Welcome to the Free Talk Live bulletin board system!
This board is closed to new users and new posts.  Thank you to all our great mods and users over the years.  Details here.
185859 Posts in 9829 Topics by 1371 Members
Latest Member: cjt26
Home Help
+  The Free Talk Live BBS
|-+  Free Talk Live
| |-+  General
| | |-+  Is the NAP Necessary?
Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7] 8   Go Down

Author Topic: Is the NAP Necessary?  (Read 30743 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Richard Garner

  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 303
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #90 on: May 15, 2009, 06:20:50 AM »

Yes, Locke believes that these things should exist.  He does not say or believe that they will exist or be respected in a state of nature--see "ought".  For enforcement, he turns to government.  I'm just puzzled as to why you bothered to bring him up as if he was in support of non-government or consistency with the NAP.  He clearly was not.

I brought him up because he was somebody who thought that government was only justified if it rested on consent (and anarchists say it does not and cannot), and so is a useful example in explaining why we talk about consent being needed. You said that using violence against a criminal, say a murderer, who had not consented to being bound by our laws was an initiation of force, but the fact is that consent theorists, like Locke, and like we anarchists, think consent is necessary precisely because we think people are all bound by enforcible principle's of justice whether we like it or not, and it is consequent to this that there are things that, if we do them to other people without their consent, are in violation of those principles of justice. Likewise, there are things that, if we do them to or with various objects without consent or permission from specific others, we violate those principles of justice.

So, neither Locke, nor any libertarian, anarchists included, thinks you need permission from would-be murderers in order to use violence to prevent or punish that guy's actions.

Quote
I'm with you on point #1.  I'm fine with resolving disputes in private courts.  In fact, it happens all the time.

I disagree with point #2.  It is possible to be impartial when you are the complaining party, and I would say it is necessary in the case of the murder of a person with no heirs and nobody with any legitimate claim to the person's estate, etc.

It is possible, but it is surely far from probable, is it? I mean, if we said that in every murder case the person deciding whether or not a crime has been committed should be the accused, nobody would ever get any justice, would they? It would be possible for a guilty murderer to be impartial and decide, yes, they are guilty, but not likely, surely. Likewise, it is possible then when I accuse the government of a crime, it could impartially decide, yes it did commit a crime, but not likely. And I don't think you would want to leave it up to a person you suspected had wronged you to decide whether he had or not.

Quote
I would like to bring up a point #3: I believe that property rights of individuals should be enforced (pursuant to their wishes, if specified) regardless of whether or not a complaining party exists after a crime has been committed.  I see no way to guarantee this in a completely private system.

This relates to your point about being murdered without leaving an heir, or someone with a legitimate claim to the estate, right? Well, firstly, I can set up a contract with a protection agency that, in the event of my murder, it does its upmost to investigate the crime, and punish the wrongdoer. Firms that were paid for such services but failed to do so would lose reputation and tend to lose business to those that kept such contracts.

Secondly, this sounds like a good incentive to ensure I do have an heir or someone to take over the estate, or to leave my claims against wrongdoers to.

An alternative is that if somebody dies leaving no heir and with nobody having a legitimate claim to the estate, then that estate becomes effectively unowned property, and maybe homesteaded. And, since claims against wrongdoers are the property of their victim, that means that claim can be homesteaded and enforced by the wrongdoer.

Honestly, laws have been privately enforced for longer than they publicly enforced. I imagine that they found someway to resolve this issue.
Logged

freeAgent

  • pwn*
  • FTL AMPlifier
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3660
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #91 on: May 16, 2009, 11:10:16 AM »

There are plenty of unidentified bodies found.  It's not a given that people will even know who you are after you're murdered.

