Debating National Service | Doug Bandow, Cato Institute | Lincoln-Douglas

0:00 burdens that you know you’re losing something now you know what it is we really don’t know I mean what would people be doing some of them people be in school some would be in other jobs you know so when you’re thinking about kind of the benefits versus the costs one of the costs you have to keep in mind is this idea of an opportunity cost then you know if I have you doing

0:21 service whatever that is you aren’t doing something else what is it you are doing maybe it’s not worth anything but maybe it is so you really can’t talk about this unless you grapple with that issue if you want to advance a service program you’ve got to be able to say it’s worth it you’ve got to be able to make in you make the argument it may be the values transmitted or more important than that you can argue that you know

0:42 the other economic benefits would be greater that’s fine but you’ve done you know something you’ve got to deal with then as opposed to ignore and the other question is if you’re talking about a mandatory national program again we’re talking about something big now we’re not talking about a couple thousand people we’re not talking about a little you know program here or there we’re

1:04 talking about millions of people and you think about if it’s mandatory you know the the nice thing about volunteerism is you don’t have to make people do things you know so and you know you have a job you don’t you want to quit if you quit it you know there’s nobody out there who has to make you go etc if it’s a mandatory program you have you are

1:24 supposed to go so you know your mandatory job is to be at a hospital and what if you don’t show up yeah well what happens okay what if you show up twice a week and sort of five times a week what happens I mean you go to jail does the federal government send you a letter and threaten you I mean you know they’re the practical stuff and most of the people

1:45 who write about this and you go back I mean again you look at the literature if you really want to get into this Margaret Mead and all these other people they never get into the nitty-gritty I mean you don’t get into the details of how would you set up a program that would manage six million young people working on all these different tasks and what do you do about them if they don’t do the job well what do you do about

2:05 them if they don’t show up what do they show up late every day I mean a normal job you get fired you know good luck you shouldn’t tell your employer wives of the fifteen roll you’re two hours late we’ll go over well you show up here and what are they gonna do are they gonna throw you in jail well then I mean if not whatever lock you show this again this practical sense of how this would work when you go from

2:29 say mm no to 2 million to 6 million people you’re talking about massive transformation you think about the bureaucracy you think about the issues you know the military has to do this and it you know it takes a lot of work but it’s a unique system and one of the advantages the military today is its voluntary which means if somebody screws

2:50 up you threaten to throw them out because they wanted to stay in if everybody is there doesn’t want to be there it becomes much harder you know to work the military had to do deal with that with a draft military then it was not easy and you had off you know coming out of the transformation to a volunteer military I mean what you find is officer saying routinely this is so much better

3:10 I have people who want to be there it’s so much easier to manage so much easier to kind of be an officer and deal with deal with them you know so if you’re going to create a mandatory civilian program you’ve got to think it through how does it all work I think at a time where we still have multiple Wars going on where national security is a big

3:30 issue you know the question is what’s the impact of mandatory national service on the military if you’re thinking about what’s the most important kind of government service job I would argue in a friend in the military then if you’re worried about the survival of your you know system you’re worried about you know that kind of an issue you know what

3:51 do you do about and fill in the blank wherever you think America’s enemy might be there’s no reason I need to get into that but you know the question is that if you cringe civilian program what happens well military people worry that it becomes a competitor I mean today you have people who definitely want to serve I mean my nephew is a seal there are a lot of people out there they want to serve their country but if you create

4:13 this whole different program which frankly doesn’t have the same risks doesn’t have the same dangers you may very well pull people away from the military the very people you want to have in the military I think another challenge there in the face jeromy’s I’m a man national service people typically put together and say well you can be in military or civilian but they really are

4:33 very different and I’d argue they’re different in two important ways one of which is military service really is service to the country I mean in the sense that the government is sending you out to do things typically civilian service I mean even if it’s mandatory you know mandated by the federal government or paid for by the federal government so for the most part is

4:54 service to individuals or service to companies or institutions if you’re working in a library don’t really think of yourself as serving the nation because you’re shelving books are library even if you’re part of some program it’s just a very different feel to it than the military and I said I think the second point it’s critically important is it’s just a different level

5:15 of risk and danger I mean a lot of folks in the military don’t serve overseas they don’t face that but another tip of the spear in combat arms I mean at the end of the day the military does something unique and as it has you know special risks so if you actually say that shelving books in a library is the equivalent of being in the military you really want to give them equal status in terms of service

5:37 you know some people have proposed you know your service system could say eighty-two years in the military or three years in civilian service me people come up with things like that to try to deal with it but I think it is one of the challenges but you have to worry about what a mandatory national program would do for the current system that matters most of service that the US

5:59 has and then just a lot of worries in terms of how that might impact service at a time where the US government faces a lot of financial burdens the world looks very uncertain you know is this the kind of program that would be useful at this time finally there’s simply a question I think of cost which is you

