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It is well-known that if the required number of military personnel is large,
paying the soldiers their hire may involve very high taxes. While conscription
involves the inefficiency and unfairness of violating free choice, it may save
significant distortionary costs of taxation. It is not well-known that, even in
the absence of these distortionary costs, conscription may reduce the inequity
of having very low marginal utilities for soldiers if they are paid enough to
attract their voluntary services and very high marginal utilities for civilians if
they have to pay very high taxes. Having all citizens serving an equal fraction
of time may be inefficient as there are high degrees of increasing returns in
military services due to both training costs and learning by doing. Conscription
may then increase the expected utilities of all individuals.
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