I am a veteran, and my inside view suggests two things: one, the least disciplined members of the population are filtered out by the military (which is to say they are not accepted or kicked out early); two, the military experience pushes veterans towards the extremes.
Reasons to consider that veterans would be more productive than average:
Acclimated to long and/or strenuous work periods.
Better access to education through veterans programs and admission boosts.
Direct boost to employability in a variety of industries.
Reasons to consider that veterans would be less productive than average:
Higher rates of homelessness
Higher rates of mental illness and suicide
Higher rates of substance abuse
Etc.
My expectation is that the productivity advantage is highest when veterans enter a civilian industry that matches military tasks closely, like compliance with regulations or uncomfortable work environments. I also expect that the veterans who fail to re-adapt to civilian life suffer an almost complete collapse of productivity.
Turning to the question of discipline, I think we will benefit from a little context. Discipline in the military is very much a team phenomenon; Army training is focused overwhelmingly on establishing and maintaining a group identity. Most of the things people associate with military discipline require other people to make sense, like the chain of command, pulling security, and how tasks are divided. Even the individual things like physical fitness or memorizing trivia, are thoroughly steeped in the team environment because they are motivated by being able to help your buddy out and are how status is sorted in the group.
I believe your friend’s statement:
If you can just train yourself like you’re in the army, then you can become just as self disciplined as a soldier
is wrong as a consequence, because you can never train yourself like you are in the Army. That fundamentally needs a group, entirely separate from the question of social incentives and environment. Outside of the group context, discipline doesn’t really mean anything more than habit formation.
is wrong as a consequence, because you can never train yourself like you are in the Army. That fundamentally needs a group, entirely separate from the question of social incentives and environment.
How is a group separate from the question of social incentives and environment? Having a group of people to motivate you seems like intrinsically a question of social incentives and environments.
I took my friend’s suggestion to be less that we can actually gather the resources to train ourselves like we are in the military, and more that if we were to do so, it would improve our discipline in the long-run. Hence the popular wisdom (or misconception) that military “straightens people out.”
To be more exact, if you have a group, then the group provides social incentives; but social incentives do not imply a group. For example, if I were publicly humiliated in front of strangers, they might mock me if they saw me later in a restaurant. This is a social (dis)incentive, but the fact remains that we aren’t in a group.
What qualifies people as a group in the sense that I intend is at least twofold: they have to share the same set of incentives; this fact has to be common knowledge among them.
I do agree that if person trains successfully it would improve long-run discipline, but doing military training won’t meaningfully change the outcome from non-military training because the group context is what does the extra work. If that is not the focus, ie veterans are just an example disciplined population, then my comments are probably not relevant to the true concern.
I am a veteran, and my inside view suggests two things: one, the least disciplined members of the population are filtered out by the military (which is to say they are not accepted or kicked out early); two, the military experience pushes veterans towards the extremes.
Reasons to consider that veterans would be more productive than average:
Acclimated to long and/or strenuous work periods.
Better access to education through veterans programs and admission boosts.
Direct boost to employability in a variety of industries.
Reasons to consider that veterans would be less productive than average:
Higher rates of homelessness
Higher rates of mental illness and suicide
Higher rates of substance abuse
Etc.
My expectation is that the productivity advantage is highest when veterans enter a civilian industry that matches military tasks closely, like compliance with regulations or uncomfortable work environments. I also expect that the veterans who fail to re-adapt to civilian life suffer an almost complete collapse of productivity.
Turning to the question of discipline, I think we will benefit from a little context. Discipline in the military is very much a team phenomenon; Army training is focused overwhelmingly on establishing and maintaining a group identity. Most of the things people associate with military discipline require other people to make sense, like the chain of command, pulling security, and how tasks are divided. Even the individual things like physical fitness or memorizing trivia, are thoroughly steeped in the team environment because they are motivated by being able to help your buddy out and are how status is sorted in the group.
I believe your friend’s statement:
is wrong as a consequence, because you can never train yourself like you are in the Army. That fundamentally needs a group, entirely separate from the question of social incentives and environment. Outside of the group context, discipline doesn’t really mean anything more than habit formation.
How is a group separate from the question of social incentives and environment? Having a group of people to motivate you seems like intrinsically a question of social incentives and environments.
I took my friend’s suggestion to be less that we can actually gather the resources to train ourselves like we are in the military, and more that if we were to do so, it would improve our discipline in the long-run. Hence the popular wisdom (or misconception) that military “straightens people out.”
To be more exact, if you have a group, then the group provides social incentives; but social incentives do not imply a group. For example, if I were publicly humiliated in front of strangers, they might mock me if they saw me later in a restaurant. This is a social (dis)incentive, but the fact remains that we aren’t in a group.
What qualifies people as a group in the sense that I intend is at least twofold: they have to share the same set of incentives; this fact has to be common knowledge among them.
I do agree that if person trains successfully it would improve long-run discipline, but doing military training won’t meaningfully change the outcome from non-military training because the group context is what does the extra work. If that is not the focus, ie veterans are just an example disciplined population, then my comments are probably not relevant to the true concern.