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Let’s Randomize America! | The New Yorker

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A thought experiment in social reshuffling.

Save this story Save this story For three decades, through three wars, the U.S. military draft was directed by Lewis B. Hershey, a general in the Army. Hershey established the first local draft board in 1941; eventually, there would be four thousand of them. These “little groups of neighbors,” as he described them, were charged with determining who should serve in the armed forces. This was a heavy responsibility. During Hershey’s tenure, the U.S. conscripted more than fourteen and a half million men, and hundreds of thousands of them died. The boards, which adjudicated claims for reclassifica

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