Mercenaries should be outlawed, and working as one should be criminalized.

The state should retain the monopoly on violence.

I do, however, find it fascinating to see how free market fanatics will say that a private company doing job X is generating wealth and adding to our economy, while government company doing job X is an expense and hurts our economy. My school is currently counted as an expense. If it was to be privatized, it would've been counted as generating wealth. The stupidity is overwhelming.

What the british are doing is relinquishing control of the armed forces, while at the same time saving no money. Rory's point is that private companies saves us money because they pay less(in pensions). That may be true, but to achieve that the state could just lower pensions for their own employees. There's no reason to pay some private company a ton of money for lowering wages.