Reading Geoffrey’s retrospective on 2006, I felt it necessary to write my own, as if I must articulate to myself the lessons it taught me in order to truly internalize them, now that the wheel of time has come full circle.

At the beginning of the year I was still in the army. They say that serving in the military turns boys into men. Yet in so many ways it was like being frozen in time, like a rat running in a wheel going nowhere fast. Geoffrey, Daniel, Shengquan, Vishal and I fought so hard against the bureaucracy to pursue our own projects, to go abroad for all our conferences and exchanges, to lead some semblance of a normal life. We could have accomplished so much more. I was never truly myself in the army, always pretending to be someone else entirely just so I could fit in the culture – they bitterly resented anyone who was going to university, let alone an ivy league school. The only times I could be myself were in the illicit hours of intellectual conversation with Chris on his monthly visit to the military library (my favorite hiding place, telling my officers I was ‘doing research’), or talking to Zaki (my only friend in camp) on the bus home. I bided my time, waiting for it to be over.

The wheel of time began to turn again once I was free of the army, and life started anew. I remember the evenings mixing cocktails and watching k-dramas at Daniel’s place, listening to jazz at Vishal’s parties, and the endless political discussions with Jiekai and Gabriel’s little dissident group at Wutien’s apartment. There was always this sense of time running out during our weekly gatherings, as it drew nearer to the day when we would have to part ways: most going East, some flying West. We prepared for the inevitable goodbye in different ways: Geoffrey and I went on the same tour of the city every time our friends from abroad came to visit, the same ferry rides down the river, the same touristy destinations like little India, Sentosa and the night safari – but it was never boring, not only because it was with friends, but also because we knew that it would be the last time we would see Singapore in a long while.

Having lost two years of my life, I was in a hurry to make up for lost time, and unlike my other friends who went traveling across Europe or Asia on their soul-searching journeys (that’s you Nicol, Matt), I chose to get a head start on the corporate rat race with a consulting firm, which was certainly a whole new experience: the endless days of 10-K reports, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, the crazy lunch-hour rush to get seats at the financial district food courts, and the long bus rides home with Chris who worked at the law firm across the street. Though I got a lot out of the internship in terms of experience, networks and skills, I missed out on one of the last opportunities to enjoy what remains of my youth and grow as a person. Perhaps I should have had the courage to leave the material world behind on a quest to find out what I truly want out of life.

And then I came to Columbia, where I am living the long-awaited dream, surrounded by opportunities and free to pursue them. The wheel of time accelerated – my days are always so eventful that my problem is choosing which activity to go for. In my first semester, I’ve shook hands with a Burmese rebel leader, listened to Vaclav Havel talk about democracy, sat through a seminar on ‘manliness’ (worst talk ever), argued with a ‘Beyondist’, seen a microfinance presentation on the top floor of Deutsche Bank, got lost in Harlem trying to apply for an SSN, got completely soaked at the Macy’s parade, ice-skated (or at least tried to) at Bryant Park, doused flaming cheese with lemons at Symposium, had tequila shots in the library, seen an off-off-Broadway musical entirely in Korean, shopped from midnight to dawn at Woodbury Common’s post-thanksgiving sale, crooned Jay Chou karaoke with the bankers, won the ticket lottery for a musical, and stayed up all night in a broadcast studio just listening to jazz with a DJ. Getting into Columbia was the best thing that ever happened to me, and every day I am thankful that I chose to come here instead of where Geoffrey goes to.

For 2007 I am resolved to live life to the fullest. My plans in terms of academic work and career aspirations have not changed since they were drawn out a while ago: get a research assistant job and start working on a long-term project, forge relationships with key mentors, fill the summer with travel, internships and summer programs, and prepare for the fall recruiting season. Yet these are only one aspect of my goals in life. My resolution for 2007 is therefore to not allow my schooling to get in the way of my real education, and better balance my work priorities with developing all the other aspects of the ideal man I want to be. To be thankful for all that I have, to find more time in my life for God, to strive every day to become a better person. This will present a whole different set of challenges: How do I become more caring, more generous, more optimistic? How do I stop myself from being caught up in the whole investment banking/strategy consulting tournament? How do I break past the limits of my comfort zone and be more open to new experiences? One key problem is that these goals are not easy to quantify and measure, so it’s difficult to gauge my progress, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. I want 2007 to be a year of accomplishment and achievement, not only on a professional but also a personal level, and I am determined to make it happen. The wheel of time is going ever forward, and I with it. There is no turning back.

