and not at the forefront of thought or action.
I do not say, however, that a purely economic actor is valueless or ignoble. That would cast useless aspersions on honest, ethical people who simply have different goals than those who choose to serve in the Armed Forces. Having said that, I do not intend to engage in a discussion of who has more "worth".
I can most assuredly see how the reporters in question were injured not "in service" to a cause, but rather in seeking a paycheck. Dr. Boudreaux, while you're more than entitled to your opinion, one which I usually hold in high esteem, I'm afraid your position on this topic smacks of a cheap shot, bigotry and not a little bit of arrogance.
Let me just dispel the myth, right here and now, that folks that serve in today's military are under-compensated; that perpetuated information is complete BS.
Some of you may have your own ideas about what constitutes a fair compensation level for what military members do and the sacrifice involved – some of you might even have your own perceptions of fairness skewed based on your own personal compensation. I am here to tell you that when a serviceman’s base pay is combined with family health care (at no addition cost to the serviceman regardless of family size) along with his/her basic allowance for quarters, a valuable service group life insurance policy with tremendous coverage for premium ratio, the total compensation level will generally kick the snot out of most comparable private sector work after just eight years of service.
The gained training, the gained experience & responsibilities, the ease at which one finds opportunities to lead others, the veterans benefits, and the pension eligibility characteristics are all OTHER favorable factors (NOT listed above) that tend to get overlooked when people discuss just how servicemen are being slighted on their pay.
The truth is, military folk (past a certain length of time served) get paid pretty well and I'll debate this viewpoint with anyone who wishes to reply to it. They also derive a certain amount of utility – as someone observed & noted above – from the non-pecuniary aspects (such as the respect and the positive image) of service. The idea that these warriors would desert if not for the articles of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice – as someone else above wrote – is complete garbage. Sure, some would, but the vast majority has balls that are bigger than the ivory tower that that particular author probably sits in.
"The idea that these warriors would desert if not for the articles of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice – as someone else above wrote – is complete garbage."
Just for the record, LowcountryJoe, that quote (by me) was ripped out of context by someone else, and is being totally misconstrued by you. I was arguing YOUR point, namely that there is far more to soldiering (and other "service" occupations) than simple financial compensation, among them honor, service, and a sense of duty.