Topic: Question for the "anarchists" in the crowd. - page 4. (Read 5880 times)

Well, as political ideologies go, it is pretty young. It's only about 40 years old, at least in the "finished" state it is now, though aspects have popped up since antiquity, and the final piece was available as early as 1849.

As to Maybury's laws, the second one essentially is the NAP. "Do not encroach on other persons or their property" and "no one has the right to initiate force, the threat of force, or fraud" are effectively the same, since those three things are "encroaching on other persons or their property."

But why do you say Maybury's laws (which I wholeheartedly support) do not require absolute adherence? After all, it says "Do not," not "You should not," or "It would be a bad idea to."

No matter how good the future of the Internet may be, the general availability of important information will always be imperfect and/or localized.  If there is no way for an ancap society to respond to an unintentional and unaware domestic threat, (as the example of Typhoid Mary represents) then there is no way that an ancap society could ever be stable, for it will always have that kind of weakness that, sooner or later, must undermine it.  Although it certainly wouldn't be typhoid to do it with all of our modern medical knowledge, any new or unknown infection would have a similar effect; at least temporarily.  Yellow fever had devastating effects upon the social structure of all the cities that had outbreaks prior to the development of a vaccine against it.  Because an infected person was contagious days before any signs of same, locals would regularly treat poor travelers (and those who worked on traveling riverboats, regardless of their status) rather harshly to say the least, and completely without regard to their constitutional rights, or oftentimes even any human decency.

Quarantining people on the word of any government expert is no different than Minority Report style 'pre-crime', so if we can't come up with an ancap answer to Typhoid Mary (or a modern equivalent), then how can we object to the TSA's use of no-fly lists other than on matters of implementation?  (as opposed to ideology or justification)  How then could we object to border checkpoints that require us to identify ourselves upon entry into, or even exiting, our own country?  We need an answer for this even as a minimalist/libertarian perspective, or all our logic and reason as to why the state is an immoral and/or unnecessary institution fail; for only one exception to the premise is required to defeat the theory.  Granted, we here all understand that the reality is that government agents often screw up anyway, even the experts.  And thus, it was about as likely that Typhoid Mary would never had been caught.  (How many typhoid carriers worked in food service prior to 1907?  We will never know)  And society was not likely to break down due to a lack of understanding regarding the infection vector of typhoid, otherwise it would have already.  Still, once the passive threat had been identified, an active response was required of the doctors; for no expert trained in his field could discover such a problem and morally choose not to attempt to solve it if he could.

This is one reason that I have trouble with the absolutes of ancap theories.  The NAP is an absolute, but it applies to an individual who must choose to abide it, or not.  Maybury's two laws of civilization are similar to the NAP, but they don't require an absolute adherence.  The ability to recognize, and manage, contradictions are a sign of maturity.  So I have to say that IMHO, ancap isn't really a mature political ideology.

Well, what can the government do differently besides using violence to put people in jail, fine them or kill them?

Read it again I said 'final' meaning when all other arbitration fails.

Additionally, the government can generally only impose its rule with violence.

False. People can arbitrate without a government and/or violence.

Exactly right. Without the rule of law the average citizen must resort to violence as the final arbitrator of all disputes.