Just as slaves are motivated to seek escape, potential conscripts naturally tend to avoid the disutility of involuntary servitude by draft avoidance and draft evasion. Occasionally this avoidance results in considerable costs, as when individuals seek to disqualify themselves from the draft by inflicting bodily harm upon themselves. (From an altruistic viewpoint, to choose freedom over slavery in this manner is to reveal an exceptionally low moral character, beneath even the compassion of altruists.) The policy also relegates otherwise law-abiding citizens to the new role of outlaws or fugitives. Although it is customary to rail at draft avoidance or evasion as "unpatriotic," it should be regarded as the inevitable praxeological result of the fundamental conflict of values engendered by involuntary servitude.

In order to enforce loyalty, it is necessary to discourage intelligence and thinking on the part of conscripts, reducing them to a machine-like level of absolute obedience. (A greater degree of mental independence may be asked of officers who enlisted voluntarily, whose role is somewhat analogous to the overseer of slaves.) While such robot-like behavior had considerable military value in wars of the past, it is peculiarly inappropriate to modern warfare, where such tasks can increasingly be executed by true robots or computer-guided machinery. The Gulf War conflict illustrated vividly the helplessness of a conventional army in the face of a force equipped by computers and high technology, controlled largely by intelligent trained professionals. The military value of such professionals continues to rise as the technology becomes ever more sophisticated, while the kind of low-skilled labor that conscription can provide plays an ever less significant role.