Terrorism is in a sense a success of the free market. The formerly completely government-subsidized domain of warfare is being taken up by individual entrepreneurs.
But, now that laissez-faire economics is a right wing dead-horse instead of a left wing dead-horse (something that happened sometime around 1967, from what I gather) there’s a strange kind of tension. Shouldn’t right-wing politicians be praising the industry of these job creators who have privatized warfare? Killing people is a huge market, and it’s fundamentally anticapitalist to allow the public sector — the military and police — to monopolize it.
The obvious left-wing response is that killing is too delicate and important a thing to be privatized. But, clearly the public sector isn’t doing a very good job regulating the organized killing — as the scandals over civilian casualties and officers peeing on the dead show. After all, if you allow the power of legalized murder to be consolidated in the hands of one group, you remove the checks and balances that prevent corruption.
Now, you might say that warfare takes personnel, and that it therefore requires a large organization. Even Bin Laden had Al Quaida, you might say. Not anymore, my friend. Much of our targeted assassination is being performed by aerial drone now — and an aerial drone is just a remote control airplane with a camera and a projectile weapon. A private individual could throw one together for five hundred dollars and fight their own completely private and completely free-market-compatible wars!
