If everyone is taking care of themselves, you need to provide your soldiers with money, and you need to figure out how much money to give them. Normally, this doesn’t need to be centrally planned because people can decide for themselves how much they need to work to get the money they need to survive, but presumably you don’t want your soldiers taking other jobs.
If someone else is providing the supplies your soldiers need, then you need to give those someone-elses access to your soldiers. I think historically this was kind-of a thing that happened with a long train of merchants following an army, but I doubt military commanders want hordes of definitely-spies in their camps.
Central planning can be more efficient. Producing millions of identical MRE’s is (presumably) more efficient than providing soldiers with a large selection of food and dealing with the waste when they don’t like some of it. The obvious downside is that MRE’s are allegedly-food that no one would buy if they had alternatives, but if you’re focusing the output of your workforce on a war, trading off happiness for efficiency can be worth it.
You probably don’t want your soldiers dealing with logistical issues, just as a matter of specialization. If you can have someone else figure out how to get allegedly-food MRE’s to them, then they can just focus on fighting. I think you see something similar with colleges and certain kinds of jobs, where they provide housing, food, and some entertainment. But obviously the downside is that very few people want to live in dorms eating alleged-food, so you can only do this if people don’t have any better options or are being forced to do it for some reason.
Something to consider is that similar things happen with companies too:
Almost all companies have specialists to pick offices and furniture, presumably for specialization and economy-of-scale reasons.
Most companies don’t want random people walking through their offices. At small scales, they just accept the (time) cost of employees leaving to get food, and at large scales they typically provide food on-site.
A few things I can think of:
If everyone is taking care of themselves, you need to provide your soldiers with money, and you need to figure out how much money to give them. Normally, this doesn’t need to be centrally planned because people can decide for themselves how much they need to work to get the money they need to survive, but presumably you don’t want your soldiers taking other jobs.
If someone else is providing the supplies your soldiers need, then you need to give those someone-elses access to your soldiers. I think historically this was kind-of a thing that happened with a long train of merchants following an army, but I doubt military commanders want hordes of definitely-spies in their camps.
Central planning can be more efficient. Producing millions of identical MRE’s is (presumably) more efficient than providing soldiers with a large selection of food and dealing with the waste when they don’t like some of it. The obvious downside is that MRE’s are allegedly-food that no one would buy if they had alternatives, but if you’re focusing the output of your workforce on a war, trading off happiness for efficiency can be worth it.
You probably don’t want your soldiers dealing with logistical issues, just as a matter of specialization. If you can have someone else figure out how to get allegedly-food MRE’s to them, then they can just focus on fighting. I think you see something similar with colleges and certain kinds of jobs, where they provide housing, food, and some entertainment. But obviously the downside is that very few people want to live in dorms eating alleged-food, so you can only do this if people don’t have any better options or are being forced to do it for some reason.
Something to consider is that similar things happen with companies too:
Almost all companies have specialists to pick offices and furniture, presumably for specialization and economy-of-scale reasons.
Most companies don’t want random people walking through their offices. At small scales, they just accept the (time) cost of employees leaving to get food, and at large scales they typically provide food on-site.