If you don't need the victim's permission to aggress against a perceived (by you) aggressor, this could lead to the type of feud-like scenarios, confusion about who is aggressing against whom, etc.  Consolidating the right to legitimate use of non-self defense force with one agency makes much more sense to me.
Logged

MacFall

  • Agorist
  • FTL AMPlifier Silver
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2295
  • No king but Christ; no law but liberty!
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #92 on: May 16, 2009, 11:14:41 PM »

That doesn't make sense at all. Private feuds are vastly preferable to a monopoly government, which drags everyone in the area it controls into the conflicts which it enters (or starts). And it's not like they'd be common anyway, as nobody's neighbors would put up with that sort of shit for very long. People who can't control their violent urges would be excluded and eliminated from a free society. On the other hand, they are exactly the sort who would go and work for a government where one exists.
Logged
I am an anarchist! HOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

Richard Garner

  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 303
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #93 on: May 17, 2009, 06:59:09 AM »

There are plenty of unidentified bodies found.  It's not a given that people will even know who you are after you're murdered.

So you are saying that if a body is found that is unidentifiable, people won't know who's protection agency to call to investigate the crime? But this seems like it would be an example of the latter solution I suggested: Since no heir for the claim, or possible claim, against a wrong doer can be found, the claim can be homesteaded by whoever discovered the body.

Quote
If you don't need the victim's permission to aggress against a perceived (by you) aggressor, this could lead to the type of feud-like scenarios,

Why?

Quote
confusion about who is aggressing against whom, etc.

Hence the need for courts to resolve the dispute.

This is really old hat, I would have thought that anybody who feels they know enough about market anarchism would also know that solutions to this "problem" have been offered long ago. For instance, the English minimal statist FW Read, objecting to the notion of voluntary taxation, said that it would result in several voluntary "states" competing in England with even members of the same household potentially belonging to different "states." Of course, this would be market anarchism, not really states, but Benjamin Tucker basically said, "yes; so what?" He wrote,

Quote
Mr Read would probably object that the "State" to which the invader belonged might regard his arrest as itself an invasion, and proceed against the "State" which arrested him. Anticipation of such conflicts would probably result exactly in those treaties between "States" which Mr. Read looks upon as so desirable, and even in the establishment of federal tribunals, as courts of last resort, by the co-operation of various "States," on the same voluntary principle in accordance with which the "States" themselves were organized.

This Tucker wrote in 1887, meaning your challenge was answered nearly 120 years before you made it! Your challenge was also made by Ayn Rand, of course, in 1963 - 76 years after Tucker answered it! Rand wrote,

Quote
A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” ...Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses. Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.

One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.

Of course, every advocacy of market anarchism written ever since has addressed this objection. For example, David Friedman here. The simple answer is that providers of force establish between one another contractual rules to decide when one may proceed against the clients of others, probably also including arbitration clauses to see when these contracts are in effect, so providing court cases. It would be in firm's rational self-interest to establish such arrangements so as to avoid the costs of conflict.

Quote
Consolidating the right to legitimate use of non-self defense force with one agency makes much more sense to me.

There is no such thing as legitimate non-self defense force. Any force that is not in self-defense is necessarily in offense, surely, and thus against somebody that is not doing something against anybody else.

Do you advocate world government? After all, you could go to your government with a claim that so-and-so has violated your rights, but so-and-so could be a citizen of another government, say the Canadian one, and could go to his and say that he has done nothing wrong but your government is trying to arrest him. It seems like the same problem you describe would exist when you have seperate national governments. But if having just one overarching government is the only solution, then surely you must be an advocate of world-government.

If not, though, then it seems hard to trace a consistency in your position: When the citizens of two nation states get in a dispute, one demanding his state proceed against the other citizen, the latter demanding that his state protects him from such, you say we don't need a monopoly organisation to resolve all such disputes, with the sole right to enforce the verdict... but then when we take out "citizen" and "nation state" and put "customer" and "protection agency" in their place, suddenly this ceases to be true?!
Logged

freeAgent

  • pwn*
  • FTL AMPlifier
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3660
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #94 on: May 17, 2009, 12:43:47 PM »

Homesteading is great and all, but I don't see it translating well into human bodies.  You could homestead a body with a bunch of debt.  Where's the incentive to homestead that?  Even if you homesteaded a body, found the murderer, and convicted him in one of your private courts or whatever, what legitimate claims to damages could you make?  The body stunk up your dumpster?  Since your justice system is based completely on reparations, it seems like you could easily get away with murder in scenarios like that.  The only penalty you might face would be similar to littering.

