The best way to get people to do a job is to pay them enough that they choose to. If people are not choosing to join the army that means they are not getting paid enough.
This strikes me as correct in many cases, but I worry about applying the general rule to military service in particular. Soldiers who see themselves as working for pay have a lot less incentive to take on risk for the sake of their employer. And from what I remember from a few studies, offering people one kind of prominent incentive drowns out others: offer a kid a dollar for doing something he otherwise enjoyes and not only will he be less willing to do it without the dollar in the future, but he’ll often do a worse job, taking no pleasure in it.
I was objecting to the claim that the best way to get people to fight for their country was to pay them a lot of money. I think this is really quite a bad way to get people to do this particular job, and forcible conscription is pretty bad too. If those are your only two options, I don’t really know which is worse. I’m sure that depends on the circumstances.
This strikes me as correct in many cases, but I worry about applying the general rule to military service in particular. Soldiers who see themselves as working for pay have a lot less incentive to take on risk for the sake of their employer. And from what I remember from a few studies, offering people one kind of prominent incentive drowns out others: offer a kid a dollar for doing something he otherwise enjoyes and not only will he be less willing to do it without the dollar in the future, but he’ll often do a worse job, taking no pleasure in it.
How about soldiers who see themselves as being forcibly conscripted?
I was objecting to the claim that the best way to get people to fight for their country was to pay them a lot of money. I think this is really quite a bad way to get people to do this particular job, and forcible conscription is pretty bad too. If those are your only two options, I don’t really know which is worse. I’m sure that depends on the circumstances.
It just struck me as odd that you didn’t address the analogous argument for the other side.
Of course, you’re right, ideally people should be joining out of the goodness of their hearts.
No, wait, ideally we should find the best soldier and clone them.
Or we could just do it with flying assassin robots.
… clearly my ideal was not ideal enough compared to, say, reality.