In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, wealthy private individuals substantially supported the military, with a particular wealthy men buying stuff for a particular regiment or particular fort.

Noblemen paid high prices for military commands, and these posts were no sinecure. You got the obligation to substantially supply the logistics for your men, the duty to obey stupid orders that would very likely lead to your death, the duty to lead your men from in front while wearing a costume designed to make you particularly conspicuous, and the duty to engage in honorable personal combat, man to man, with your opposite number who was also leading his troops from in front.

A vestige of this tradition remains in that every English prince has been sent to war and has placed himself very much in harms

way.

It seems obvious to me that a soldier being led by a member of the ruling class who is soaking up the bullets from in front is a lot more likely to be loyal and brave than a soldier sent into battle by distant rulers safely in Washington who despise him as a sexist homophobic racist murderer, that a soldier who sees his commander, a member of the ruling classes, fighting right in front of him, is reflexively likely to fight.

So what made very large numbers of rich and powerful people personally sacrifice for the military? They must have gotten something out of it, and at what they were paying, it was not the salary.

Presumably they got social status, which could be cashed in for wealth and power. This however requires that we award social status for activities that are actually constructive and support society and order, and that we then allow social status to be cashed in. Which means we have to make sure that social status is not awarded for superior holiness – we have to hang Greenpeace from the yardarm when they engage in piracy on the high seas, and send William Wilberforce to west indies as a slave to cut sugarcane in punishment for apostasy.

I understand how eighteenth century patriarchy worked, how good behavior was socially and coercively enforced on women.

But I don’t understand how private and individual support of the military by wealthy and or aristocratic males was motivated. This is a lost social technology.

To make it work, have to bestow status on those worthy, and reward earned status with money and power.

The system eventually failed because the holy claimed higher status than that horribly brutal racist sexist homophobic baby eating military. The attacks on the military began with synthetic moral outrage at the British army’s successful and heroic measures to cut Russian logistics in the Crimean war, in which the courage and victory of officers and men should have covered them with glory, and have escalated ever since, with ever more severe efforts to denigrate and disadvantage soldiers. What was heroism before the Crimean war has become baby eating ever since.

In place of crediting heroes with heroism, they credited whores like Florence Nightingale with heroism. (I assume she was a whore because most of the female camp followers, and most of the camp followers were female, worked vertically by day and horizontally by night. Also, when she was hot, she had many connections with many wealthy men, but never married. When a young cute girl spends a lot of time hanging out with a succession of old rich guys ….)