Soldiers in this army pay for their own boots, their own uniforms, their own stripes, their own guns, their own ammo, their own communication devices, their own tanks, their own rocket launchers, their own aircraft, their own weapons of mass destruction.
This applies to all ranks.
Make war cost effective now!
(hoping the side effect will be nobody will join any armies and war becomes outdated)-- zeno, Jun 08 2007 Albrecht, http://rubens.anu.e...rints/0012/1235.JPGYou're fired. [pertinax, Jun 08 2007] Historically, this is how the officer corps was manned.-- nuclear hobo, Jun 08 2007 what nuclear_hobo said
Also, there are other historical lessons learnable here; where this idea is implemented, the nexus of wealth and political power becomes even closer than it already is - really bad news for democracy. There's a beautifully simple illustration of this in Classical Greece.
In most of the city states of southern Greece, warfare was dominated by heavy infantry and, what do you know? Political enfranchisement was generally limited to those men who had enough money to equip themselves with heavy infantry kit - up to a few thousand men in each city.
In Thessaly, the flatter terrain increased the military importance of cavalry and, guess what? Political rights were limited to the much smaller class of aristocrats who could maintain a stable of horses.
In Athens and several of the islands, there was (for a while at least) a sort of democracy. Why? Partly because those cities depended on sea power, and sea power depended on low-class citizen oarsmen.
This is not a theory that I've made up - it was common currency in political debates at the time.
Basically, [zeno], what you're proposing is that Dubya's friends in Texas will actually own all the UAVs, helicopter gunships and nukes, regardless of who's elected to government in Washington. Are you sure that's a good thing?-- pertinax, Jun 08 2007 I will always vote for war to be outdated, I don't care how they figure out a way...-- xandram, Jun 08 2007 Oh sigh, thank you for that lesson [pertinax] you and the lt are right I suppose.-- zeno, Jun 08 2007 Google "Blackwater". We already have mercenary armys in the field.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jun 08 2007 Ah yes, and that brings a whole other problem when you want to terminate their contracts. See link.-- pertinax, Jun 08 2007 Does this apply for the navy too? Know where I can get a good deal on a like-new aircraft carrier with good mileage left in the reactors?-- Moonguy, Jun 13 2008 baked... e-bay-- FlyingToaster, Jun 13 2008 War used to work quite well like that. And wait...if you're buying your own bullets, you're probably going to want to get some use out of them.-- plasticspoon, Mar 06 2009 //you're probably going to want to get some use out of them//shelf life aside, not really, no.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 06 2009 random, halfbakery