MichaelMatulef on Nostr: Let us look, for instance, at the present-day United States. Assume that by a ...

Let us look, for instance, at the present-day United States. Assume that by a legislative act the state had abolished its right to provide security with tax funds and a competitive system of security production was introduced. Given the state of public opinion, how likely would it then be that outlaw producers would spring up, and what if they did? Evidently, the answer would depend on the reactions of the public to this changed situation. Thus, the first reply to those challenging the idea of a private market for security would have to be: What about you? What would your reaction be? Does your fear of outlaw companies mean that you would then go out and engage in trade with a security producer that aggressed against other people and their property, and would you continue supporting it if it did? Certainly the critic would be much muted by this counterattack. But more important than this is the systematic challenge implied in this personal counterattack. Evidently, the described change in the situation would imply a change in the cost-benefit structure that everyone would face once he had to make his decisions. Before the introduction of a competitive system of security production, it had been legal to participate in and support (state) aggression. Now such an activity would be an illegal activity. Hence, given one’s conscience, which makes each of one’s own decisions appear more or less costly, i.e., more or less in harmony with one’s own principles of correct behavior, support for a firm engaging in the exploitation of people unwilling to deliberately support its actions would be more costly now than before. Given this fact, it must be assumed that the number of people, among them even those who otherwise would have readily lent their support to the state, who would now spend their money to support a firm committed to honest business would rise and would rise everywhere this social experiment was tried. In contrast, the number of people still committed to a policy of exploitation, of gaining at the expense of others, would fall. How drastic this effect would be would of course depend on the state of public opinion. In the example at hand—the United States, where the natural theory of property is extremely widespread and accepted as a private ethic, the libertarian philosophy being essentially the ideology on which the country was founded and that led it to the height it reached —the effect would naturally be particularly pronounced. Accordingly, security producing firms committed to the philosophy of protecting and enforcing libertarian law would attract the greatest bulk of public support and financial assistance. And while it may be true that some people, and among them especially those who had profited from the old order, might continue their support of a policy of aggression, it is very unlikely that they would be sufficient in number and financial strength to succeed in doing so. Rather, the likely outcome would he that the honest companies would develop the strength needed—alone or in a combined effort and supported in this effort by their own voluntary customers—to check any such emergence of outlaw producers and destroy them wherever and whenever they came into existence.

- Hans-Hermann Hoppe