Beginning with the premises that conscription is just as a civic responsibility in support of the order that protects civil rights, and that all citizens enjoy equal rights, it follows that conscription must be universal and equal in order to be just. Equal sacrifice for equal rights. Call it the law of equivalent exchange, if you will. (apologies to Fullmetal Alchemist/Hagane no Renkinjutsushi)

In the real world we often diverge from this ideal form, as conscription is almost never strictly universal systemically (lotteries, male-only, exemptions, deferrals etc). But in many cases it is inclusive enough to approximate universality. How about equality then?

Most conscription systems draft citizens for specific durations – the time served by all citizens is generally equal. However, time is a tricky measure of sacrifice… An objective valuation of productivity (however quantified, opportunity cost or ‘defence value’ etc) differentials would conclude that the value of the time differs. For the same amount of time, high-productivity individuals contribute far more than low-productivity individuals, and conscription in this sense is productivity-inequitable. It is a progressive ‘tax-incidence’ on productivity, with the incentive effects that a progressive incidence causes. If productivity is endogenously determined by innate capacity and discretionary effort, disincentives to possessing high productivity would lead high capacity individuals to either opt out or reduce discretionary effort. It would be either a brain-drain or a race to the bottom, both suboptimal outcomes.

(This assumes that productivity valuation is conceptually sound – I suspect that efforts to value opportunity cost would not only have to include the market value of civilian income foregone but also the discounted returns on human capital investment foregone and other such projections of counterfactuals. If we are to ignore conventional accounting of opportunity cost for a specific value to defence efforts, then we have the pricing problem. This also assumes that valuation is practically possible – informational asymmetries are huge and the closest indicators of market value like income statements are poor proxies)

However, what if conscription was value-equitable? Instead of an equal duration of service, citizens must contribute a flat rate of X value. High productivity individuals who contribute more value thus serve a shorter period of time. Disincentives are flipped: Discretionary effort and productivity will increase. Valuation in terms of market value would help retain high capacity individuals, and raise standards all around. Valuations in terms of ‘defence’ value, depending on how prices are derived, would incentivize individuals to become better soldiers and take on greater responsibilities. In other words, there are potentially significant gains from liberalizing conscription towards a more market-based system of value-equitability.

[Edit] Just to reply to some comments on the post. Caveats – its a model of human behavior, and the model like any other model is abstracted and simplified for discursive purposes. So you’re right, there is a lot of subjectivity in value, there are multiple incentives and disincentives at work (and the net effect will differ), people aren’t hyperrational, there are other relevant concerns, the model does not explicitly factor in training time. Agreed that I’ve conflated consistency with ideals and system efficiency, two separate issues. Admittedly this wasn’t rigorously thought through – its a blog post and part of a evolving process.

I think the main point is that if differentials exist in productivity (regardless of how it is objectively derived and regardless of distinctions between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ forms) but are not accounted for, equity is not achieved. Also, (dis)incentives come into play, and on net the system will trend towards a certain outcome.

1. Should Melvyn Tan be punished in an equal fashion as any other draft dodger in Singapore, regardless of his individual achievements and international standing?
1b. OR, if Melvyn Tan was indeed equally punished, is the sentence for this crime too light?
1c. AND, why is there not enough public condemnation of the man?
2. Should Melvyn Tan be punished for draft dodging at all, when he has renounced citizenship, not lived in Singapore since the age of 12 and never returned since (until now)?
3. Should draft dodgers be punished in this fashion at all, and is our system of conscription just?

There is a huge public outcry in the media over first issue, about the perceived special treatment of elites, which Palinurus half-jokingly suggested might be due to egalitarian-fetishist hatred of elites/fear of genius and a celebration of mediocrity mentality. Or, a vindictive desire that others must suffer as much as they have. Regardless of the non-rational/emotional nature of this issue, the other issues of whether Melvyn should be tried for this particular crime, given his somewhat extenuating circumstances, and of the catch-22 nature of citizenship/conscription in Singapore, only tend to come up in discussions on Young Republic or in camp.

What happens then is that people conflate the issues and the answer for one overrides the answers for others. They conflate justice with consistency in punishment and perversely, end up advocating equal injustice. The media frames the first issue and people naturally say ‘yes’, but frame the other issues and the answer becomes ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ – but nobody sees the separate issues.

