Clayton, I won’t add a line to what you write. Of course logistics, production, training and R&D can be provided privately at much higher quality and a fraction of the cost compared to the statist methods.
The issue with defense is only that financing it is a pain for a private (NAP-observing) player, and only financing is subject to said economies of scale. First, defense is as close as it gets to a so-called “public good” and second, it makes huge difference whether a firm covers millions or thousands (Lanchester’s square). Combine the two together, and you get a service where the clientele size matters, and yet the ‘public’ nature of the service makes handling large clienteles voluntarily very difficult.
Now, I’ve read the myriads of pages that try to answer such issues, but I just am not very convinced by them, or by some ideas of my own. Right now, I think that only nukes, with their potential of making defense very cheap and far less depended on size, can answer these problems.
Te internet is a statist invention. Would that mean that people in Libertopia would never have invented it?
But in a sense I tend to agree: there would be no libertopia around for long but for nukes, so nukes had to be invented under statism. Anyway we’ll have to wait and see how the market will value nukes. I myself have not the slightest doubt.
Ok, the square says that you have to achieve a qualitative edge of N squared over an enemy which numerically is N-times superior to you. If a PDA sporting (optimistically, to my mind) an ‘army’ of 10’000 faces an US invasion force of a million, it soldiers and technology better be 10’000 times as good soldier-per-soldier or its going to lose. If this ain’t an economy of scale, tell me what ever was.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with economies of scale. Where is the economic analysis in the above? I can’t find it anywhere.
Furthermore, I don’t understand why you’re considering PDAs to be facing off on their own against state invasion forces. And how exactly do you measure “military superiority”?
Finally, the Swiss don’t have nuclear weapons, but they’re armed to the teeth. They were this way when the Nazis were in power in Germany, and the Nazis left them alone.
I never said, nor does the data show, that what is true of open battles is likewise true of guerilla. When the Vietcongs thought of facing the Americans in the open filed they were exterminated, of course.
Now, guerrilla has been discused in another thread and I expressed my opinion (it’s a poor defense concept for a free society) than. If you think it worthwhile we can debate that again.
It sure would need an extended paper to turn Lanchester’s square into a full-blown analysis into the economics of war, and I in no way want to do that here.
The idea I was trying to get across is that numerical superiority confers a huge advantage in an open battle (economy of scale), and that it would supposedly be very difficult (and expensive) for a small PDA to counter that by its other undoubted advantages.
Sure, that is not a proof of any kind. What about guerilla and covert ops? What about the incentives to conquer a free society? What about Switzerland, or England, or other free-ish societies?
The full debate would take a long time. So I’ll limit my comments to the observation that all the free-ish societies we see surviving (and ultimately expanding) today strangely have some unique geographic feature to help defending them. Alps, two oceans, a floodable plain, a narrow land-bridge. Could that be per chance, or is it the case that in the pre-nuclear age you needed such factors to help balance the scales against a numerous invading army of barbarians?
You were the one who brought up Lanchester’s square to support your thesis. I challenged it. If you’re backing down from that challenge, then please be explicit about it.
Now then, you seem to be equivocating with “economy of scale” - that is, you’re using it in a non-economic sense (!) as well as in an economic sense. I pointed this out in my last post and you’ve just done it again. I don’t understand why.
If a free-market society were really under threat of invasion, I fail to see why only the pre-existing “PDAs” would be tasked with defending it. Rather, I think the situation would be akin to Yamamoto’s depiction of the folly of invading the United States: “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”. Volunteer (“irregular”) militias would abound in such a situation, IMO.
Furthermore, even if one allowed (if only arguendo) the existence of nuclear weapons in a free-market society as defense against state invaders, I fail to see what use they would have within the free-market society itself.
Certain land formations have been historically easier to defend. “Holding/taking the high ground” is a very ancient military concept. Anything which slows down or stops an invading enemy, such as high slopes (embankments) and bodies of water (moats), is advantageous.
Nukes, dirty or clean, do not kill enough. But many people think they should be banned. Considering that socialism and communism have proven to be the most distructive things on the planet, with more than 100 million people killed, they should be banned. Or maybe there should be a world government to control them (just like governments control nukes).
I think nuclear bombs are not special. Dams, chemical factories and simply dangerous people require assurance. So you have a justifiable claim against those who don’t assure you of their safety (whether people or property). Naturally this can be abused, so there has to be some norm above which it would be legal to demand assurance.
You really do not see the argument there, or are you just trying to produce an over-detailed response? If what a firm ‘produces’ is military force, and ceteris paribus for every x% increase in one factor of production (labor) you get a ((1+x%)^2)-1 percent increase in production, is it really so thought to see this is an economy of scale: you get a more than proportional increase of production by increasing the use of one factor?
Please now, do tell me where the difficult part of the concept is.
But then why you insist on discussing the idea that PDAs would defend a free society in open battle? Just say that you believe in guerilla.
Now, guerilla warfare is another subject, and I expressed my opinion on its futility in another thread. If you think it proper, we can discuss those points.
If we assume, arguendo, that nukes may be useful in defending against foreign aggression, why wouldn’t they also prevent the creation of a new government by force of arms in the anarchic commonwealth itself? If a foreign army can successfully occupy a free society, than any band of robbers could, in time, do the same. If foreign armies are vaporized as soon as they leave their borders, local thugs won’t even try to amass fellow thugs.
Basically, I theorize that nuclear weapons being the creatures of the State, there would be no market need for them and, thus, no production of these weapons.