I'm not sure if you're familiar with the prisoners' dilemma or not. It's a non-zero-sum game in which everyone wins a little if nobody cheats, but the first (successful) cheater wins big. It accurately models why thieves often double-cross each other, but it also suggests an explanation why thieves so often don't double-cross each other. Humans are capable of reasoning their way through the prisoners' dilemma.
In this context, they are perfectly capable of comprehending that if too many people try to take a free ride, then everyone loses. Most will respond by (1) paying up, and (2) penalizing the non-payers. If you don't join, your neighbors won't talk to you. Your insurance agent will raise your premiums. The local Pinkertons might refuse to guard your place of business. Such spontaenous organization is in fact common in history, and it's why honor systems often work, even though they sometimes don't.
Fine, but needless to say, it hardly requires a libertarian state to realize such things, considering that we already have private contractors working with the military.
Try to keep up with this thread! I already addressed that matter. These "private contractors" do not represent real privatization, because prices are fixed by legislative action, not by market forces. That's why the Pentagon pays $68 for a hammer.
And, of course, there are going to be some deliveries that FedEx can't or won't make...
Conceivably. Some they will make using a rented armored car and a few Pinkertons. Some they will refuse to make, for example behind enemy lines, and alternative solutions can be improvised easily enough. But one thing you need to remember: I've already conceded that you can't privatize an invasion of Korea! At least, it's far tougher than privatizing a defense of the homeland. In practice, FedEx would refuse to ship to Korea, naturally, but they'd be far more cooperative in shipping vital supplies to occupied Connecticut.
It should be rather obvious, but Wal Mart was not the first set of boots on the ground down there, and they're never going to be the first set of boots on the ground.
If defense were privatized, I fully concede that American boots would pretty much never be on foreign ground in the first place--but in that case, Wal*Mart won't be asked to make deliveries there anyway.
Sit in on some plea-bargain discussions some time, and you'll be amazed at how quickly co-conspirators race to the bottom in order to be that first guy to do the double-crossing. The Prisoner's Dilemma is eminently logical in its thinking - the problem is, people quite often aren't ;)
Most will respond by (1) paying up, and (2) penalizing the non-payers.
Penalizing the non-payers? Well, we can certainly be grateful that coercion is a thing of the past. Oh, I know, we'd like to define "coercion" as the exclusive province of the state, but the reality is that actions designed to cause people to behave differently through the threat of some penalty are inherently coercive, by definition. Boycotts are coercive actions. Strikes are coercive actions. If they weren't, they wouldn't be effective in getting someone else to behave in a manner you find acceptable.
Anyway, how will the neighbors know? I think I've addressed the insurance premium thing, but I don't see why I'm not given an incentive to simply lie to the neighbors about my insurrection coverage.
Such spontaenous organization is in fact common in history....
Sure, like lynch mobs. Spontaneous organization outside the purview of any legitimate state power or authority. We can argue all day long about how jobs are an employer's to give or not give as they see fit, for whatever reason they please, but I'm having trouble seeing how telling you "do what I say or you're fired" is somehow non-coercive. Only now, instead of a formal system with rules and procedures and consequences spelled out in advance - the state - we substitute the ad hoc judgments of the mob as to what sorts of behaviors are acceptable or not. And you find this attractive, do you?
Some they will make using a rented armored car and a few Pinkertons.
Sure, and you, as a subscriber to the services of whomever they are delivering to, will pay the cost of that car and those guards. Just like you do now, so what's the advantage again?
In practice, FedEx would refuse to ship to Korea, naturally, but they'd be far more cooperative in shipping vital supplies to occupied Connecticut.
Why, because they're nice people? Maybe they will, and maybe they won't - it'll depend on whether they feel like the benefits of delivering fuses to Radio Free Stamford outweigh the risks, won't it? That is, unless you're going to rely on them always behaving altruistically because they have some emotional attachment to the place, which would be, you know, bad. Or something. Anyway, Randian Express isn't supposed to behave in any manner except that which is in accord with their own rational self-interest, and I don't think you're in a position to make that determination for them.