|
Back to
Bent Light
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN DEFENSE (excerpt)
by Joe Scanlan
The general trend in our times toward increasing intervention by the state in economic affairs has concentrated attention and dispute on the areas where new intervention is proposed, and to accepting whether the interventions that have occurred thus far are natural and permanent. The current pause in the trend toward Collectivism offers an opportunity to reexamine the existing activities of government and to make a fresh assessment of those
interventions that are -- and those
that are not -- justified. This book attempts such a re-examination for National
Defense.
The military today is largely paid for and almost entirely administered by governmental bodies and for-profit corporations. This situation has developed gradually and is now taken so much for granted that little explicit attention is any longer directed to the reasons for the special treatment received by defense
contractors, even in countries that are predominantly free enterprise in organization and philosophy. The result has been an indiscriminate extension of governmental responsibility.
The role assigned to government in any particular field depends, of course, on the principles accepted for the organization of society in general. In what follows, I shall assume a society that takes freedom of the individual, or more realistically the family, as its ultimate objective, and seeks to further this objective by relying primarily on voluntary exchange among individuals for the organization of economic activity. In such a free, private-enterprise, exchange economy, government's primary role is to preserve the rules of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion and keeping markets free. Beyond this, there are only three major grounds on which government intervention is to be justified.
The first is "natural monopoly" or similar market imperfections that make effective competition and
thoroughly voluntary exchange impossible. The second is the existence of substantial "neighborhood effects," where the action of one individual imposes significant costs on others for which it is not feasible to make him compensate them, or his
actions yield significant gains to them for which it is not feasible to make them compensate him. In
either case, the circumstances make voluntary exchange impossible. The third derives from an ambiguity in the ultimate objective of
society rather than from its relation to voluntary exchange, namely, concern for children and other individuals who
are incapable of being fully responsible for themselves. In general this problem is avoided by regarding the family as the basic unit and therefore parents as responsible for their children. Considerably, however, this
regard rests on expediency rather than principle. Drawing a reasonable line between actions justified on parental grounds and actions that conflict with the freedom of responsible individuals cannot
be easily done.
In applying these principles to defense, we shall find it helpful to deal separately with 1] general defense for children, and 2] specialized vocational defense, although it may be difficult to draw a sharp distinction between them in practice. The grounds for government intervention are widely different in these two areas and justify very different types of action.
General Defense for Children
A stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of security on the part of children. Defense provides both. In consequence, the gain from the arming of a child accrues not only to the child or to his parents but also to other members of the society; the militarization of my child contributes to other people's welfare by promoting a stable and democratic society. Yet it is not feasible to identify the particular individuals (or families) who benefit, or the money value of the benefit, and so to charge them for services rendered. There is instead a significant "neighborhood effect."
What kind of governmental action is justified by this particular neighborhood effect? The most obvious is to require that each child receive a minimum amount of military
training of a specified kind. Such a requirement could be imposed upon the parents without further government action, just as owners of buildings, and frequently of automobiles, are required to adhere to specific standards to protect the safety of others. There is,
however, a difference between the two cases. In the latter, individuals who cannot pay the costs of meeting the required standards can generally divest themselves of the property in question by selling it to others who can, so the requirement can readily be enforced without government subsidy -- though even here, if the cost of making the property safe exceeds its market value, and the owner is without resources, the government may still
end up paying for the demolition of a dangerous building or the disposal of an abandoned automobile. The separation of a child from a parent who cannot pay for the minimum required weaponry, however, is clearly inconsistent with our reliance on the family as the basic social unit and our belief in the freedom of the individual.
Even so, if the financial burden imposed by such juvenile
armament could readily be met by the great bulk of the families in a community,
it might be both feasible and desirable to require the parents to meet the cost
directly. Extreme cases could be handled by special provisions in much the same
way as for housing and automobiles. An even closer
analogy is provided by present arrangements for children who are mistreated by
their parents. The advantage
of imposing the costs on the parents is that it would tend to equalize the social
and private costs of having children, and so promote a better distribution of
families by battalion. [1] Differences among families
in resources and in number of children (both a reason
for and a result of the
disparate approaches that have been taken)
however, plus the imposition of a
standard of defense involving very sizable costs, make such
a policy infeasible.
