There is a rather strong paradox visible in the case of the modern army. Military service is one of the most demanding jobs a European or American can undertake. It involves gruelling physical strain, strict control over personal life in military barracks, isolation from friends and family, insane work hours and often humiliating obedience to the orders of drill sergeants. While one could maybe find an outlier example, such as underwater welding or fishing on the arctic seas that surpass their strain, almost no jobs on the market even come close in their gruelling difficulty to the profession of soldiers.
Most young men would, of course, be happy to suffer through all that given the right price. If the money was good enough, then men would abandon the cushy office jobs and, following the howl of Uncle Sam, happily fill the barracks to serve their country. Here comes the paradox, however: that price is never offered, and yet the barracks are filled to the brink!
The Affordability of Cannon Fodder
Given how strenuous military service is, soldiers are severely underpaid.
In the US Army, crammed in barracks, soldiers are barely paid $4,700 more annually than comparable civilians. This is despite the huge disparity in working conditions between military and civilian jobs. Military personnel is expected to change locations every few years, deploy for specific operations. work longer hours in more hazardous conditions and lose personal autonomy. And to top it off, the job comes with a considerable risk of involvement in warfare.
It is rather obvious that war-torn countries are a horrid work environment. Combat deployment dramatically increases fatality risk: Soldiers deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan had a fatality rate of 48 per 100,000 per year, which is 15 times higher than the average civilian workplace fatality rate. For comparison, firemen, who also bravely risk their lives regularly, have fatality rates of 3.4 per 100,000. At the same time, office and administrative workers have 0.6 cases of death per 100,000. Construction workers are slightly more prone to death, with 9.6 fatalities per 100,000.
The risk of death, amputations, curable and incurable injuries permeates army life. The soldier, sweating and bleeding in the furnace of war, earns a wage that mocks the gravity of his toil. The reasonable salaries at which most men would be willing to endure such a fate are far beyond the army pay scale. Yet that war is hell does not deter the soldier; the barracks are never vacant.
Price of Patriotic Naivete
The toll of nationalism is levied not upon its architects, the statesmen who fan its flames, but upon the particular breed of men it blinds. They march, they bleed, they bury their dead with solemn pride, never questioning the distorted arithmetic of their sacrifice. They are the only reason why the current compensation structure can be viable. Their love of the state is used to drive down the costs of manning the army.
While not inherently a bad model, the patriot-manned forces do, of course, have some major downsides. The biggest one may very well be a political one. The army of heavy nationalist leaning, could become dangerous in times of political instability. What is more, the army with such a love-for-the-state-driven recruitment will be unable to hire some of the particularly necessary young men. As militaries demand more skilled, specialised, and mission-ready soldiers, pay systems rooted in the bedrock of institutional enthusiasm for the sacrifice of the individual make it nearly impossible to enlist recruits for technical roles.
This low price of cannon fodder is exactly why the army doesn’t reform. The cause for why it has its focus on degrading exercises and senseless activities. This is the reason why bright young people stay away from military service. Setting the entire recruitment model around getting men fuelled by patriotism creates a perverse incentive and reward mechanism.
The Absurd Incentive Structure
Modern armies have a rather intricate, lavish and completely unattractive for the youth benefit structure. This was recently remarked by Twitter’s most notable economist, Nicholas Decker.
„A lot of people like to say things like “America owes its veterans a debt which we can never repay”. This is false. America’s debt ends when they exit the employment contract to the government. They should receive no benefit, perk, or subsidy beyond that specified in contract. It is frankly absurd that we think the government should be involved in providing healthcare to veterans. We should rightly reject it here and elsewhere. If they demand a pension program, the pension should be spelled out in advance. Instead our world is just unlimited money to veterans for whatever reason. It’s absurd.”
While Decker’s tweet is set to be inflammatory (he is a master at playing the Twitter game), he did nail the absurd public choice dynamic that plays out in this case. Instead of attracting the best young men with competitive compensation and the potential to make a boatload of money serving in the forces, the army tricks men of nationalist leanings to join it. The push for compensation only comes once men are entrenched in the army bureaucracy or veteran groups, and they come to realise their patriotic zeal won’t pay for their mortgage.
