JEFFREY CARTER: Milton Friedman Was Right Again.

If you saw Vladimir Putin’s speech last week, you saw a person that seemed a bit desperate. His incursion into Ukraine isn’t going well.

His reaction is a great lesson in how economics is more than just supply chains, goods and money. Economics is a part of being human too. It enters into how you make human decisions in your life. Friedman and especially Gary Becker pushed economic concepts into places they had never been before and we are seeing it acted out in real time today. . . .

From the Financial Times here are two stories of many in the article I linked above. You just feel for these people.

One doctor in the city of Makhachkala said some patients had asked her to provide them with medical exemptions so they could avoid the draft. “On the day they announced mobilisation, everyone started whispering in queues, shops and on the bus,” she said. “There was already news — everyone had heard that someone they knew got drafted. Of course, people are upset.” The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities had begun drafting medical workers, including nurses, in Dagestan, prompting some of her friends and relatives to flee to Kazakhstan. “We’re going to hide and run away. We won’t open the door, go to the draft office or take the notices. We’ve talked it all over,” she said.

Lev, a 27-year-old who lives in suburban Moscow, quit his job and left home after officials put his draft notice in his mailbox. He said he had decided to avoid his registration address but stay in the country, fearful that he would be caught at the border and handed a draft notice. “Putin’s ‘special military operation’ has just destroyed my life and any chances I had,” he said. “And now he literally wants to take my life away.”

I can’t say that I blame them.

Plus, how ending the draft made the military better.