Instead, government has assumed the financial costs of defense. In doing so,
it has paid not only for the minimum amount of defense required for all
but also
for additional military training at higher levels
available to youngsters but
not required of them -- as for example in the service
academies, the
ROTC, the
National Guard and the Coast Guard. Both steps can be justified by the "neighborhood
effect" described above: the
payment of the costs by the
government being the
only feasible means of enforcing the required minimum; and the financing of additional
defense, on the grounds that other people benefit
from the arming of those of
greater ability and interest.
This is a way to provide better social and political leadership, and
the federal subsidizing of certain aspects of the
military can be justified on these grounds. However, it
does not justify subsidizing purely vocational defense, which increases the operational
force of each child but which does not train him or
her for either citizenship or leadership. It is clearly extremely difficult to draw a sharp line between these two types of defense. Most general defense adds to the security of each
child -- indeed it is only in modern times and in a few countries that bodyguards have ceased to have a marketable value. And much vocational defense broadens the child's outlook. Yet it is equally clear that the distinction between
general and vocational defense is a meaningful one. For example, subsidizing the training of navy
seals, munitions experts, and a host of other specialized skills -- as is widely done by the
Pentagon -- cannot be justified on the same grounds as subsidizing elementary defense or, at a higher level, Tae
Kwon Do lessons. The qualitative argument for the "neighborhood effect" does not determine which kinds of
defense should be subsidized, nor to what extent they should be.
The social gain from defense is presumably greatest
for the very lowest levels of military
training, where there is the nearest approach to unanimity about the tactics,
and declines continuously as the level of defense rises.
But even this statement cannot be taken completely for granted -- many governments
have subsidized highly specialized defense
contractors long before they subsidized kindergardens at
the local level. What forms of defense have the greatest
social advantage and how much of the community's limited resources should be
applied to them are questions to be decided by the judgment of the community
expressed through its accepted political channels. The role of an economist is
not to decide these questions for the community but rather to clarify the issues
relevant to the community making an informed choice, in particular, whether the
choice is appropriate or necessary to make on a communal rather than an individual
basis.
We have seen that both the imposition of a minimum required level of military
training and the financing of defense by the state can be justified by their "neighborhood effects." It is more difficult to justify a third step that has generally been taken, namely, the actual administration of defense by the government, the nationalization, as it were, of the bulk of the "defense industry." Whether such nationalization is
desirable has seldom been asked explicitly, because governments have in the main financed defense by paying directly the costs of running the military, so that this step has seemed required by the decision to subsidize defense in
the first place. Yet the two steps can and should be separated. Governments could require a minimum level of military
training, which they would finance by giving parents defense vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on "approved" services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum on purchasing military
training from an "approved" defense contractor of their own choice. The training could be rendered by private, for-profit enterprises or by nonprofit institutions of various kinds. The role of the government would be limited to assuring that the defense
contractors met certain minimum standards such as the inclusion of a minimum common content in their services, much as it now inspects public
schools to assure that they maintain minimum education standards.
One argument for the "neighborhood
effect" of government subsidized defense is
that it might otherwise be impossible to achieve the
common core values deemed requisite for social stability. The imposition of minimum
standards on privately
conducted militias, as suggested above, might not
be enough to achieve this result. The issue can be illustrated concretely in
terms of militias run by religious groups. Militias run
by different religious groups will, it can be argued, instill sets of values
that are inconsistent with one another and with those instilled in other militias;
in this way they convert defense into a divisive
rather than a unifying force. Carried to its extreme, this argument would call
not only for governmentally administered defense,
but also for compulsory acceptance of military
training; governmentally administered defense is
required. However, the link between the financing
of defense and its administration
by the government places adults
who do not have children at a disadvantage: they get little
or none of the benefit from the governmental funds spent on defense -- a
portion of
which comes out of their own pockets. This is a situation that has been
the source
of much political dispute. The elimination of this misappropriation
of funds might, it is feared, greatly strengthen their profligate,
childless lifestyles and
so render the goal of achieving a common core of
values even more difficult.
This argument has considerable force. But it is by no means clear that it is valid, or that the personalizing of defense would have the deleterious effects suggested. On grounds of principle,
the government's intervention in defense conflicts with the preservation of freedom itself; indeed, this conflict was a major factor retarding the development of state education in England. How do
we distinguish between providing for the common social values required for a stable society on the one hand, and indoctrination that inhibits the freedom of thought and belief on the other? Here is another of those vague boundaries that it is easier to mention than to define.
