Look to see what country Hilter avoided during WWII as well. I’m not saying he eventually wouldn’t have gotten to Switzerland, but the cost benefit analysis on Switzerland obviously didn’t make sense since they would have had citizens firing at them from all directions.

As far as not letting tyrants run roughshod, first people need to defend themselves first before asking someone else to do it. Right now Americans subsidize the rest of the world with money and blood to defend them even when our security is not in question. If they aren’t willing to fight for their freedom, then they must not want to be free bad enough.

I think we actually had a bigger effect with expanding freedom before based on our example than we do now based on our might.

Also, tyrants are kind of like monopolies. They may last in the short term, but in the long term they will fail. Tyrants typically are too arrogant, and they do something stupid. Look at Napoleon and Hilter going into Russia leading to their downfall.

I also agree that if we didn’t go outside our borders looking for as much trouble as we do, we wouldn’t be as big a target as we are. I’m still struggling a little bit with that though because there are tyrants in the world, and I don’t know that we should let them run roughshod invading other countries and such, but if the target countries can’t defend themselves against attack, then we’ll be forced to be their big brother on the playground forever. That does neither country any good. I don’t know, maybe that’s up to the UN to deal with, but somehow I don’t think they’re up to the task.

It’s fun to dream I suppose, but like you said, not a likely scenario.

The article did mention the problem of people looking for a free ride when it came to insurance, and I thought they had a good point. They said most of the insurance would be purchased by businesses, since businesses have much more in value to lose if there was an attack. Because businesses aren’t people, they would pass that cost on to the general public through prices. The end result would be a pretty even distribution of the cost amongst the population.

Also, the insurance company’s policy is to protect you. It is still possible that there could be an attack. If that is the case, the insurance company would have to pay out claims. If you tried going for a free ride, you may have your freedom protected, but you will not have claims paid for destroyed property, life, etc. That may be incentive for a good amount of people. Considering the death toll that could come from an attack, maybe it would be part of life insurance. Just thinking out loud here. I think the business angle would be the likely scenario. Too bad you couldn’t buy insurance now to protect you from our looting gov’t.

As far as the second one goes, I don’t see any reason there would be a lack of competition unless one company just does it better and cheaper than another. Remember gov’t won’t be there to pick winners and losers, so these companies will have to compete. If you look at some of the insurances where there isn’t huge gov’t involvement, there is a ton of competition (life, business, etc). The only insurance sector that seems to really lack competition is health insurance, and that is completely at the feet of government.

Also, I think when we think of defense, we think of our national military. When this country was founded, we were supposed to have state militias. I don’t see why the insurance and defense agencies would function any different than state militias. They would function at a lower level protecting areas that they cover under their policies. Also, don’t forget that in a free society citizens’ rights to protect themselves will be without question. A heavily armed citizenry will be enough of a deterrent to begin with. The insurance companies and defense agencies would probably function more at the intelligence, diplomatic, and advanced technology level that individuals would not be able to afford themselves. No country wants to invade the US, when there is already 1 gun per person, and that’s under all this gov’t gun control. The only threat I really think you would have to worry about is complete destruction, but like the article said with private defense, we wouldn’t have a gov’t out stirring up trouble in the world that would create blowback.

While this is fun to discuss, we both know it would never happen. If ever attempted, it would challenge the idea of gov’ts world wide, which means it would probably be destroyed before it was ever implemented. While it’s interesting to think about, I’d be happy to just go back to how we were setup at our founding with state militias, individual freedom, and a very strictly limited gov’t. That’s about as likely as the private defense though.

1. If defense is treated like an insurance policy, then you have the choice of whether or not to purchase said policy. From the insurance company’s standpoint, how can you provide for the defense from foreign aggressors for some citizens without providing for all? I have a feeling people would pick up on that point real quick, therefore few would have the incentive to purchase a policy.

2. Competition (or lack thereof) between insurance companies. Realistically it would be almost impossible to have multiple insurance companies selling defense policies because of the delivery of service. Defense works best in a collaborative effort. Having multiple suppliers of service and that would lead to an inevitable passing of the buck to prevent a payout.

I will concede that different suppliers would invariably lead to multiple approaches to defensive measures, which would be highly beneficial, however the downside would be attempting to figure out which measures worked if every house had a different insurance policy.

I’d love to hear your followup thoughts on the matter though, as it’s a very interesting topic.