Interesting set of points describing the relationship between private military companies and the market-state (as opposed to the nation-state).

Couple of things that grabbed me, Schloky argues that the customer of a PMC is not the nation-state but the taxpaying citizen. Not sure what the ramifications of that are, also not sure I agree with it, given how remote a PMC's requirements are from civil understanding.

Another one is that the market will decide the bounds of acceptable violence, not nation-state regulation. Given that Australian Republicanism is a technological system for the minimisation of tyranny and violence this has serious ramifications for republican technologies and their implication.

Republicanism relies on morality to do a lot of the internal and individual regulation, such that as Harpur argued, war, or violence becomes impossible. This is a utopian republican future without a state that is self-governing through moral perfectibility.

If the PMCs are the customers of tax-payers, rather than nation-states, then their market bounds become the morality of the customers - ie tax-payers. This requires market like pricing efficiency so that behaviour of the PMCs can be judged constantly against the morality of taxpayers.

Can the markets enforce morality? This paper suggests there is a link between markets and morality [pdf] . Though much of the morality is in the name of economic efficiency it does have positive virtue which can be argued to be compatible with individual morality.

Even in a modern liberal market environment the speed of information flow and market behaviour has not been fast enough. Many have been caught conducting immoral acts, that have been adjudged criminal, but it took time to unravel or make these public. Enron is a good example of this behaviour.

So even in a strongly moral market environment PMCs may not be restrained by customer morality, and if they are, it may be after the fact.

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