Defense as a Private Good in a Competitive Order
Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to provide a comprehensive demonstration that, contrary to popular opinion, there is nothing inherent in defense that makes it belong to the category of common goods, thus indicating that its effective provision does not require the existence of a territorial monopoly of force, and could be satisfactorily delivered in a purely market-based system. The above analysis implies that within a contractual, competitive, and purely voluntary social order this task could be accomplished even with respect to protection goods that affect wide geographical areas, while avoiding the problem of agency infighting.