Private defense agencies

A private defense agency (PDA) is an enterprise which would provide personal protection and military defense services to individuals who would voluntarily contract for its services. PDAs are advocated in anarcho-capitalism and market-based forms of social anarchism, such as mutualism.

A PDA is distinguished from a private contractor of the state which is subsidized financially through taxation or legally through monopoly and immunity, and relies on conscription and other involuntary support. Instead, such agencies would be voluntarily financed primarily by competing insurance and security companies, which are penalized for losses and damages, and have a financial incentive to minimize waste and maximize quality of service.

As proponents of free-market anarchism, Benjamin Tucker and Gustave de Molinari first explicitly proposed for-profit private defense agencies. The concept later was advanced and expanded upon by anarcho-capitalists who consider the state to be illegitimate, and therefore believe defense is something that should be provided or determined privately by individuals and firms competing in a free market. The Mises Institute published a book of essays entitled The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production.Murray N. Rothbard in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto and David D. Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom expand substantially on the idea. Both hold that a PDA would be part of a privatized system of law, police, courts, insurance companies and arbitration agencies who are responsible for preventing and dealing with aggression. In this environment, victimless crimes and "crimes against the state" would be rendered moot, and the legal realm would be limited to contractual disputes and tort damages, as from assault, burglary, pollution, and all other forms of aggression. This concept is similar to Polycentric law. Within economics, discussion of the concept largely has been confined to the Austrian School, as in Hans Hoppe's article "The Private Production of Defense" published by the Mises Institute.

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