From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 11:34:59 MST
On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 11:39, Andrew Clough wrote:
> >### Reading the "Machinery of freedom" it seems to me that David
> >Friedman wasn't able to come up with a plausible anarchist solution to
> >the problem of defense against organized external aggression, and he
> >admits it.
> >
> >Rafal
>
>
> Perhaps you could get something workable if the private security companies
> gave rebates to people who joined their "national guard" units? I
> certainly wouldn't want to trust a company that couldn't protect me from
> even an invasion by Albania. Public mutual defense pacts betwen providers
> would help if a bigger fish decided to invade.
### Yes, this is correct, although you would still have the free-rider
problem - people who would sign up with PPO's which had no mutual
defense contracts, and therefore would be cheaper. The other PPO's would
need to maintain extra forces, verify to each other and to their
customers that the forces really exist and are battle-worthy, and this
would impose additional direct and transaction costs. Making sure that
your combined PPO army is any good would be pretty tricky without an
occasional war, too.
One partial solution is for the PPO's to band together to destroy
competitors unwilling to participate in the general defense fund (but
this would make them somewhat similar to a territorial state), and to
pass the names of individuals without PPO contracts to criminals (who
would gleefully prey on them, discouraging from free-riding). As a
result you would still have the competition that makes capitalism work,
since users would choose the best of the PPO's capable of participating
in the general defense fund (the super-PPO), and the monopolist part of
the system would be reduced to only one aspect of the society. But it
wouldn't quite be anarchocapitalism anymore.
--------------------------
>
> I'm not an anarcho-capitalist myself, but I'm pretty sympathetic to the
> idea - and thinking of how it could work is just plain fun.
### Yes!
Rafal
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