You could get feuds with situations where third parties get involved with justice because it isn't clear who started what.  There are also obligations of other third parties to protect the people who get involved, and it could spiral out of control.  I'm thinking of a situation like WWI alliances which led to war not just between a small number of countries, but between almost all countries in Europe and North America.

So your answer to the competing protection agency problem is to establish something like a United Nations of protection agencies?  Interesting, given how effective the UN is in real-life.

I don't see how you now go back to say that all non-self defense force is unjustified.  Protection agencies and government are, by definition, initiating force whenever they take action in defense of one of their clients.  A government and a protection agency would be no different in that way.

I'm fine with a one world government so long as it protects people's rights instead of infringing on them.  However, it seems like the way you're describing multiple national governments is much like the way you describe competing defense agencies.  As I've alluded to before, our defense agencies have the UN and all sorts of agreements between each other where they have agreed to get along.  We must be living in anarchtopia!  It seems that you recognize that fact as well:

Quote
When the citizens customers of two nation states defense agencies get in a dispute, one demanding his state agency proceed against the other citizen customer, the latter demanding that his state agency protects him from such, you say we don't need a monopoly organisation to resolve all such disputes, with the sole right to enforce the verdict... but then when we take out "citizen" "customer" and "nation state" "defense agency" and put "customer" citizen and "protection agency" nation state in their place, suddenly this ceases to be true?!

I don't know about you, but if this is anarchy, I am not a fan.
Logged

MacFall

  • Agorist
  • FTL AMPlifier Silver
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2295
  • No king but Christ; no law but liberty!
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #95 on: May 17, 2009, 01:48:55 PM »

Holy gigantic blazing strawmen!

Quote
Since your justice system is based completely on reparations

No. It is based on defense. Reparation is simply retroactive defense. A criminal forfeits their rights to the extent that they have violated the rights of others. It would be completely just to take the life of a murderer, although it would be far more beneficial to force the murderer to work off a restitutive debt instead. This scenario also assumes that the victim had no heirs, because if he did, the murderer would owe them restitution, regardless of who found the body. Or his life, if they chose.

Quote
I'm thinking of a situation like WWI alliances which led to war not just between a small number of countries, but between almost all countries in Europe and North America.

Governments dragging their slave-populations into the fights they start happens with governments. Not in a scenario where a company can lose its customers in a matter of hours when the customers find out that the company is up to no good. And especially not when those customers would also have the unquestioned right to form their own defensive organizations, even to protect themselves against their former protectors.

Quote
So your answer to the competing protection agency problem is to establish something like a United Nations of protection agencies? 

No. You're the one saying that.

Quote
I don't see how you now go back to say that all non-self defense force is unjustified.

There are only two kinds of force: initiatory, and defense against initiatory force. If you're not defending yourself or another in your act of force, you are violating another person's rights. Period.

Quote
Protection agencies and government are, by definition, initiating force whenever they take action in defense of one of their clients.

Bullshit. The most basic rights theory asserts that rights can be delegated. Protection agencies act upon the rights delegated to them, by consent. Governments violate the rights of everyone in the area of their control simply by existing.

Quote
A government and a protection agency would be no different in that way.

Except for how they would be entirely different, which is in the very principle of how they operate.

Quote
I'm fine with a one world government so long as it protects people's rights instead of infringing on them.

LOL!

Also, it's funny how you continue to imagine that PDAs would behave just like governments do. Trying to draw analogies between governments and defense organizations is like trying to describe space travel as the operation of a lot of horse-carts.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2009, 01:58:49 PM by MacFall »
Logged
I am an anarchist! HOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

Richard Garner

  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 303
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #96 on: May 17, 2009, 02:34:19 PM »

Homesteading is great and all, but I don't see it translating well into human bodies.

