This is a question to those who, like me, believe that only physical harm should be considered a crime, so for example paying a hitman should not be a crime.
The question is this: let’s say I tell my girlfriend, who of course trusts me, that in order to make a surprise for her, she will have to close her eyes and walk where I tell her to. Then I tell her to walk straight into a highway thus killing her.
Am I liable for murder? If only physical actions matter, then how can I be liable?
This is a question to those who, like me, believe that only physical harm should be considered a crime, so for example paying a hitman should not be a crime.
Does this mean that Mao was innocent? What about a general who orders a villiage to be massacered?
That’s like saying it was “gravity’s fault” if you drop a piano on someone’s head and kill them. You don’t nessecarily blame the immediate cause of the harm if the circumstances around it prove otherwise. Your scenerio is pretty clearly fraud. Your GF would have no reasonable expectation under the law that you were trying to kill her.
People are very different, with different morality and values. In order to have maximum freedom for everyone to act according with their own values, you need to separate property so that one person will be able to isolated himself completely from others if he wanted to.
When you invade someone’s property because he said something that you, using your values, construed as immoral or endandering (like cross this street), you make a kind of collectivistic judgement about common values. I want to avoid that.
If people will have to be afraid for saying things, that will hurt freedom and will prevents clear isolation via property rights.
Oh but he could say the “surprise” is her getting killed. But he’s also be wrong in saying this clears him of liability. There are reasonable, common-law standards and definitions that would likely be used in a private-law society. The same way that when you sell somebody a product labled “milk”, they don’t expect it to be 50% vegetable oil, or even 10% or 1%, and selling such a product labled as “milk” would constitute an act of fraud.
Not if she’s dead (and maybe right before she dies). Look, Eugene keeps making these goofy threads, so they deserve goofy responses. A lot of these questions can be answered by reading What Law Is by Clayton. I’ll post an excerpt that I think is particularly relevant:
Clearly, Eugene’s dead girlfriend (EDG) cannot press charges against Eugene, so where is the conflict? It is with whoever has a conflict with Eugene over this, most likely EDG’s family, but it could be anybody. Eugene’s question just misses the whole point:
If Eugene kills his girlfiend, and there is some other person in the world that gives a damn (sopinwtgad), there is a conflict. Period. We cannot know how an anarchic society would resolve the conflict. If Eugene and sopinwtgad cannot resolve the dispute, there will be open conflict. If sopinwtgad wants Eugene dead for his transgression against EDG, then there will be open conflict until one or the other dies. I mean really, what kind of question is this…If I kill my girlfriend through especially crafty means, will someone else care if I killed her?
I am not disputing the fact that in a free society conflicts will be resolved according to people’s wishes and ethics. Instead it is the ethics I argue about, and the principles which will guide me personally when going to an arbitrator.
There are a lot of ways to punish a person without invading his property. You can useuse santions against him or ostracize him completely. So I’m sure immoral people will get what they deserve. I only question our rights to invade the property of people just for saying words. It only makes sense that property invasion would only be used as a retaliation against other property invasion. Yet what property invasion was in my case of lying to my girlfriend? Obviously it was terribly immoral, but was there property invasion that would justify property invasion?
You can argue that there was property invasion because the girl ended up dead, but I did not directly cause it. I only led her to believe something that was untrue, I lied. I think that invading property for lying is not good indicator of freedom.
Look, Eugene, the whole reason of going to an arbitrator is to resolve a dispute. If someone else defrauded your girlfriend and she died as a result, it is up to you if you want to do nothing. But in this case, EDG’s father has a dispute with you, and if you don’t resolve it, you both will be in open conflict.
If you can’t see why it is against the NAP to defraud people, then there really isn’t much to say.
