Is it possible to counter the free rider argument in regards to military protection without bringing up private defense contractors?
How do private defense contractors solve the problem?
If they choose not to purchase protection then they won’t have said protection.
Yes.
The military bureaucrats, generals, recruiters, pro-war politicians, etc. are the ones who are free riders - they have never fought back or repelled an invading army that was in our country. Even our soldiers don’t do this.
Now if the marines were targetting DEA/FBI/CIA/DHS/IRS operations, then I might say they were actually risking themselves to protect our freedoms. Until then, nope. They’re just part of the problem.
Let me provide a little more context of what I am asking. Somebody says we are all obligated to pay taxes because of the miltary. Anyone who does not pay taxes is a free rider. They get the protection of the military without paying for it. Is there any way to counter this without saying “well if we had a private military we could solve this problem.” From what I’ve been able to dig up so far, all I can say is “who cares, free riders don’t harm anyone and they didn’t ask for the protection.”
@Prime: I think that, in the limit, the answer to your question is, simply, no. I think your best bet is to read this fairly short book. Once finished, you should be well-equipped to tackle any counter-arguments as well as raise a positive argument for the case of private security. I know it’s a bit daunting to be told “read the book!” however, on this topic, there isn’t really any short-cut as the rat’s nest of myths, lies, distortions, fabrications, fallacies and downright gobbledy-gook is insuperable. The need for a standing army is the single most propagandized point in the entirety of public discourse.
Clayton -
Prime,
I think that you underestimate both the nature and seriousness of the free rider problem in this instance. The whole problem with public defense is that it’s a public good, at least from the point of view from military defense (law is a bit of a different issue). If force X is invading a city then the military can’t say “Okay, we defend everything in the city except free rider house. The enemy can invade and bomb the s*** out of that house, but no one else’s”. You can’t realistically stop the free rider from getting defense unless you don’t provide it at all if he doesn’t pay, which is an insane and untenable idea upon any sort of scale.
This might all be fine in the way that you describe except for a very major problem: Everyone has an incentive to be a free rider. If your marginal contribution to defense means nothing, or very little, then you don’t have an incentive to provide for defense. Now you can argue the case of whether or not your marginal contribution does matter, and this depends in part upon context, but the whole problem is that with the free rider problem in effect, a situation could well develop where there is no defense, contractor or otherwise, at all.
You make a good point. Essentially, there is no way to prevent a free rider without forcible taxation. The only other way to argue this is to say who cares.
Positive externalities have their own set of benefits. And lets just say that the kind of people we want involved in private security are the kind of people who dont think its a bad thing that, when 40% of businesses in a given area hire their services, crime decreases to such an extent that the other 60% dont need to hire them.
I don’t think the concern here is for the security firm that isn’t getting paid by the 60%. The concern is for the 40% who are paying more than they otherwise would have for protection if the other 60% would have chipped in.
That is a fallacy I like to call “inappropriate basis for comparison.” they’re also paying a lot more than they would pay if the justice league lived in that town. They are paying a lot less than they would pay in the midst of a klingon invasion. In the event of widespread turmoil, their firms and property will be protected while the other 60% are not. That is what they are paying for.
I will refer you to what Neodoxy just said in case you didn’t read it:
“If force X is invading a city then the military can’t say “Okay, we defend everything in the city except free rider house. The enemy can invade and bomb the s*** out of that house, but no one else’s”. You can’t realistically stop the free rider from getting defense unless you don’t provide it at all if he doesn’t pay, which is an insane and untenable idea upon any sort of scale.”
With that in mind, which looks like a solid response as far as I can tell, I will refer back to my previous question; Are the only two responses to this free rider dilemma either (1) forced taxation, or (2) who cares?
well I’m not sure what is being said. This military certainly cant give anyone permission to bomb someone’s house. But its simply not realistic to expect them to defend a house that they are not being paid to defend when they are busy protecting their customers. In any event, theres nothing preventing them from saying the above, it just doesnt seem prudent or even realistic IMO.