It is not homesteading the body, it is homesteading the claim against the wrongdoer, namely the murderer. In societies with private enforcement of law, like Medieval Iceland, claims for restitution were private property and could be sold, gifted, or bequeathed, so that those who were too weak or poorly acquainted to enforce it themselves could sell it to someone who wasn't. In a scenario such as you imagined, of somebody who was murdered without leaving an heir, and no proper heir could be found, this piece of property, the claim for restitution, becomes essentially unowned, since there is no legitimate owner. As unowned property, it can be homesteaded, then.

Quote
You could homestead a body with a bunch of debt.  Where's the incentive to homestead that?  Even if you homesteaded a body, found the murderer, and convicted him in one of your private courts or whatever, what legitimate claims to damages could you make?  The body stunk up your dumpster?  Since your justice system is based completely on reparations, it seems like you could easily get away with murder in scenarios like that.  The only penalty you might face would be similar to littering.

This is not relevant, since you misunderstood the point.

Quote
You could get feuds with situations where third parties get involved with justice because it isn't clear who started what.

I'm not sure what you are saying here.

Quote
There are also obligations of other third parties to protect the people who get involved, and it could spiral out of control.  I'm thinking of a situation like WWI alliances which led to war not just between a small number of countries, but between almost all countries in Europe and North America.

Yes, and... I can't see the relavance.

Quote
So your answer to the competing protection agency problem is to establish something like a United Nations of protection agencies?  Interesting, given how effective the UN is in real-life.

No, my answer is that protection agencies, in order to avoid the costs of conflicts, will contract the services of arbitors to resolve their disputes.

Quote
I don't see how you now go back to say that all non-self defense force is unjustified.  Protection agencies and government are, by definition, initiating force whenever they take action in defense of one of their clients.

No they are not, they are acting as the agents of their clients, using defensive force on his behalf. I can't see how defense is offense. You'll have to explain that.

Quote
I'm fine with a one world government so long as it protects people's rights instead of infringing on them.  However, it seems like the way you're describing multiple national governments is much like the way you describe competing defense agencies.  As I've alluded to before, our defense agencies have the UN and all sorts of agreements between each other where they have agreed to get along.  We must be living in anarchtopia!  It seems that you recognize that fact as well:

Quote
When the citizens customers of two nation states defense agencies get in a dispute, one demanding his state agency proceed against the other citizen customer, the latter demanding that his state agency protects him from such, you say we don't need a monopoly organisation to resolve all such disputes, with the sole right to enforce the verdict... but then when we take out "citizen" "customer" and "nation state" "defense agency" and put "customer" citizen and "protection agency" nation state in their place, suddenly this ceases to be true?!

I don't know about you, but if this is anarchy, I am not a fan.

Well, the obvious difference is that states can externalise their costs onto their citizens, so they have to worry less about the costs of conflicts with each other. Security firms, on the other hand, have no tax payers, and no conscripts.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2009, 02:35:52 PM by Richard Garner »
Logged

Diogenes The Cynic

  • Cynic. Pessimist. Skeptic. Jerk.
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3727
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #97 on: May 18, 2009, 11:05:38 PM »

That doesn't make sense at all. Private feuds are vastly preferable to a monopoly government, which drags everyone in the area it controls into the conflicts which it enters (or starts). And it's not like they'd be common anyway, as nobody's neighbors would put up with that sort of shit for very long. People who can't control their violent urges would be excluded and eliminated from a free society. On the other hand, they are exactly the sort who would go and work for a government where one exists.

In a book of mine (a compilation of good wild west stories) there is a real picture of several bodies that were the result of a water feud. Had there been fear of official reprisal (a government that protected people from one another) that was fair in nature, I cant help but think that those deaths would not have happened.

Saying "they would work for a government anyways" isn't a good argument. How do you know that?

