You have to understand nuclear devices are very delicate, high maintenance items. You just cannot put them in a bunker underground and give them a look once in a while. They need to be monitored regularly (frequence varies according to the tech employed) by highly trained personnel using high tech equipment. A good chunk of the routine on an SSBN (nuclear armed submarine) revolves around making sure the nuclear weapons on board are working. If something’s wrong procedures have been devised to replace the whole missile at sea with the help of a submarine tender. SSBN’s are on 24/7 watch and cannot lose time re-entering harbor to do a missile swap.
Of course there’s literally a price to pay for this. Nuclear weapons are expensive to design, expensive to manufacture and expensive to maintain. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia invested a disproportionate chunk of her budget to keep nuclear weapons working, at cost of leaving her conventional military to rot. Can a private group afford such costs? Perhaps, but I don’t think nobody ever did more than back of the envelope speculation.
Of course nuclear weapons have one huge bonus: they are the most powerful deterrent ever devised by man. Nikita Khrushchev understood this perfectly, so much he invested ungodly amounts of resources to close the nuclear gap with the US. US armed services were well aware around 1959 the US had a huge advantage over the USSR (which the Soviets desperately tried to close by fielding IRBM’s in Cuba, even at the cost of a serious political crisis) but played along the Soviets’ scheme. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) was seen as preferable to the temptation of launching a pre-emptive strike with unknown consequences. At the very worst nuclear weapons can be used as a Samson Option (Israel’s original nuclear doctrine): foreigners will think twice about invading your territory if you can take friends and foes together into nuclear oblivion.
One thing that should be considered is nuclear weapons can also be used as bargaining chips. Israel’s original Samson Option has evolved over time into a brutal yet effective diplomatic doctrine. Israeli leaders can force the US and Europe’s hand by threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Sure, they may be bluffing but do you really want to find out? Also Israel has been rumored to have offered a few Arab countries with good unofficial relationships (Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) a nuclear umbrella of protection in return for political benefits. Same thing about North Korea, which has been known to use her nuclear program as a bargaining tool to get fuel, food and money out of the US, Japan, ROK and even China.
So you see: a nuclear weapon is not just an instrument to destroy your enemies. It’s so mind-numbingly powerful it has other uses nobody could have envisioned in the late '40s.
…and even still, “it’s so scary that I feel safer making sure only a State, comprised of elitist sociopaths and narcissists, which holds a monopoly on legal force, has legal access to this sort of material.”
…nevermind the fact that there’s no feasible way average everyday individuals would have the resources (i.e. knowledge, land, capital, raw materials, maintenence personel, etc.) to even begin to have such a thing…no, if individuals were legally allowed to have them, nuclear weapons would be just as plentiful as handguns, and would be owned and used by just as many people.
I mean, just look at the news, a new gunman seems to popout every other day. Imagine that but with a nuke. (And of course there’s no way the media would report and repeat such stories in such a way that it would seem a new gunman pops out every other day when that really wasn’t the case. No. If it seems that way based on news reports, that must be the reality.)
Dude lol, the point is we are talking not about KITCHEN bombs, or fully auto-m4’s, but NUKES.
If you cannot offer a reasonable solution to that and the other military equipment, than as far as I’m concerned, this is a major plot hole in the anarchist story. Also, the potential of another Hitler certainly isn’t out of the picture the way our world is spinning out of control, and the need of an organized and efficient/proficient military SURELY, to you, MUST be more favorable to that of a ragtag group of businessmen/farmer civilians with shotguns.
But I guess if we all had nukes we could just blow the invaders up, and of course, deal with the occasional madman who destroys an entire city.
Are you disputing the fact that these gunmen exist? I’m pretty sure that the news ran the story because many people die from these gunman.
Are you suggesting that these events don’t occur? Why shouldn’t a reasonable, peaceful man be wary that there are people who would kill him without remorse?
Right. Something that virtually no one has the knowledge, land, capital, raw materials, maintenence personel, and all the other resources necessary to even begin to create. Which makes one wonder why you’re so much more afraid of that than of things that virtually any person could theoretically create, or better yet, buy from almost anywhere.
It’s like walking along the banks of a volcanic lava flow and being afraid of getting stabbed by a unicorn.
a) As we just established, this scenario of nuclear bombs being as plentiful and widely dispursed as handguns is about as realistic as Lindsay Lohan winning a clean sweep of the Nobel Prizes the same day that Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley hotwire an old space shuttle and go do an actual moonwalk.
b) Extrapolations of widescale defense in a free society have been made. And provided to you. Here are some. Here’s more. I’m sorry that you will not take the time to investigate and look into the answers you seek. I truly am.
c) I do not know of this “anarchist story” of which you speak. Could you tell it to me?
sigh
I really wish you’d at least look at some of the resources provided to you before making statements like that. You’d look a lot less foolish.