1. Should Nguyen Tuong Van be sentenced and hanged in a manner consistent with Singapore law?
1b. regardless of his extenuating circumstances?
1c. regardless of the appeals of the international community?
2. Is the death penalty for capital crimes justifiable?
3. If so, does drug trafficking constitute a capital crime? OR, is our mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking policy just?

The first issue is about the rule of law and consistency, and to a certain extent, some nationalist sentiment over sovereignty. The public tends to agree with the government’s position on consistent sentencing and independence from foreign pressure, but doesn’t consider whether the sentence in question is just. The second issue is a perennial debate, and the third issue based on a particular position on the second. The process of conflating issues and selective framing is similar. Personally, I’m torn between being consistent with libertarian positions, and a pragmatist ‘public-choice school’ position on the second and third issues – which makes the whole business uncertain, and I wonder if my certainty over the first issue is warranted.

On another note, things like this putative boycott of Singapore goods and services, and this denial of service, seem counterproductive and plain dumb. It’s like they never learn from history, and it doesn’t help change public sentiment here either.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Or is it? Rand didn’t think so. Libertarians in general insist on consistency to principles.

Now, Chris makes an observation about Melvyn Tan, the draft-dodging pianist who comes back a national hero:

Our entire legal system is based not on mercy, but on a strict conception of justice. But, when a Singaporean judge allows a person like Mr Tan to slip through the cracks because you want to show mercy, a most un-Singaporean virtue, you break that strict conception of justice. By failing to punish this law-breaker, you will encourage many more.

Mr Tan’s case will set a legal precedent: Future draft-dodgers may return to Singapore unscathed, provided they become rich and famous. And if you happen to be able to play a musical instrument as well as Mr Tan, then you need not do NS, because you’ve already “done your duty”.

At first, I wondered if Chris had turned into one of those people I swore I would never become – someone who would defend conscription, having served through it and not wanting to devalue his legitimate-or-otherwise sacrifice (and there are quite a few around, just read some of the Young Republic posts on conscription). A fallacy of sunk costs undermining personal integrity. The same way that some officers and specialists rationalize punishing their subordinates in a perverse sense of ‘tradition’ – buying into the very system they suffered under.

After all, if you read the rest of Chris’ posts and mine, you would know that he and I generally concur that conscription in Singapore is unjust. One would expect us to celebrate the flexibility of the government in considering his service to the nation, in welcoming the market principles of specialization that let Melvyn Tan contribute where he can contribute best. One would expect us to respect a man who could stick to his principles and exercise labor mobility, paying the costs of draft dodging – exile to a foreign land. One would expect us to see this as an incremental step towards the dissolving of a system we hate. One would expect us to be happy. All these would be consistent.

Yet his response is also consistent with our position (at least my position) that conscription is just in principle, but often lacking in its practice. We accept conscription as a necessary evil, a civic responsibility that pays for our civil rights, and we look back to Athenian democracy and citizen soldiering as a model. At the same time, we look at the practice of the modern draft, and the nature of military organizations and the state, and see plenty of injustice. We want our conscription to meet the ideals of universality, minimality, transparency etc – in this perspective, it is not inconsistent for us to demand system integrity in universal conscription, that Melvyn Tan must be punished the same way any draft dodger would – that we make equal sacrifices for equal rights.

So I wonder which is more consistent as a libertarian.

After a difficult day fighting bureaucratic inertia, incompetence, ingratitude and military malice, it becomes even harder to take what little pride there is in communitarian servitude. How pleasing then to come home to read on Tacitus about Russell Kirk on the draft:

The claims of enthusiasts for conscription are numerous. They may be consolidated under three heads: conscription builds character, it improves health, it educates youth to play its part in the world. The writer, who has been on the inside of conscription looking out, has not found himself ennobled, strengthened, or educated thereby.

It has always irked me whenever someone attempts to identify the positive aspects of my condition as such, regardless of how good their intentions are. Because it obfuscates the main purpose of conscription, it conflates the military argument with the social and thus perpetuates a lack of critical thought on the former.

Yet what is truly irrational about this line of argument is its omission of comparison to the next best alternative ie opportunity cost. A statement that conscription has been beneficial because I am now ‘more mature’ lacks a comparison to how mature I might have become in any other context, not to mention its weak causal link. Nor whether I have actually become more mature given the particularly perverse incentives in military life towards evading responsibility, punishment of independent thought and action, and lack of autonomy. Conscription delenda est.