Private defense agency
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A private defense agency (PDA) is a conceptualized agency that provides personal protection and military defense services voluntarily through the free market. A PDA is not a private contractor of the state and is not subsidised in any way through taxation or immunities, nor does it rely on conscription and other involuntary methods.
As proponents of mutualist economic theory, Benjamin Tucker[1] and Gustave de Molinari first explicitly proposed for-profit private defense agencies. The concept later was advanced and expanded upon by anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians who consider the state to be illegitimate and therefore believe defense is something that individuals should provide or decide for themselves. The Mises Institute published a book of essays entitled The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production.[2] Murray N. Rothbard in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto and David D. Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom expand substantially on the idea. Both hold that a PDA would be part of a privatized system of law, police, courts, insurance companies and arbitration agencies responsible for dealing with contractual disputes and tort damages, as from assault, burglary or pollution.[3] This concept is similar to Polycentric law. Within economics, discussion of the concept largely has been confined to the Austrian School, as in Hans Hoppe's article "The Private Production of Defense" published by the Mises Institute.[4]
These authors emphasize that PDAs have different motives than existing statist defense agencies. Their survival depends on quality of service leading to a wide customer base, rather than the ability to extract funds via the force of law, as is true of states. Customers and markets would thus dictate that PDAs minimize offensive tendencies and militarization in favor of a pure defense. Anarcho-capitalists believe such privatization and decentralization of defense would eliminate the credibility of, and popular support for, the state.
As a private firm offering individually determined defense, the PDA provides an anarcho-capitalist model for how an entirely private defense would work in practice. Anarcho-capitalists such as Juan L. Madrigal argue that the need for large-scale defense is minimized in direct inverse proportion to the extent of domestic control by the state. Since the greater number of proprietors makes surrender more costly to an aggressor than a relatively authoritarian region, vulnerability to attack is less likely. Furthermore, since individuals minding their own business pose little threat to neighboring regions, official or ideological justification by those neighbors for attacking them is also proportionately diminished.[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin,The Relation of the State to the Individual, 1890; Tucker, Benjamin, Liberty and Taxation.
- ^ The Mises Review (Vol. 10, No. 1; Spring 2004) A summary is given in a review by David Gordon [1].
- ^ Murary N. Rothbard, "Society without a State", originally published in the The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975; David Friedman, Police, Courts, and Laws---on the Market, David Friedman home page.
- ^ Hans Hoppe, "The Private Production of Defense", Journal of Libertarian Studies, undated.
- ^ J.L.Madrigal, "anarcho-capitalism: principles of civilization - elements of security"