First, lets dismiss this idea of “stopping the free rider from getting defense” because of my above assertion that people that we want in defense industry are people who dont care about, or favor, benign free riders. No one, in my scenario, is trying to stop them from getting defense. If the defenders are driving around with nothing to do, and they see a non-customer being aggressed upon, certainly this is an opportunity to ply their trade and get a new customer. If, however, there is a state of war, and the customers are using the protection services, the defenders cannot be expected to provide protection services to non-customers. I dont understand why this would be insane and untenable, if in fact customers have hired those firms for their own protection, I cant imagine a good entrepreneur expending his resources on noncustomers when his customers have purchased and desire to use those services.
so I must confess I dont see the dilemma.
Lets go over a scenario then. Suppose house A (pays for protection) and house B (free-rider) are situated 20 feet apart and the agressor, a foreign military, is flying a B2 bomber overhead and carpet bombing everything in a 500 yard radius. How is a defense firm going to single out and protect house A and not house B? Indeed it cannot, which is why it is untenable. The notion of not protecting house B can be done on a small arms scale, single criminals, etc…but it cannot be done on a larger scale, such as a foreign military.
I dont understand why a firm would want to do that, nor do I understand why this is a problem that must be solved. Air defense would cost the same thing even if house B wasnt there, except the kids in house A wouldnt have anybody to play with. So my answer to this part of the question is “who cares?”
Its trivially true that if centurion defense contractor has pledged to protect monticello against all threats, and halstead manor is within 500 feetof monticello, then an attack on halstead manor with a weapon where the damage radius combined with circular error of probability is greater than 500 feet would fall under the defense mandate of centurion defense contractor. I guess I am dense because I dont see a problem here. Halstead manor still has to deal with threats smaller than 500 feet (foreign troops, machines guns, tomahawk missiles) and concomitantly higher insurance rates. Likely as not they couldnt afford to live in the neighborhood without the “free rider effect” so everyone who transacts with them is likewise benefitting from the “free rider effect.”
It is a problem because it is used as justification for taxes. “We must make the free-rider pay for these services.”
It is true, the cost of an air defense unit would be the same no matter how many customers the defense contractor has. However, from the point of view of the paying customer, Monticello, it costs more in monthly premiums to cover that fixed cost if Halstead is not paying for the service. Think of it like medical insurance; as a custmer, you want as many other healthy individuals in your coverage pool as possible so you pay lower premiums. What pisses people off is when Halstead gets the benefit of the defense protection without paying for it, meanwhile Monticello gets stuck with higher premiums. Monticello then has an incentive to forcibly tax Halstead.
This is very difficult to debate with someone who is an advocate for taxation in order to remedy this problem. I’ve found my only option is to say “who cares” and move on.
I really dont think its a problem, if my firm expends some active protection munitions to save halstead, and they dont feel like writing me a contract, then fine. The fact that my defenses are geared to protect monticello should become obvious with repeated volleys of mnitions, at which point the hostile party may decide to attack halstead and ignore monticello, because of those defenses.
Whats interesting is that given the collateral effect of active protection systems, its more likely than not that defense firms wouldnt protect noncustomers from certain precision attacks. A side-attack anti-missile munition puts out a donut of death that cuts through the missile and everything else in that plane for 25-100 m or more. Theres an awful lot of liability associated with detonating one of those in someone’s backyard without authorization.
Malachi, you seem to be framing your response only from the point of view of the defense firm. The crux of the issue, the problem so to speak, comes from the point of view of the actively paying client, in that they are forced to pay higher prices. Please see my post just before this one for a scenario if yoiu haven’t read it yet, and try to address the issue from a different perspective.
There are plenty of people living in the U.S. who do not pay federal taxes and by extension do not support the military. The structure of U.S. defense is more based on geography but also on population and infrastructure, etc.. Of course, ultimately its job is to protect the citizens of the states, but it’s not setup on a per capita basis.