This image alone would be a nice locus for an undergraduate PPE seminar. Rather than dissecting the economic fallacies this image conjures, I want to ask you, my cherished readers, how the moral intuitions this image references change depending on whether we have an all-volunteer force or conscription.
Do draftees elicit the same warm sentiments? If you think strictly in Aristotelian terms, the volunteer Soldier exhibits a surfeit of courage, whereas a draftee can reasonably be perceived to revert to the mean. That is merely to say that since draftees are randomly selected from the general population, their characteristics can be expected to reflect the typical citizen. Volunteers are self-selected.
Is it easier to support myths of superior virtue in self-selected matching markets? Isn't that sort of the branding of the US Marines or the Special Forces? If so, how far down the rabbit hole can we chase those myths?
As a veteran myself, I find it pretty galling that someone would have the temerity to heap anti-immigrant rhetoric on the backs of former service members. It's shameful even. But it's a trifling price to pay for shifting to an all-volunteer force. Not exactly euvoluntary, but certainly in the right direction.
750,000 VETERANS ARE UNEMPLOYED
REBLOG IF YOU AGREE WE DON'T NEED MORE BABIES
Sophist please.
Keep them over there. It's easier to shoot them that way.
ReplyDelete750,000 VETERANS ARE UNEMPLOYED
ReplyDeleteREBLOG IF YOU AGREE WE DON'T NEED MORE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES.
The variations are endless.
We won't have to start worrying about excessive immigration until we have at least two million unemployed veterans.
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