Military Meritocracy

[JW Frogen]

Civilians often talk about how they could not stand the regimentation of military life, but having worked for years in both the military and civilian worlds I can say that there is a greater deal of opportunity and freedom in the military.

Forget the travel, or ability to witness historical events first hand, and leaving behind the head on philosophical confrontation about the meaning of life one is confronted with when they face the possibility (not theory) of death head no, the spiritual and intellectual freedom that comes from surviving, indeed mentally triumphing over that fear, I am actually referring to the routine, more hum drum way of military life.

Civilian routines are grounded in a simular aura of group think and conformatiy to organisational ethos, but without the ridged adherence to rights as well as responsibilities, with more empathise on arbitrary back slapping, and being one of the boys.

Where as military life is grounded on performance, testing, and rock solid rules governing how one moves up the hierarchy. An almost anceint Spartan equality for those intiated past the rituals of basic training.

Military life requires organization, needs hierarchies, demands meritocracy, and insists upon delegation of authority. (This last aspect of military life, the amount of authority delegated, often even on life and death decisions maybe be the hardest aspect of military life for a civilian to understand. No where can one obtain more responsibility and authority quicker than by displaying talent in the military.) This is an intricate, time-tested system replete with checks and balances that no one person can over-ride (not even a President.)

And because in the end, military performance is tested in the Darwinian hot house of war those who can not perform, no matter how liked by superiors or amendable to co-workers, will be weeded out. (History is replete with examples of this, from the rise of drunk, but effective General Grant, to the recent rise of General Patraues, whose military strategy in Iraq went directly counter to the dominant Rumsfeld policy.)

So I believe if one is willing to commit to the discipline of military life, they will find themselves in the long term not only offered with more adventure and travel (and educational opportunities) than the average civilian, but in a more egalitarian meritocracy that recognises individual merit.

The democratic military may be the closest thing to utopia humans will ever get.

[freediver]

The military is less of a meritocracy than a civilian free market, and totally lacks all the other benefits, which most people consider more important.

[JW Frogen]

The main organisational engine for the so called free market is the corporation or business, I do not think most of those are more merocratic than the military for the reasons I already mentioned. Work for a family business as not a member of the family, or a corporation as one who challenges corporate orthodoxy and does not back slap with the boys.

The military has formal procedures to challenge orthodoxy, to advance and forged in conflict cares about one thing and one thing only, success.

Also there are many benefits one gets in the military they do not in civilian life. Far more travel (often quite nice, for instance I lived in London for six years, Westminster London!)

Far more different kinds of occupational training (my resume' is about 10 freaken pages long, when I went to a civilian employment agency they said I would have to cut it way down as no civilian employer would believe I have done that many different types of jobs.)

Subsidised, even free University education. Free health care. All sorts of home loans and subsidised insurance, and a host of other benefits, even after leaving.

[freediver]

The fact alone that you need a bureaucracy to support the alleged meritocracy should indicate that it is a weaker meritocracy than the free market. There is only one military in a country. If people don't accept your ideas you cannot simply go out and set up your own military. You can in a free market place. Competition, not paperwork, is the only guarantee of meritocracy. A military bureaucracy is not magically better than any other, regardless of the 'policies and procedures' in place.

[JW Frogen]

Most business have bureaucracies, or dominance hiarchies, and of course all Corporations. These are the egines of the free market. To succeed in any of these one must play the particular beaurcratic rules of that particular organization, but would not necessarily be provided with the equal opportunity and benefits that military bureaucracy provides everyone.

And because the gravity of any business is not where near as important as the military (nations, business, corporations, markets can perish without military protection) the military has to promote success for it’s own sake over more prosaic concerns.

So that a lifetime in the military not only offers more opportunity, it offers more freedom for self-fulfillment.

[freediver]

Bureaucracies are not the engines of the free market. It works despite them, not because of them. It is the intense competition between businesses that prevent the bureaucracies from doing what centralised government control (eg Communist Russia) does to trade. Failure of bureaucratically controlled trade can kill just as many people as a military failure. The one thing a bureaucracy is good at is shifting the blame to some other cause. That's what policies and procedures are for.

[JW Frogen]

Humans are primates, most primates are subject to dominance hierarchies, and certainly humans are.

Either in the competition of the free market, or the real competition of war and peace.

The difference is because the military is so often about life and death, those that rise in the hierarchy are the best and the brightest rather than the kiss ass and the guy who married the bosses daughter.

[AiA in Atlanta]

It isn't the regimentation of the military that would bother me but the bad haircuts.

[JW Frogen]

I can not defend the haircuts.

I could give a good argument for the shower sodomy however.