The Bureaucrats Are Running Scared

July 23, 2008 3:43 PM by S.M. Oliva | Other posts by S.M. Oliva | Comments (5)

Jeffrey Tucker's post below argues that "national service" -- or as Ilya Somin more accurately calls it, "the mainstreaming of forced labor" -- "will rob young people of their most important years early in life, taking them out of productive work and making them less able to offer anything to the marketplace after." I think the important question to ask is why these initiatives are being pushed now by such a wide coalition of mainstream political interests.

The simple answer is fear. As governments continue to expand at all levels throughout the world, the establishment fears there won't be enough new bureaucrats to consume the wealth extracted from the productive members of society. Regulations and mandates don't enforce themselves, after all. Nor will political campaigns continue to generate the same heightened amount of interest in a world where wealth and technology allow people to pursue their own interests without resorting to rent-seeking.

Public schooling is no longer up to the task of producing the next generation of parasitic, wealth-destroying government drones. Something has to be done now or the very fabric of the modern state could start to unravel. "National service" offers today's bureaucrats hope for a better tomorrow. The basic premise is that forcing all young adults to participate in some form of government-directed labor will yield a crop of lifelong bureaucrats. Once the kids realize they don't have to be productive and can rely on taxpayer funds for subsistence, they'll be hooked!

A commenter replying to Jeffrey's post argued that this should be a call to arms: "This is not just another statist evil. This is THE border between an annoyingly big state and outright tyranny." I prefer a more optimistic spin. I see "national service" as a signal of statist desperation. They failed to create their Utopia with government schools, government health care and government management of commerce. So now they're reduced to the gimmick of "make every teenager work for the state for a year" to justify their continued plunder. Honestly, if that's the best the political establishment can come up with, then I think the battle has turned a corner in favor of the pro-freedom, pro-market campaign.

I'd also suggest a simple response to the force labor crowd. Simply declare, "I WILL NOT SERVE." Maybe we can get a petition going.