Adam Smith: the army as lottery

In my previous post, we saw how the direct relationship between risk-taking and youth — the observation that young people are especially vulnerable to wishful thinking and risk-seeking thrills — can be traced back to Book I, Chapter 10 of The Wealth of Nations. For Adam Smith, the paradigm case of this risk-taking behavior is “the readiness of the common People to enlist as soldiers, or to go to sea.” (WN, I.x.29) Smith elaborates on these two examples in the next two paragraphs (Paras. 30 & 31) of Book I, Ch. 10. First, Smith asks, why are young people so willing and eager to volunteer to join the army–not only in times of peace but even when war is on the horizon? After all, by enlisting they are putting their very lives at risk. And yet, the outbreak of hostilities is the time when the armed forces are able to recruit the most, or in the immortal words of Adam Smith, “young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war”! (WN, I.x.30) But why? According to…