Lastly, a minimum of government is needed because people suck, and thus those who suck would band together to form large groups of terrible people who rob others a la The Seven Samurai. You could say that a government is just that, but if governments worked on the basis of a social contract theory, then a crappy result will not be inevitable.

Remember the three types of people in Team America: World Police?
Logged
I am looking for an honest man. -Diogenes The Cynic

Dude, I thought you were a spambot for like a week. You posted like a spambot. You failed the Turing test.

                                -Dennis Goddard

MacFall

  • Agorist
  • FTL AMPlifier Silver
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2295
  • No king but Christ; no law but liberty!
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #98 on: May 18, 2009, 11:12:21 PM »

social contract

My cue to stop taking an argument seriously.
Logged
I am an anarchist! HOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

Diogenes The Cynic

  • Cynic. Pessimist. Skeptic. Jerk.
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3727
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #99 on: May 18, 2009, 11:13:07 PM »

Logged
I am looking for an honest man. -Diogenes The Cynic

Dude, I thought you were a spambot for like a week. You posted like a spambot. You failed the Turing test.

                                -Dennis Goddard

MacFall

  • Agorist
  • FTL AMPlifier Silver
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2295
  • No king but Christ; no law but liberty!
    • View Profile
Logged
I am an anarchist! HOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

Diogenes The Cynic

  • Cynic. Pessimist. Skeptic. Jerk.
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3727
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #101 on: May 18, 2009, 11:21:02 PM »

social contract

My cue to stop taking an argument seriously.

Why?

Seriously?  :?

Every belief must have a logical basis behind it. If you disapprove of the social contract theory, then you should explain why that is so.
Logged
I am looking for an honest man. -Diogenes The Cynic

Dude, I thought you were a spambot for like a week. You posted like a spambot. You failed the Turing test.

                                -Dennis Goddard

MacFall

  • Agorist
  • FTL AMPlifier Silver
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2295
  • No king but Christ; no law but liberty!
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #102 on: May 18, 2009, 11:47:47 PM »

Social contract theory has been debunked roundly by Spooner, Tucker, Mises, Rothbard, and many others. It's as silly a theory as the geocentric model of the solar system. But I'll boil down the argument for you:

A contract is a form of consent. There can be no such thing as a contract without the knowledge and consent of the contractor. You do not consent to anything by being born. There is no agreement between a person and the government, except that the person shall obey the government and respect their monopoly on legal violence, or ultimately die for their disobedience. That's not a contract; that's slavery.
Logged
I am an anarchist! HOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

Richard Garner

  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 303
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #103 on: May 19, 2009, 05:23:22 AM »

That doesn't make sense at all. Private feuds are vastly preferable to a monopoly government, which drags everyone in the area it controls into the conflicts which it enters (or starts). And it's not like they'd be common anyway, as nobody's neighbors would put up with that sort of shit for very long. People who can't control their violent urges would be excluded and eliminated from a free society. On the other hand, they are exactly the sort who would go and work for a government where one exists.

In a book of mine (a compilation of good wild west stories) there is a real picture of several bodies that were the result of a water feud. Had there been fear of official reprisal (a government that protected people from one another) that was fair in nature, I cant help but think that those deaths would not have happened.

Saying "they would work for a government anyways" isn't a good argument. How do you know that?

Murder rates in the worst cattle towns in the old west were better than in modern Washington DC. A classic essay on private provision of law and order in the old west here.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2009, 09:33:45 AM by Richard Garner »
Logged

Richard Garner

  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 303
    • View Profile
Re: Is the NAP Necessary?
« Reply #104 on: May 19, 2009, 05:25:03 AM »

social contract

My cue to stop taking an argument seriously.

Why?

There is no social contract. Nobody signed anything. That simple.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7] 8   Go Up
+  The Free Talk Live BBS
|-+  Free Talk Live
| |-+  General
| | |-+  Is the NAP Necessary?

// ]]>

Page created in 0.022 seconds with 32 queries.