Originally Posted by Ambiguous

Ah, I misunderstood. Another way to put it is to say the military -- or more appropriately, the government -- has a monopoly on the use of force.

I was talking about it from a different perspective where there are many sellers of equipment (defense contractors) but only one buyer for their products (the military).

I guess you could say the military/government is in the unique position of being both a monopoly and a monopsony. In either case I think it shows that extremism is most readily possible through government. It gets to play the game as well as set the rules. Fun combination.