I fully understand that there are several good objections to the idea of a free-market structure for our military's personnel management. I've outlined some of the ones I've thought of, and some work-arounds or solutions.
1.) There's no point! Reason: The free-market system is driven by the profit motive. The Army is in a non-competitive environment, fueled by taxpayer dollars, managed at government pleasure, and engaged in a business where winning and losing is determined not by market share or profits, but by wars won or lost, regional stability, and casualties. There is no profit motive; ergo, the Army cannot play free-market in this environment.
This is a valid and very dangerous (to my argument) point. That the Army doesn't have the same profit motives as other industries is indisputable. On the other hand, something motivates units to perform. Is it superiors' orders? Is it a devotion to duty? Is it individual recognition? Is it money? Is it a combination of all of the above? Businesses in the civilian world exist to make money, but individuals in those businesses also have motivations that don't necessarily exclude incentives other than money. Likewise, pretending that soldiers work only for reasons unrelated to money is ignorant. The problem at hand is creating a framework of incentives that is analogous to the civilian marketplace and applies to individuals in the army as well as units themselves. On the individual level, the marketplace model works fine; on the unit level, we run into problems of evaluation and performance. My proposed solution of using a combination of training event evaluations and real-world mission evaluations tied to monetary/budgetary compensation is far from perfect, but it's more performance-oriented than the planning system we have now.
The other side of the profit-motive coin is losses. What would happen to an under-performing army unit? Would it be decommissioned, all of its officers fired, and everyone spilled into the DoD personnel pool? Would its leadership simply be fired by the "Board" (i.e. DoD or JCS)? This is a serious issue, but I think it can be addressed by one of the latter means. There has to be an alternative to profitability to drive performance, and in this case I think it's strongly tied to leadership losing jobs after sub-optimal performance. This could be applicable down to the small-unit level as well; right now, firing someone in the Army can be a tortuous process, and units are not guaranteed replacements. Under my framework, this situation might improve because of the availability of a pool of potential "employees".
2) Doesn't this logically point to forming a mercenary army, and a loss of civilian control over the military?
Not necessarily. As long as the government doesn't outsource standing-army military functions to outside businesses-- that is, as long as the government employs people directly--then the government can exert the same control over the military that it does now. But let's look at this a bit more closely. Would a mercenary army be a bad thing? That's a whole other topic, but the main issue with that idea seems to be the concept of civilian (governmental) control over the contracting entity. Having direct governmental control is necessary to prevent disclosure of state secrets, pre-empting coups, maintaining a strong standing army in accordance with national strategy goals, and having a stick that the good ol' US of A can beat bad people with. Now, there's not a lot in that list that can't be put into a long-term contract with a Triple-Canopy type organization, but I'm not ready to make the leap of faith and separate defense organically from the government.
3) Wouldn't an open marketplace lead to bribery and corruption among job seekers and units?
I don't think so. Bribes to people would probably fall under the category of "salary" and "signing bonuses"; kickbacks to units could be a problem, but since salaries would be tracked, serious irregularities could be monitored. Past the individual's salary, there wouldn't be a lot of money to give kickbacks with, which would seriously limit the amount of kicking-back going on. Unit funds would be controlled and tracked on a DOD-audit-able system, instead of units having closed books and receiving carte-blanche funding from the gov't. If there are other possibilities
4) Is the current system so inefficient that it would merit this sort of sea-change in culture and process? That's a lot of upheaval, and we can't afford to have our pants down in this day and age.
Again, I don't have the HRC databases to show what HRC is doing with its resources and constraints. I do know that centrally planned systems analogous to HRC's are typically inefficient and wasteful, so while I can't point out systemic waste, I have no doubt that it occurs. The evidence I have as to HRC inefficiency is purely anecdotal. As to the overall benefit, overall readiness would likely improve, retention of the right people would increase, recruiting (as needed) would become easier, and we'd see better leadership in the military.
5) Wouldn't this cause a loss of the military culture needed to fight and win the nation's wars?
Doubtful. Money's a huge incentive for performance, regardless of patriotism and service motivators. To ignore its potential for encouraging maximum performance out of our service members is naive at best. The Army's been offering huge bonuses lately, in addition to all sorts of other benefit packages to keep service members in; why not call a spade a spade, and tie salary to performance?
Soldiers are motivated by many things, and money is not least among them. Maintaining military tradition, pride, patriotism, and so forth, would still be possible and encouraged by unit tradition.
6) It may be a good idea, or an idea with good points, but it'll never happen. The military's too entrenched culturally and resistant to change.
Ok, you win on that one.
Comments always welcome.
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