Positive Liberty

Here’s a follow-up to my Anti-Servitude Pledge….

I solemnly swear that I will never take part in any involuntary civilian service at the behest of the federal government, regardless of the consequences.

…which has provoked some agreement as well as some interesting responses. As usual, Joshua Claybourn is worth the read:

Volunteering for a good cause is something I think all of us can support. But government coordination and regulation of such volunteering brings a host of problems, particularly when the meaning of “good cause” carries differing definitions. Is assisting the local gay pride association a good cause? What about assisting the local Christian outreach organization? What about advocating for the little-known insect threatened by farming? Not every taxpayer funding such endeavors will agree on the definition of “good cause”.

If we really wanted to be hyper-Burkean, we might claim that there is an intrinsic value to sociability, particularly if it means we develop a deeper sense of belonging to the community. Thus it might not matter whether the cause was “good” or not; the fringe benefits are there regardless.

Still, I don’t see an Evangelical Christian being thrilled about new friendships at a gay pride parade, and I don’t see that I’d do much good by promoting a religion that I don’t even believe in. This would be the purest absurdity, if it weren’t for all the serious First Amendment issues.

Then there’s that whole compulsion angle, which makes these projects more a parody of Burke — with taxpayers as marionettes — than the genuine article. Joshua makes a good comparison here too:

But the potential exists for it to take root much like George Bush’s infatuation with “faith-based initiative” which now has its own federal agency and soaks up billions of tax dollars each year.

Lots of people are pro-faith, just as lots of people are pro-volunteerism. That’s why anything coming under these names will have an eternal life in government, whether or not it has any business being there.

And there’s a good observation from one of his commenters, too:

If such a plan is started it will also become corrupt like the draft did. Poor boys went to Nam, college boys stayed home, the sons of the rich or influential never had to serve although some did.

Indeed, the Rangel proposal already contains deferments and exceptions, and these are sure to become politicized as well.

Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy, whose earlier post inspired my anti-servitude pledge, has been doing excellent work describing and contextualizing the goals of Service Nation, the interest group lobbying for mandatory national service. He writes,

Under the medieval system in much of Europe, serfs or peasants owed obligations of actual physical labor (beyond military service) to their political overseers. As English liberties grew, this obligation of physical labor was replaced by the right to pay taxes instead, with the chief exception being obligations of military service for males. Free men were increasingly free to choose their line of work and pay their political overseers with money, rather than owing an obligation of service to whatever physical tasks happened to be thought important or profitable to the upper and the political classes.

Service Nation is an organization devoted to stripping away this bulwark of Anglo-American liberty, hoping by the year 2020 to require every young American man and woman to be drafted into either military or community service.

And this is why we have to stop the new wave of compulsiteerism. But how far should we go? My own commenters have debated this considerably, with some wanting to attack both taxes and the military draft, too. (I would, but these are different arguments, both legally and practically, and I’m going after this issue alone for the time being.)

Is it worth it, then, to take the pledge? Rojas at The Crossed Pond doubts it:

Unfortunately, I know myself too well to suspect that I have the courage. . . to undergo any meaningful penalty for the sake of protesting compulsory service. Case in point: I am writing this blog under a pseudonym for fear of the employment consequences were my writings to be publicly attributed to me. Such is not the stuff of the national service martyr.

But the penalty for his reticence could be high as well. Would your employer hold your job while the government borrowed you for two years? Would every employer hold every job for all those millions of people?

Of course they wouldn’t. Some employers would hire replacements, while others would cut jobs and shrink the economy. This alone shows how little the servitude lobby is thinking about the real effects of their plans.

Finally, Rojas’s economic insight deserves credit:

Where are we to find millions of hours of work that needs to be done, but which is not important enough that we are willing to pay anyone to do it?

Simple: We’ll neglect something more important.

These service hours won’t be made of idealism and spare time, as volunteer service is today. They will be made of opportunity cost: successful careers cut short, products and services unprovided, scientific discoveries unmade, and lives not enjoyed as their rightful owners see fit. These years — not hours, years — will be made of interruption, inconvenience, and waste, of college degrees going stale, jobs lost, small businesses ruined. While trying to cure the world’s miseries, the compulsiteers will create new ones all their own.

The fact that fewer people volunteer today than would be compelled under Rangel’s plan does not mean that there is anything wrong with us. It only means that time is a limited resource, and that work for pay is valuable. Working for pay is good, even noble — an honest living, they used to call it.

The national servitude peddlers seem to suggest just the opposite, that paid work is somehow second-best. The implicit denigration of paid labor is antithetical to both the American ideal and to plain economic sense. “Do something worthwhile” suggests all by itself that what you’re doing right now is not. But it is. That’s why people pay you to do it.

Yes, it would be nice if people volunteered more often, but then, it would be nice if Exxon gave away free gasoline, too. It would be nice if we could have everything we wanted for free, but only politicians and thieves ever try for it. The trouble is, they do it using other people’s lives. Yours.

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