In the American Civil War, you could avoid conscription by paying $300 and hiring a substitute. This was widely regarded as unfair, as only fairly wealthy people could afford to pay, and was a major agitating factor in the New York City draft riots.
If my understanding of US history serves me one of the sides in that war was also fighting for slavery. I am more than willing to defy the ‘fairness’ intuitions that some people have got up in arms about in the past.
As a purely practical matter of implementing an economically sane solution with minimal hysterics by silly people I observe that implementing conscription and allowing people to buy out of it will tend to trigger entirely different ‘fairness’ instincts than implementing a wartime tax and paying soldiers the market rate. The latter solution would likely produce far less civil unrest than the former and the fact that the economic incentives are equivalent is largely irrelevant given that the objection wasn’t rational in the first place.
Bizarrely enough I would expect more unrest from the wealthy in the “war tax and pay market rates” scenario (“It isn’t fair that you are taking all this money from me! How dare you use my money to pay these low status people $500,000 a year. They do not deserve that.”) and objection from (people affiliating with) lower classes in the case of the “conscript and trade” scenario (“It isn’t fair that rich people can buy their way out of fighting but poor people can’t!”). Complete reversal of political support due to terminology change in an implementation detail. People are crazy; the world is mad. Not even biased self-interested political influence can be trusted to be coherent.
If my understanding of US history serves me one of the sides in that war was also fighting for slavery. I am more than willing to defy the ‘fairness’ intuitions that some people have got up in arms about in the past.
As a purely practical matter of implementing an economically sane solution with minimal hysterics by silly people I observe that implementing conscription and allowing people to buy out of it will tend to trigger entirely different ‘fairness’ instincts than implementing a wartime tax and paying soldiers the market rate. The latter solution would likely produce far less civil unrest than the former and the fact that the economic incentives are equivalent is largely irrelevant given that the objection wasn’t rational in the first place.
Bizarrely enough I would expect more unrest from the wealthy in the “war tax and pay market rates” scenario (“It isn’t fair that you are taking all this money from me! How dare you use my money to pay these low status people $500,000 a year. They do not deserve that.”) and objection from (people affiliating with) lower classes in the case of the “conscript and trade” scenario (“It isn’t fair that rich people can buy their way out of fighting but poor people can’t!”). Complete reversal of political support due to terminology change in an implementation detail. People are crazy; the world is mad. Not even biased self-interested political influence can be trusted to be coherent.