Topic: Objections to the non-aggression principle - page 4. (Read 5897 times)

Only if you make an unjustified assumption that given a demand for law, the market would not satisfy this demand.

You still have the basic problem.  No laws means gang law.

Let me clarify, when I say stateless society, I mean one in which the people willfully desire and achieve the lack of a state. Iraq was an invaded and failed state, big difference.

In a stateless society, for example Iraq in 2003, a huge number of people felt just that.  In London last year when the state withdrew from certain streets, it took less than 30 minutes for the looting and beatings to start.  People were literally killed in the street.

Civilisation is a thin veneer on top of a brutal humanity. 

You are missing the point. 

The whole idea of property is a legal concept.  It comes from the state.  If you take away the state, the whole idea of property rights goes with it and you end up in a tribal situation where ownership is a flexible concept and violence over how things like cows get shared is the norm.  If there is no law, people who disagree with you owning 20 cows are not jealous douches any more than you are.

Let's say that Hakwer is right, and (from some perspective) he is morally justified in taking one of my cows. Well, then it is your equally valid moral opinion that he has too many cows and you have too few, and you are exactly as justified in taking his (your) cow back from him as he was taking it from you in the first place. Now, I'm going to assume that at this point he will argue that he is justified in using violence to prevent you from taking the cow, but that's merely because it's his cow, not yours. See, moral opinions are only legitimately backed by force when the opinion works in the statist's favor.

No it doesn't, you can think having 20 cows is morally wrong all you want, but it's not. In this situation you would just be a jealous douche. If you acted on these thoughts by trying to steal a cow, what would happen? The same thing that would happen if you went out today and tried to steal a cow, you'd get shot.

The point I'm trying to make here is that as human being we interact with each other using the Non-Aggression Principle all the time. If there is a government to resolve disputes between parties, that doesn't change anything when a trespasser is in the act of stealing one of my f'ing cows.

Are you claiming that in a stateless society that values the NAP, all individuals will feel they have the right to initiate violence against any other individual? What?

Have you read it?  From the second paragraph, it falls apart as it assumes that everyone shares the same property values.  If I think its morally wrong for you to have 20 cows when I have one, the whole thing fails.

So wrong you are. Nations in our world analogize very accurately to individuals in your NAP world.

Those things are behaviors of states, entities which have geographic monopolies on the initiation of violence. There is no realistic analog to a state in a stateless society. Yes, as a property owner I would have a "monopoly on the initiation of violence" on my property, but it is a very limited monopoly, both in size and scope. However, you are correct that statism, the current societal paradigm, "is rife with problems, wars, takeovers, complete disregard for contracts, power plays, allies ganging up on others, and [...] the only model under which nuclear arms have been used against others".

I have read portions of your document - the section entitled "Private Law". There is nothing new there that hasn't been discussed here. Point number 1: U.S. states aren't analogous, as they operate under the umbrella of the Federal Government. Point number 2: Using the diverse set of world nations is analogous, and I have pointed out that very fact in other threads. The ultimate libertarian "contract law" experiment is the world, and it is rife with problems, wars, takeovers, complete disregard for contracts, power plays, allies ganging up on others, and, believe it or not, the only model under which nuclear arms have been used against others.

You clearly don't understand it. Just read the first half of the tiny book I pointed you to. Read about how decentralized justice systems have worked in ancient societies.
Educate yourself. The "faults" you think you're raising have been refuted by many important writers already.

I say you don't give a shit about learning, all you want is to carry on purposeless discussions. If you really wanted to learn anything, you'd have already figured out that's not through forum discussions that you'll learn much (particularly in a forum that is about a technology, not economy or ethics).
EDIT: Well, actually forums may be useful. They are useful to solve punctual doubts, or to get pointers to more extensive knowledge somewhere else, as I'm try to provide here. But you must want to follow such pointers.

We need government so everyone can keep their primal urges to themselves and we can have a large functioning society. I don't think a civilization can exist without a government. History shows that people always needed a government. Some probably are going to argue this and it's okay. On the global scale of things, these people don't matter anyway because they are just a bunch of pissed off ignoramuses. Thank your government that you have any rights at all.

There is no contract between you and some random person you've never met. There is simply no guarantee that NAP would be the order of the day. I have had this discussion a hundred times. Most people here want NAP to be a reality so badly that they fail to objectively see its faults.

Dream on.

I avoid huge threads, yes. And you obviously have not read what I've suggested you to.

If "private law" is what's practiced in a society, then by definition the NAP is being respected as all laws would be contractual.
Please, just read about the subject instead of complaining "nobody explains it to me".

Obviously, you have missed the 200 page threads where this subject has been debated to death. Tell me now, if private law is the order of the day, why would one have to hire courts or protection that adheres to NAP? Who exactly says that one must hire firms which adhere to NAP?

Then I think you fundamentally misunderstand the non-aggression principle. My understanding of the way the NAP is generally accepted is that it allows for the use of violence in response to violence, but only to an extent that is necessary to put an end to the initial violence. So, just because someone steals a thing from you, it doesn't give you the right to kill them. You would however be completely justified taking it back. If they tried to use violence to prevent you from doing so, then you are justified in defending yourself. After all, how could they possibly be more justified using violence to defend your thing that they possess than you are in taking it back?


In order for there to be no way to get food without aggression (if we assume theft or trespassing is the initiation of force), all of the following must be true:

• There is no unclaimed property
• There is no way for you to hunt/gather without trespassing
• Your labor was worth absolutely nothing to anybody
• Nobody will charitably give you food or a way to get it

While you could come up with a thought experiment where all that is true, I find it highly unrealistic that this scenario occurs (edit... a chronically unemployed person's labor is not worth zero, it's just worth less than the legal minimum wage. Think about it.)

The only valid objection I've heard to the non-aggression principle is that the definition of force or violence is disputed. As a response to this, I would merely say that a stateless society provides a better way to come to agreement on the definition of violence than through the use of a state.

This would seem to make the NAP irrelevent: It's completely subsumed by whatever system of property we use.

Is this an "ethical" or "practical" question?

For ethical learning, search for Hans Hermans Hoppe texts. He has some good texts on the ethics of private property.

If you want to imagine how things could work without a monopoly on justice, I suggest the first part ("Private Law") of this text: http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf
There are many mores besides this one, of course. It is particularly interesting to read about ancient societies which have had decentralized justice systems, like medieval Ireland or Iceland.


Learning this will obviously require some effort of yours. If you were simply expecting someone to answer all your doubts with a forum post, then good luck, you'll have to keep trying.