Back in the early 1960s all young men eighteen years of age
and over had to register for the Draft. If you were enrolled in college and
studying what was an essential course such as science or engineering you were
assured a deferral. Thus the motivator for young men was to study these areas
as well as getting tuition paid since these areas were funded. Furthermore if
you graduated and went into defense oriented work you were again deferred. Thus
millions of talented men went to work for defense contractors getting paid
nominal salaries and none went to high tech startups, you were likely to get
drafted.
This situation I would argue had several long term results.
First, the high tech field became male dominated. Women had no Draft obligation
and could study Liberal Arts of all types. Few went into the demanding high
tech areas where failure meant immediate draft and high risks of death in
Vietnam. Secondly, the men in the high tech jobs became follow the leaders and
there were no venture funded high tech startups, unless of course you had some
Government related Defense funding. In fact these smaller high tech entities
dominated Silicon Valley. But, compensation was quite limited and IPOs were far
and few between. However the technology was ground breaking and had little to
do with today’s oftimes useless social media materials.
But secondarily it created a mal dominated high tech
environment. Women could choose with no fear of imminent death in a jungle,
unless of course they might be nurses in the military. One could conjecture
that the result of this male Draft process may have led to what we see as a
bias on high tech. There is no clear data on this conjecture however.
As the Draft was eliminated, a good thing all around since
one really wants dedicated military not enforced conscripts. One must remember
that many of the military jobs in Vietnam were support whereas in Iraq and
other recent adventures they were outsourced to civilians. Wars do not get
cheaper, they just spend the money in differing ways. Now instead of an E2 we
have some outsourced civilian in a mess hall getting paid several times more
but with no VA benefits.
The question is: as the populations in high tech is depleted
from this period, what is the length of time necessary to return the system to
a balanced state? What if we reintroduced Government funding for high tech
jobs, would that work to both expand the US base as well as enable a balanced
work force? Just some thoughts.
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