The Commons Blog is a bastion of free market environmentalism: let's protect Mother Earth, by ensuring strict property rights, functioning free markets, etc., complete with links to Cato Institute reports and Michael Crichton novels (which, by being nominally fictional, can tell the real truth while avoiding the incestuous nature of the peer reviewed literature). And you know, I have to admit, I'm all over this, I love markets, and share the basic value of distrust of government. It's very difficult for legislators to make correct evaluations of technologies, trade off costs and benefits and who benefits and suffers. So privatization as a means of environmental protection is very appealing to me.

But not just for the environment. National security is another area ripe for privatization. Sure, the tools used in national defence have been produced by industry for some time (can you say, "military-industrial complex"? I knew you could). And, in the current situation in Iraq, much of the heavy lifting, infantry-wise, has been provided by so-called "contractors". (Salon had a series on these awhile back, or see NYT Magazine.) Still, this is all private industry in service of the government. What true privatization of national defense would mean would be to allow markets to determine, not just how to defend, but what to defend. How much should be spent on military prepardness and action? What countries are worth attacking? Does it depend on the amount of natural resources, weapons of mass destruction, or whether the dictator might go over to the dark side? What are the costs, and what are the benefits? Let the markets decide. Perhaps a system like the privateers of old might work, still regulated by government, but with allocations of resources determined by the Invisible Hand. I think free markets could work just as well for protecting the homeland security-wise as environment-wise.