One more time…how in the hell of Oprah Winfrey’s sex chamber are “we all” going to have nukes? Please. Just explain that to me. I really want to know what sort of economic calculations are going on in your head when you come up with things like this.
I’m simply pointing out the irony that you would actually use the accurate phrasing of “a new gunman seems to popout every other day.”
I’m suggesting that making assumptions about the world based on what “seems” to be the case due to news media infotainment reports is quite naive, and actually pretty dangerous.
No system is perfect. There will always be disputes and conflict. Libertarian anarchists do not want the solution to be monopolized and centralized power. We want just the opposite (i.e. decentralized power). There is no way to predict the exact outcomes of anarchy, but there is also no way to predict the exact outcomes of statism. We can point to what would be likely outcomes, but there are no assurances for any system.
Let me provide a different example, the FDA. Drugs require FDA approval, and this takes years. Statist supporters of the FDA like to point out the lives that are saved from requiring FDA approval. Antistate detractors like to point out the deaths that happen because the FDA takes so long to approve drugs. People are going to die either way. But surely letting people decide for themselves if the risk of certain side effects are worth it is the better way.
Apply this to the nuclear arsenal. Something has to happen to the nukes. But what? Well, as established by Kakugo, it is expensive to maintain nuclear weapons. Without a tax base, who is going to be paying to maintain them? Most likely these weapons would be harvested for materials and put to a different use. I cannot prove this. I can only say that it is likely because of the high opportunity cost to maintain the nuclear weapons. And of course, since the nuclear weapons are centralized, all that is required for them to be launched is for the POTUS to give the order. One person has to give the order and then other people will have to carry it out, people who have been conditioned for years to follow orders. Considering the warhawks in the Republican party, do you really want all of that power centralized so that all it takes is one warmongering fool to get elected and start launching?
Or we could decentralize power and sell the nukes off for scrap and be put to other, more productive uses.
So are we assuming a scenario where a former military bunker is abandoned and nuclear weapons are just sitting there waiting for someone to come take one?
I ask because the OP is so incredibly vague that it hardly even constitutes a meaningful hypothetical question imo.
What do you mean by abandoned? That everyone in the bunker just ups and leaves? I mean, considering the bunker is unjust property, why not have the people working there homestead the bunker (after all, they are the ones using it) and then liquidate it, share the proceeds, and then go their separate ways?
I’m just trying to understand what he means by an anarchist society “emerging.”
Are we assuming that the military has completely dissolved overnight and left all the nuclear weapons just sitting around in bunkers? Are there ex-military personnel still stationed/homesteading/whatever there? Do they have access to the weapons?
It’s interesting how so quickly and easily you jump back to rubber stamping aggression. I guess never underestimate the power of a little ignorance mixed with a little fear.
Now all of your questions have been responded to. I find it curious how you completely ignore every one of my points and questions to you. Would you please address those? We have all been kind enough to address all of yours.
? What does that mean? You mean you have no idea how the scenarios you propose would even begin to be plausible?..the very scenarios you base your entire reasoning on?
That doesn’t exactly sound very well-thought out to me. Perhaps you should do some more consideration of your positions here.
Under Anarchy, suppose the free market made nuclear weapons accessible to everyone at a reasponable price – for deterrence naturally…
Imagine a crazed man who, in our current system, may kill 20 or so with an Ak-47. In this system, he buys a nuke, for deterence reasons, naturally, or so the seller beleives.
And then he destroys a city.
Is this plausible to you (in the future)? What do you say to this scenario?
I suggest you read my post, the one that JJ linked to, and then you read Kakugo’s post that I linked to in my post. Nuclear weapons are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people, and then the cost of maintaining such a weapon is also prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people.
Your scenario is incredibly implausible. Why should we entertain your hypotheticals when you have yet to respond to either me or Kakugo?
Because you don’t have a plausible answer for my scenario.
Once upon a time cars and tvs weren’t widely accessible. People found a way to make them accessible. Mind you, I spoke of the future, so imagine a time and place that makes nuclear weapons relatively cheap. Even if they cost a few years worth saving, people would want them as, you know, deterrents to their neighbors, who have a nuke!
Perhaps they are bought out by a billionaire! Perhaps he uses them as bargaining chips to install himself as dictator! If people don’t follow him, he’ll blow them up!
With all due respect, you are entirely ignoring the actual economics involved. It was not long before the vast majority of people could afford cars and tv’s, and that’s due to mass production. Would you care to explain the method of mass producing nuclear weapons?
I also sincerely doubt you read the article I linked to by Roderick Long.