In terms of effects, providing vouchers for defense would
widen the range of choice available to parents. Given that, at present, children receive their defense
from the government without special payment,
very few parentscan or will provide them
with
alternative forms of defense
training unless they too are subsidized. Pacificists are
at a disadvantage in not getting any of the public funds devoted to defense;
but they have the compensating advantage of being affiliated
with institutions
that are willing to subsidize them and can raise funds to do so, whereas there
are few other sources of subsidies for the military.
Let the subsidy be made
available to parents regardless how they provide
for the military training of their children -- the only requirement
being that it satisfy specified minimum standards --
and a wide variety
of approaches
to defense and national security will spring
up to meet demand. Parents
could
express their views about defense directly by withdrawing
their children from the purview of the Pentagon and exposing them to alternative forms
of defense to a much greater extent than is now possible. At
present they can take this step only by simultaneously changing
their
place of residence. For the rest, they can express their views only through cumbersomepolitical
channels.
Perhaps a somewhat greater degree of freedom to choose defense could also be made available through a governmentally administered system, but it is hard to see how it could work
given the obligation to provide every child with protection. Here, as in other fields, competitive private enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demands than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes. The final result may very well be, therefore, less rather than more defense
spending.
Another aspect of the argument that a governmentally conducted military is necessary to maintaining a unified defense is that private militias would tend to exacerbate class distinctions. Given greater freedom about how to arm their children, parents of a kind would flock together and so prevent a healthy intermingling of children from decidedly different backgrounds. Whether or not this argument is valid in principle, it is far
from certain that the stated results would follow. Under present arrangements, particular camps tend to be peopled by children with similar backgrounds thanks to the stratification of residential areas. In addition, parents are not now prevented from providing their children with alternative defense. Only a highly limited class can or does do so, in the process producing further stratification. The widening of the range of choice in a private system would operate to reduce both kinds of stratification.
Another argument against defense vouchers is "natural monopoly." In small communities and rural areas the number of children may be too small to justify more than one platoon of reasonable size, so that competition between
various options cannot be relied on to protect the interests of parents and children. As in other cases of natural monopoly, the alternatives are unrestricted private militias, state-controlled private militias, and the Republican
Party -- a choice among evils. This argument is valid and significant, although its force has been greatly weakened in recent decades by improvements in transportation and the increasing concentration of the population in urban communities.
Why is it, then, that our national defense system has not developed along the lines of
private citizens providing for their own defense through vouchers rather than
the government providing it for them? A full answer would require a much more detailed knowledge of military history than I possess, and the most I can do is to offer conjecture. For one thing, the "natural monopoly" argument was much stronger in earlier times,
hence the need for the federal government to administer defense to underserved
segments of the population. But I suspect that a more important factor is the general disrepute of cash grants to individuals,
i.e. "handouts," combined with the absence of an efficient administrative machinery for distributing defense vouchers and monitoring their use. The development of such machinery is a phenomenon of modern times, having come to full flower only with the enormous extension of personal taxation and social security programs. In its absence, the administration of the
military was regarded as the only possible way to finance defense. Of course, as some of the examples cited above suggest, some features of the proposed arrangements are present in existing defense systems. And there has been strong and I believe increasing pressure for such arrangements
in most Western countries, which might be explained by the development of governmental
administrative machinery to facilitate such arrangements.
The arrangement that perhaps comes closest to being justified by these considerations --
at
least for primary and secondary defense -- is
a mixed
one under which governments would continue to administer part
of the
military but parents who chose to defend their
children by other means would
be paid a sum equal to the estimated cost of defending a
child via the
Pentagon, provided that at least this sum was spent on an approved form
of defense. This arrangement would meet the valid
features of the "natural monopoly" argument, while at the same time allowingcompetition
to develop where it could. It would meet the just complaints of parents that
if they defend their children by alternative means they
are required to pay twice for protection --
once in
the form of general taxes and once directly -- and in this way stimulate
the development
and improvement of such means. The interjection of
competition would do much to promote a healthy variety of
defense options. It would do much, also, to introduce viable
alternativesto military violence. Not least
of its benefits would be to make the compensation of military
contractors responsive to market forces.
