Mark Kleiman writes, as part of his pragmatic argument against the government’s hiring contract security services:
The private firms pay better than the regular military, and are using the money they get from public contracts to bid away experienced soldiers, leaving the Army short of skilled bodies. Why should we compete with ourselves in that way? Recall that the skills that ex-Seals and Delta Force grads sell to the private outfits were acquired at public expense.
Mark has a point, but I wonder how far it goes. As I understand it, many Air Force pilots get better-paying jobs with the airlines when they leave the service. They’re selling to private airlines skills that were acquired at public expense. Some of them might leave the service earlier because of these job opportunities.
Should we be worried about that? Should we try to keep the airlines from hiring them away? I realize the situation isn’t completely analogous — the government generally doesn’t do much hiring of private airlines for military transport (though I vaguely recall that this is sometimes done). But still, the airlines are competing with the Air Force for skilled pilots, and I’m sure airlines get various government benefits of one sort or another.
One possible answer might be that, yes, we should be worried about this. Another, though, is that the military recruits people partly by promising to teach them various skills that will help them get a good job. When potential soldiers consider the possibility of them being employed as airline pilots, or even as private security people — or when they hear about ex-soldiers making good money in some field — they might be more likely to sign up. So there might be some accelerated loss of good people at the end of their enlistment (and remember that they’ve done the term of duty that they promised to the government), but a gain of good people at the beginning.
I’m not sure whether this analysis is right; and in any event, there may be other problems with contracting to well-paid private security people, ex-soldiers or not (such as possible morale problems among military members who see others working alongside them and getting paid much better money). I just don’t think that “we don’t want our soldiers to get such good jobs that they don’t reenlist” response is necessarily the correct one.
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