6:19 know the US government is effectively bankrupt I mean if you want to see if you’re into and interested in the numbers you go to the Congressional Budget Office website now they have analyses looking out over the next ten years and what they say in the next ten years federal deficits will probably hit a trillion dollars that’s without a financial crisis an annual federal deficit will be a trillion dollars where

6:40 does the money come from to pay for national service there again this idea of opportunity cost it if we’re borrowing a trillion dollars can we afford to add yet another program now you might argue that the benefits are clearly worth it you might argue that there are ways we get the money back you could argue that in fact we should cut other programs I mean all of those are fair responses but it’s something I

7:02 think that needs to be addressed that to talk about a really big new program millions of people all these jobs that is something which is well somebody’s gonna ask you how you pay for you know and how so how do you do it you know what you say again it goes back to the practical issue what would it cost if you proposed something in your opponent says yeah but what would it cost we

7:22 don’t know they just gotta gave up with this idea who’s gonna pay for it then you have to be able to answer that and say who’s gonna pay for it I think there’s no you look ahead nobody really doubts I think that your service is a good thing I mean that’s something where I think across the political spectrum attending virtually anyone you know that I can imagine in

7:43 American society any politician you can imagine go to Capitol Hill who would who would disagree with the idea of service and the fact that’s why so many Americans do service of some sort to some degree the argives be nice to thinking more but lots of people do they contribute they serve they you know they work with local groups so do you want to turn that into kind of a political

8:05 program and I think that it’s both expand it massively and make it corset because again if you really want national service you’re talking about mandatory national service you know it takes you into a different realm it’s one thing to ask everybody please serve to show by example why they should serve it’s a very different issue if you want

8:26 to essentially say if you don’t serve go to jail so you know are you going to cross that to mean that we get back to the debate those are the kinds of big issues I doubt anyone has been argue against service but as you know do we actually view course service even as service I mean is this service does is it service if I don’t want to do it is

8:46 it and the only reason I serve is because I go to jail otherwise is that really service so mean is that compassion you know I do it because I’m afraid of jail you know these cotton these are issues I think that they’re very very deep but very important you know I’m trying to work through until this concept of national service here we see you know a

9:06 lot of folks out there writing things that applauding American society talking about little platoons charles murray is one and others who kind of brought back that de Tocqueville rhetoric you know that a lot of people would love to find a way to in their view revive a spirit of service get more people involved that rhetoric is out there it’s very active

9:27 you know a lot of people promotive but the idea of national service and mandatory national service is something very different so if you’re going to jump into that realm recognize that today the political climate feels very different in that sense you don’t have that kind of collectivist sense it’s a much more individualistic you can argue that’s precisely why we need to do this

9:48 but you also have to recognize that politically it becomes more difficult and you have to work on all these practical issues because it’s far more than a kind of a philosophical issue it’s a very practical legislative issue if you really want to make this happen so I think I’ll stop there I’m happy to take their any questions and kind of go over anything that there you don’t kind

10:08 of you all have questions about and try to help you any way that I can all right so if I mean go ahead and wait

10:30 one more minute to see if anyone has any questions I know that I found that very interesting Doug thank you so much I I know I learned a lot and I don’t even have to debate it it was very helpful so we’ll do a last call for questions

10:51 [Music] give it about 30 more seconds guys come on you have a wonderful resource at your fingertips

11:17 all righty then so there’s no other questions I guess that means that there was a great presentation that already answered all their questions other sources that the Cato website has some of my studies that I’ve written over the years on this so you know if they wanted more detail they could clearly go to that yeah definitely

11:37 guys so I switched over to the the survey section so you can go ahead and answer those questions and also at the bottom we have that link to the Cato Institute website where you can find you can find all of Doug’s writings you can also find other information about National Service if you have any

11:58 questions at all feel free to email me and Kerber the ARP er at Bill of Rights Institute org also you guys can go ahead and check out things about calm and there’s it features a lot of current events that are going on that could help with debate and we also were opening up

12:19 our scholarship applications later on this week so you can apply to win some of the 20,000 dollars that are up in scholarship money and that’s going to be at the Bill of Rights Institute website which is Bill of Rights Institute so all right you guys can go ahead and answer

12:41 those questions it looks like most of them have been answered but I will then I’m gonna hop off this phone call and once again thank you so much Doug for everything you were a really really great speaker and like I said attendees if you have any questions feel free to email me and I’d be more than happy to

13:01 help you find resources or have any questions for you if they come up a little bit later while you’re prepping your debate so once again all right thank you guys for attending and we hope to see you tomorrow for our next debate webinar on that 7:00 p.m. and we’ll be talking about the NSD a policy topic all

13:24 right