Conscription of Men, Women, and Resources - Art Carden - Mises Institute

Conscription of Men, Women, and Resources - Art Carden - Mises Institute: "What is compulsory national service but a type of slavery?"

"'Service' extracted at the point of a gun is not honorable. It is tragic. Furthermore, conscription is a backdoor way of increasing the state's burden on society in a way that is more difficult to measure than taxing and spending. The use of compulsion suggests ipso facto that resources are being wasted."

"Higgs points out that people were slow to volunteer after the United States entered the war (p. 131). In spite of Woodrow Wilson's stated opposition to conscription, he moved forward with a draft law that had been sent to Congress 'the day before the declaration of war'"

"Individuals' reluctance to volunteer suggests that service to the alleged moral rightness of the cause is not a sufficient compensating differential to those who are called to risk life and limb."

"Evidently no one in the government ever considered whether the desired number of volunteers could be obtained by making the deal sufficiently sweet."