Soldiers receive low salaries but numerous in-kind benefits. From an economic view, giving them cash instead would let them spend more freely and maximise personal utility. Yet the army insists on micromanaging non-cash compensation. It creates military health care providers, on-base military dentists, thrift savings plans, child care on base, university tuition assistance programs, and even has the Department of Defence run schools. The last three items are only used by 37%, 34%, and 18% of US soldiers, respectively, strongly penalising the non-parents and the non-students. Overall, about half of the cost of compensation goes to provide noncash and deferred benefits!
The system leads to absolutely absurd outcomes. The easiest way to make money in the army might very well be dying and taking the many rewards that come with that. One can then get burial benefits and coverage of burial costs, continued health benefits for surviving family members, death gratuity payments, dependency and indemnity compensation, survivor and dependent education, tax benefit and unused leave. The only problem is that the soldier himself will, of course, get zero utility out of that pay structure. On the other hand, in Poland, the main selling point of the army service is the vision of early and well-paid retirement. Is there nothing better to sell the youth on?
I myself experienced the army’s desperate recruiting strategy. Three years ago, I was forced to participate in the Polish equivalent of the American Selective Service System. Although for now there is no conscription in Poland, my parents were harassed by police officers to bring me to a medical check-up, so that I can be assigned a service eligibility category. Aside from the bureaucratic fervour for collecting data on the citizens, forcing youth to register has one, much less explicit purpose. While I was queuing together with around 60 other boys for long hours, we were forced to listen to a talk given every twenty or so minutes by a soldier, trying to convince us to join the army. While the uniform and the posture might have been intimidating, the guy was a subpar salesman, clearly just as uncomfortable with the odd public speaking engagement as we were.
If I recall correctly, there was not even a single individual who engaged with any of his points, not even out of boredom. At the end of the half-day process, he was replaced by a moustache-bearing commander with a much fiercer attitude, who praised the advantages of early retirement. When that did not achieve the expected exhilaration, he decided to also scare us that in case of war there is no escape as borders will be immediately closed, and we will end up in the army any way, so we might just as well get paid, and not be sent to the worst part of the meatgrinder without any training. I do not believe this sales pitch had much effect on the gathered either.
For any man who still remembers himself in his youth, the incentive structure appears obviously misguided. To a young male, the vision of retirement is too distant to be real. Similarly, free army healthcare won’t really attract candidates who are at the height of their physical stamina and power. Hypochondriacs aren’t exactly volunteering for the front lines.
What would work is a heap of green, so that one can enjoy a more elevated lifestyle than his peers, and ponder reaching some major life milestones: search for a spouse, consider moving out from his parents, and prepare for parenthood. Yet the army benefits are aimed at the geriatrics, as they hold all the lobby power in the institutions at hand. Veterans and retirees are showered with benefits, while young soldiers struggle to make ends meet.
Tax on Nationalism
I don’t think the tax on nationalism should go away. I believe the state should continue to suck out all the juice it can out of the potent nationalism in most nations, and make the most faithful of the patriots sacrifice for their proclaimed values, at lowest cost possible. Nevertheless, I think there remains a need for something more.
There is an established cultural archetype that could serve this very purpose: the mercenary. A soldier unbound by morals and patriotic values. An armyman perfectly complimentary to that intoxicated with his nation-state. Mercenaries may just be the way to solve the conundrum at hand.
It might be time for the creation of dedicated ethos-free forces. Soldiers who will not be driven by the desire to serve their earthly masters, but by money. The sort that would complement the armed forces with technical expertise, paid for at their exact price. Not those who merely guard presidential palaces for tourists’ photo ops, but those who serve, where necessary, to spill blood to keep foreign entities at bay. Ruthless contractors, who will execute missions with all the cunning, and who will not require days of national mourning if they are killed in action. The ones buried without grandiose military funerals, though well-paid during the time they were alive.
Can we eat our cake and have it too?
