It's not 'giving back' it's taking away

The public reaction to the scrapping of national service was quite muted. In fact, some politicians lauded the removal of an awkward institutional remnant of Germany’s Cold War defense strategy. Major newspapers such as Die Zeit highlighted the fact that the civil service option had the downside of delaying young men’s entry into the regular labor force. Moreover, it was seen to distort the market for health care and childcare by forcing young men into in these sectors for artificially low pay. It could be said that, after several decades of inertia, it eventually becomes all but obvious that the economic cost to the young men and society as a whole greatly exceeded the price of the small stipend they received and the service they rendered in return.

Imagine my consternation, then, when Aaron Applbaum proposed a somewhat similar scheme in his column on Monday. He argued for institutionalizing a “community service regimen” in the United States that would use financial and moral persuasion to encourage young people to interrupt their studies for a year in favor of “giving back” through activities such as “mentor[ing] young children, or car[ing] for the sick.” Though Applbaum stresses the voluntary nature of such service, he admits that “ideally, this action would create a norm.” However, this norm might eventually have the same harmful consequences as a requirement.

Let me start with a reductio ad absurdum: If, as Applbaum argues, it is true that “the more people who help, the more people who are helped,” wouldn’t a society where, let’s say, 90 percent of all adults would do “community service” for little money, instead of their usual jobs, be a paradise? Only if we take the biblical lack of clothing and nothing but an apple to eat as the standard might the answer be yes. In fact, every productive activity ceases to be worthwhile if its execution requires giving up something even more highly valued. As failed economic experiments such as socialist East Germany have shown, everyone doing something that the government deems worthy does not mean that everyone is doing well.

In a free economy, everyone always has the option of paying someone — trained or not — to mentor their children or care for the sick. Basic economics dictate that prices for these services and wages for those providing them will rise in accordance with demand. If people decide not to pay for these services themselves, there seems to be no a priori reason why the government should extract money by legal force or moral persuasion from other citizens.

Of course, this issue is politically more complex because there are redistributional concerns involved: Perhaps those in need simply do not have the means to afford the services or are too ignorant to see their long-term benefits. Nonetheless, the benefits of tricking a 17-year-old high school graduate or an older college graduate into accepting below-market wages for a one year “service” project are unclear. If there is no way that, if handed the appropriate sums, anyone would pay for their activities through the regular labor market, then there is no reason for society to forgo another job in favor of these charitable activities. This criticism applies whether or not the program is optional, so long as it uses incentives to encourage community service.

The comparison to a year’s community service between schooling is the expected average productivity later in life — benefits of which are irrevocably lost if an individual spends a year mentoring children or caring for the sick instead of doing things in which he or she has a comparative advantage. After all, one of the reasons for our high standards of living are the benefits from specialization: An urge to do things that are “good” instead of things that one is uniquely “good at” reduces everyone’s quality of life.

Consequently, this proposal would have an explicit monetary cost, a high implicit opportunity cost and economy distorting effects with only small benefits. Far from supporting a scheme the likes of which countries such as Germany are glad to abandon, the University should take a strong stance against well-meaning intents to institutionalize what in effect amounts to “taking away” — not “giving back.”

Gregor Schubert is an economics major from Leipzig, Germany. He may be reached at gregors@princeton.edu.