"Probably not very well, but the article doesn't seem to be limited to consideration of what is required to provide for the national defense, and I don't think there's a case to be made that any action that is justified in the name of national defense is equally justifiable for any other reason."
Of course not. But the author falls into a similar trap when he argues that if something is not justified in the name of national defense it cannot be justified for any other purpose.
But since you bring that up, libertarians from the Von Mises Institute like to argue that all functions of government can be better performed by the private sector quite commonly pointing to the use of privitized police and courts. I have similar problems with those arguments as well.
Suppose all police and courts are privitized. Let us further suppose that you and I are neighbors and have a dispute over say our property boundary. I go to my court and get an injuction against you. You go to yours and get an injuction against me. We both call in our separate police forces and try to enforce these injuctions. I think there is a problem there that illustrates why some functions must be public and why they must be compulsory in the sense that all must abide by them.
Excellent! You raise an important and valid issue. Some would contend that this inevitably results in rival warlords: the "Pinkertons" versus "Securitas," for example.
However, there is an answer to this dilemma. It's worth pointing out that our respective police forces don't actually want to get into a shooting war over my dog digging in your petunias. There are various ways they can avoid a shooting war, so I don't know which one they would pick. One is for the two to agree upon a third judge, and inform you and me that they will drop us as customers unless we agree to enter arbitration with the third judge. If he says you're in the right, then my agency will drop me as a customer unless I pay for your petunias--which, of course, leaves me defenseless against your agency.
There's a separate consideration also. Each of us going to separate judges is pretty unproductive in the first place, and we knew that already. In most cases, therefore, we'll make stipulations in our original contract as to which judges we would consider acceptable in the event of a dispute. If we have no contractual relationship--for example, we're involved in a random car accident--then we would presumably pick the arbitration agency with the best reputation for fair judgments. An arbitator who always decides for his client will soon have no customers.
Is that the author's error, or Milsted's? The author addressed what he perceived to be errors in Milsted's reasoning, and the example Milsted used was national defense and made generalizations based on the example.
But since you bring that up, libertarians from the Von Mises Institute like to argue that all functions of government can be better performed by the private sector quite commonly pointing to the use of privitized police and courts. I have similar problems with those arguments as well.
Do they really argue that all government functions could be better performed by the private sector, or just some of them that you agree with?