If most of your customers are law abiding they may choose to not support your unlawful (in natural law sense) actions against another.
People still go to BP.
The question also becomes IS killing a competitor lower cost and lower risk then arbitration, licensing, marketing, or other non-violent means.
I would say so, yes. Ignoring the drug-cartel example I can't think of any way to prove this in any way, so I'll just say it's my opinion, for now. Maybe I can come up with something better if I think a bit more about it. (Or maybe I'll find that I'm wrong.) But for now, I'm gonna go ahead and say that it is probably much cheaper.
Once again all theory but if private security forces replaced police states then you could find your security contract revoked per a condition in the contract.
What's the point of having a contract if there is no state? (Or: what is the point of having a state if it can't enforce it's law?)
Still I wasn't really talking about the lack of a state.
Oh? Sorry, that's what I thought. My bad, I guess.
I was just pointing out the power of the cartels is a direct result of regulation, namely the prohibition on certain substances, not a lack of regulation as you seem to claim.
I think it's both. The regulation made them rich enough to defy the state, resulting in a failure of the state (absence of state power and thus regulation), leading to cartels.