[GiorgioG]

> Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen.

We seem to have no problem with throwing $700 billion per year on the military and nobody is pressuring them to make a profit. Is that a disaster? No? "But that's different!" It's only "different" because that's what we've been led to believe.

[rectang]

The US military is spectacularly inefficient, and the US military-industrial complex is a parasitical behemoth per Eisenhower's critique. It's not like the problem is unknown; the issue is that the state has to have a monopoly on violence, so we live with the inefficiency. Encouraging a marketplace of competing militia would not a viable approach. :)

[salawat]

Uh huh... I'm guessing you aren't a fan of the 2nd Amendment then? Not trying to derail things, but assuming the State MUST have a MONOPOLY on violence is a terrible idea.

We give the government the leeway we do, because it is the best way to provide for the common defense of the nation. NOT because ONLY the State should have violence open to it as an option.

Anyway... Back to healthcare... The type of structure that made the military industrial complex problematic was specifically that the industrial part was doing everything they could via lobbying/bribery to maximize profit. A shift to a model where we attempt to minimize waste, and maximize effective treatment/cures turns the quality equation on it's head. You still run into the issue where riskier grants that 'may work' are going to have a harder case to make in order to be issued, but I think that once one gets away from trying to build industrial supply chains predominantly for treatments that don't result in cure, you would start to see materials and expertise to get industrial supply chains built period may become more easily accessible if not perhaps become much cheaper.

[rectang]

> I'm guessing you aren't a fan of the 2nd Amendment then?

The 2nd Amendment is completely compatible with the philosophical concept of monopoly on legitimate violence as articulated by Weber.

[mamon]

>> the state _has_ to have a monopoly on violence

I think that the whole point of 2nd Amendment to US Constitution was to prevent government monopoly on violence. The possibility of citizens making successful military rebellion against the state was supposed to keep the government in check.

[GiorgioG]

> The issue is that the state has to have a monopoly on violence

A monopoly on violence in what context? The planet? That doesn't seem to be necessary for most countries. Within the country itself? That's the job of local law enforcement.

[rectang]

"Monopoly on violence" is a term with a lot of history. I'm using it in the same sense as Max Weber, where the state is defined as the "human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within a given territory."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence#Max_Weber...

All the critiques on this thread about competing authorities such as local law enforcement, the second amendment, and so on, none of them invalidate the idea of legitimate use of force defining the state. Weber accounts for all those points.

The closest thing we have to an actual marketplace among authorities wielding violence is the competition between jurisdictions (one municipal police department against the one the next town over, the state police in one US state vs another US state) -- but that's not the same as a commercial marketplace.

The only critique I think is relevant is the idea of mercenaries, a.k.a. private military contractors. But there again, those mercenaries are part of the military-industrial complex, which is an extremely stunted marketplace as it's largely a government monopsony.

We don't use economic competition to determine who holds authority on the legitimate use of violence. As a consequence, we don't get the full benefit of marketplace competition in maximizing the efficiency of our armed forces -- but we also don't have perpetual civil war.

[marssaxman]

> the issue is that the state has to have a monopoly on violence

That is not the case in the USA, where the absence of such a monopoly is written into the federal constitution.

[baursak]

Are you talking about 2nd amendment? If so, that's not a grant to violence by any means. If you want to test if the state really has a monopoly on violence, try being violent, or simply disobedient with an officer of the state.

[scottishfiction]

The state doesn't have to have a monopoly on violence; as the use of private military contractors has proven.

[Chaebixi]

> The state doesn't have to have a monopoly on violence; as the use of private military contractors has proven.

I don't think you know what the "[state] monopoly on violence" means. It does not mean all people authorized to use force are directly on the government payroll.

[fjsolwmv]

Rectang misused it first, by claiming "encouraging a marketplace of competing militia would not a viable approach. " Even though mercenary corporations are in fact competing militia.

[rectang]

Whatever large portion of the military we are not comfortable contracting out is going to continue missing out on the efficiencies induced by marketplace competition.