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matt comments on Bayesians vs. Barbarians - Less Wrong
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What about just paying them to fight? You can have an auction of sorts to set the price, but in the end they'd select themselves. You could still use the courage enhancing drugs and shoot those who try to breach the contract.
One might respond "no amount of (positive) money could convince me to fight a war", but what about at some negative amount? After all, everyone else has to pay for the soldiers.
That "auction of sorts" would be the normal market mechanism, right? There are death rates that vary between professions now, with risks priced into the prevailing market wage for those professions. I don't see why soldiery should be different.
Well, yeah, nothing special. It's just that the government doesn't usually try to use smart mechanisms in deciding what to pay people (soldiers) so unless we're talking about a private army, then you gotta specify that you pay them right.
That's why a contractor in Iraq today makes about $200,000/yr for a job that would pay $70,000/yr in the US. (A soldier makes, I think, a median of something like $40,000/yr.)