https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/01/murray-n-rothbard/defense-services-on-the-free-market/

Defense Services on the Free Market
By Murray N. Rothbard

... A supply of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining the axiom of the free society, namely, that there be no use of physical force except in defense against those using force to invade person or property. This would imply the complete absence of a State apparatus or government; for the State, unlike all other persons and institutions in society, acquires its revenue, not by exchanges freely contracted, but by a system of unilateral coercion called “taxation.” Defense in the free society (including such defense services to person and property as police protection and judicial findings) would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who

gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion and

did not—as the State does—arrogate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection.

Only such libertarian provision of defense service would be consonant with a free market and a free society. Thus, defense firms would have to be as freely competitive and as noncoercive against noninvaders as are all other suppliers of goods and services on the free market. Defense services, like all other services, would be marketable and marketable only. ......