There is a common debate between ACers and statists over protection in AnarchoCapitalism. It typically goes as follows.
Statist-With no government, there will be no police and no one to stop me from violating your property rights.
AC- Not true, there is a demand for protection of property and a way to supply protection in a free market. Private Security companies would develop.
Statist- Yeah, and then the biggest and most powerful security company will just blow up all it's competitors and then game over man, back comes the state, and it'll probably be a tyrannical dictatorship.
The Statist forgets one thing though. That is that wars are expensive, very expensive. One line that Riddick would use is "What do you think the ROI is on waging war?" . Think about it. Think about all the money we as taxpayers have paid for the war in Iraq. Do you think we've made a profit off of that?
The government is projected to spend over
$300 billion on the war in Iraq by the 30th of this month (last revised in August, source found
here ). And we still have very little control over the area. How many people do you know (besides that conniving bastard Bill Gates, just waiting for AC society to come about) can afford that? How many companies could amass enough money through voluntary transactions to be able to field a military to create a state?
No, war is a product of the state. The state has a monopoly on both (a) security/military and (b) acceptable theft. Using these means, those that have power in the government can profit from it (for example, Cheney and Halliburton) even though it is not a profitable endeveur for the investors (taxpayers). War profitteering is made by a very very small minority (much less the 1%) of those paying for a war.
Agree? Disagree? Why or why not?