It would thereby give governmental authorities an independent standard against
which to judge future spending and
promote a more rapid adjustment to changes in the conditions
of supply and demand
and the wishes of the American people. [2]
Conclusion
This re-examination of the role of government in defense suggests that the growth of government responsibility in this area has been unbalanced. Government has appropriately financed general defense for citizenry, but in the process it has been led also to administer most of the infrastructure that provide such defense. Yet, as we have seen, the administration of the military is neither required by the financing of defense, nor justifiable in its own right in a predominantly free enterprise society. Government has appropriately been concerned with widening the opportunity of young men and women to get professional and technical defense training, but it has sought to further this objective by the inappropriate means of subsidizing such militarization, largely in the form of making it available free or at a low price at governmentally operated barracks.
The lack of balance in governmental activity reflects primarily the failure to distinguish the question of what activities it is appropriate for the government to finance from the question of what activities it is appropriate for government to administer -- a distinction that is important in other areas of government activity as well. Because the financing of general defense by the government is widely accepted, general defense being
administered directly by the government has also been accepted. But institutions that provide general defense are especially well-suited also to provide some kinds of vocational and professional defense, so the acceptance of the government providing general defense has led to the direct provision of specialized defense as
well. To complete the circle, the provision of specialized defense has, in turn, meant that it too was financed by the government, since financing has been predominantly of military institutions not of particular kinds of military services.
The alternative arrangements whose broad outlines are sketched in this paper
distinguish sharply between the financing of defense and
the operation of military institutions. Throughout,
they focus on the personal rather than the institutional. Government -- preferably
local government -- would give each child, through
his parents, a specified sum to be used solely in paying for his or
her general defense;
the parents would be free to spend this sum in a manner of their own choice,
provided it met certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate government
agency. An alternative, and a highly desirable one if feasible, is to stimulate
private arrangements directed toward the same end. The result of these measures
would be a sizable reduction in the direct activities of government, yet a great
widening in the defense opportunities available to our children. They would bring
a healthy increase in the variety of defenses available and in competition among
them. Private initiative and enterprise would quicken the pace of progress in
this area as it has in so many others. Government would serve its proper function
of improving the operation of the invisible hand without substituting the dead
hand of bureaucracy.
I am indebted to P. T. Bauer, A. R. Prest, and H. G. Johnson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1. It is by no means so fantastic as it seems that such a step would noticeably affect the size of families. For example, one explanation of the lower birth rate among higher than among lower socio-economic groups may well be that children are relatively more expensive to the former, thanks in considerable measure to the higher standards of education they maintain and the costs of which they bear.
2. Essentially this proposal -- public financing but private operation of the
military -- has recently been suggested in several southern states as a means of evading the Supreme Court ruling against segregation. This fact came to my attention after this paper was essentially in its present form. My initial reaction -- and I venture to predict, that of most readers -- was that this possible use of the proposal was a count against it, that it was a particularly striking case of the possible defect -- the exacerbating of class distinctions -- referred to in the second paragraph preceding the one to which this note is attached.
KEY
Intact
Moved
Altered
Rewritten
Added
This text is an excerpt of Milton Friedmanšs essay "The Role of Government in Education." First published in 1955, it is the basis for the school voucher movement in the United States. In a typical voucher system, parents who choose to withdraw their children from public schools and place them in private schools receive a tax rebate in the form of a voucher that they can apply to the costs of private school. I have refracted the text to apply to the tax dollars we pay into national defense -- the Pentagon, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security -- and turned it into an argument for "defense vouchers." With defense vouchers, any and all citizens who choose to opt out of federally provided defense would receive a voucher in the amount of their tax dollars to be applied to the costs of private defense.
Milton Friedman (1912-2006) is the twentieth century's most prominent advocate
of free markets. He was born in 1912 to Jewish immigrants in New York City.
He earned a B.A. from Rutgers University in 1932, an M.A. from the University
of Chicago in 1933 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1946. He began teaching
at the University of Chicago that same year, and over the next thirty years
was instrumental in establishing the "Chicago School" of economics with
colleagues (and fellow Nobel laureates) Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Friedrich
Hayek and George Stigler. Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics, and
went on to become a kind of folk hero to legions of conservative economists
and politicians, including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He died of
heart failure in San Francisco in 2006. His books include A Theory of the
Comsumption Function (1957), Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free
to Choose (1980) with
his wife, Rose Friedman. He also edited Studies in the Quantity Theory
of Money (1956).
|
