I run into this type of argument against the NAP. How would you counter?
A camper is in the woods and gets lost. It is very cold, he is hungry and scared. He finds an empty cabin, breaks in, and uses their phone to call for help. The non-aggression principle holds that it is wrong for that man to break into the cabin on the grounds that the breaking in is an act of aggression towards the cabin’s owner, which seems to be a silly conclusion. Any logic that leads to such an absurd conclusion must be flawed.
There is nothing flawed about it. It is aggression, the cabin owner is not responbisble for your getting lost, so why should he pay for it with a broken door?
There are plenty of cases where any moral person would indeed commit aggression (eg there is a baby drowning so you steal a boat to save it). The difference is a moral person would take responsibility for it after the act and submit himself to the consequences of it and not try to wiggle out of it .
In this case it means that if you pay for the damages you and the cabin owner can still be friends. But if you claim that it is not your responsibility and refuse to pay up then you are obviously a moral degenerate.
the NAP doesn’t necessarily say that such aggressions are “wrong”, it says they are morally wrong.
So I’d recommend that the camper break in to the cabin. But also acknowledge that technically what he did was morally wrong, and accept responsibility for his actions afterward.
Even if you pay the required penalty, your breaking in would be a wrong act at the point when you did it. You couldn’t have been aware of the consequences of your act (maybe the owner would starve if you used the phone, because it costs him £1000 a minute etc.) You couldn’t have known he would accept a contract of X damages for the violation of his property.
Thus you must resolve not to break in, as it is wrong, regardless of what you expect the owner to do.
In any case, one has to wonder whose forest it is the individual is lost in, and why they don’t have a mobile phone etc.
What if the owner is away for weeks? What if this was a life or death situation? At some point you have to weigh the pros of being a perfectly virtuous anarcho-capitalist against the cons of dying of hypothermia, thirst, or bear-mauling. I’d say, in this specific scenario, to commit the crime and pay the consequences. Committing crime for the purpose of self-preservation is nothing new. I wouldn’t say it’s justified, but it’s necessary.
The great thing about the message of complete liberty is the promise to deal with crime as effectively as possible through market forces. Let’s not get bogged down by setting unrealistic standards for those who wish to adhere to libertarian ideals.
Sure, I look at the NAP as an ideal to live by, but if I’m at a bar and some guy calls my girl a bitch, and then looks me in the eye and calls me a pussy, you better damn well believe that I’m about to violate the NAP.
You misunderstood. I did not mean to say you count on the good will of the owner. I said you accept full responsibility for all the consequences of your act and give yourself up to the mercy of the court and pay whatever price they assign without signing a sigh. If your phoning caused the owner to starve then that price is going to be that much higher.
No, I don`t think the hiker should die in the forrest before he should break in and use a phone. What if he had found a child lost in the forrest and as calling on both of their behalf? What if the child is yours? Should he still not call for the fear that it might cause damages to the cabin owner he can not foresee? If he is moral he will take the responsibility for commiting this aggression to save the child.
full responsibility for having done what was morally wrong; a property crime. to avoid falling into error on the point, the aggressor must admit that he should not have aggressed from the moral standpoint. The reasons or excuses as to why he aggressed come form his having put that standpoint below other standpoints.
being ‘generous’ in providing ‘assistance’ is not a moral issue. its a question of taste. if he is moral he will refrain from doing immoral things. if he is moral all the times he is moral except for when he is not. then that’s what he is.
This topic was debated endlessly on the Sterba thread
I don`t know what “falling into error on the point” means. You are going to have to use less fancy phrases.
Taking responsibility means that you declare you were aware what you were doing, were aware of the consequences that were certain to stem from your action, were aware that further consequences could stemm from your action and that you are ready to pay the full price for your action and all the consequences, foreseen and unforeseen. It does not require of you to admit you should not have done it. And it has nothing to do with reasons or excuses.
are things that are immoral things that you should not do ? what does immoral mean aside from that you should refrain from doing it.
certainly, people should take responsibility for their actions; i could not and would not argue against that. but this will not allow anyone to sustain that immoral acts should be done under X conditions (like taking responsibility after)
indeed, taking you up on your point…
if there is no reason to admit you should not have done it… if having done it was not immoral of you… then you take responsibility for having committed an act that was not immoral, you take responsibility for having done -nothing wrong-
It seems kind of silly to extend the principle as far as you have. I would submit that, if you were in the camper’s situation and it seemed to you to be life or death, you enter the empty cabin and call for help. Not even Rothbard takes the NAP as far as you do.
Rephrasement of the stealing bread to survive story. Yes its a crime to steal bread to survive and to break into a cabin that isn’t yours. Correctly labeling a crime as a crime is not absurd logic.
Immoral things are those things that should you commit them will mean that you are (to some extent) an immoral induvidual.
It is only you who phrased actions as moral/immoral. Until now I have only talked about moral/immoral persons.
No, I do not belive breaking the NAP is always an immoral act.
Again. It is you who are phrasing such and such acts as we talked about as immoral acts. I did not agree to this.
Nobody is “allowed” or “disallowed” to break the NAP. The NAP is there to determine what actions carry the consequence of punishment and which actions do not carry the consequence of punishment. It is grounds for the only possible legal system.
It is not there to determine which actions are moral and which actions are immoral. It is possible to do something immoral without breaking the NAP.
In certain theorethical circumstances, that are extremely unlikely in real life and that the was overwhelming mayority of people will never find themselves in, certainly not me or you, the moral thing is to break the NAP and later on accept your full punishment. In essence - sacrificing yourself.
The problem arises when people want to break the NAP but not accept the punishment, thus sacrificing others rather than themselves.
I take responsibility for the damages inflicted on others without their permission. The same way I accept a hangover when I have had too much to drink. It does not mean I was wrong to drink.
EDIT: I must say it is only a possibility when the aggression is of such a nature that the aggressed upon can later on be compensated for to a satisfactory degree. For example property damage or bodily damage that can heal.
you are confusing the Non-aggression principle - which is the principle that it is wrong and immoral and should be refrained from aggressing the property of innocennts
with the non-aggression without due compensation principle - which is a peculiar modern invention of this forum, some of the blame I lay at the feet of Walter B, even though I am largely a Blockean.
Rothbard (for one) is terribly clear that Natural Law is a body of Ethics, that entails certain legal principles for the functioning of a prosperous and moral society. you are overfocused on the legal principles that he highlighted in their legal aspect; and you have somehow managed to ignore their connection to the dictates of morality; indeed the very analysis he used to discover and justify them.
the reasoning Rothbard uses to sift through candidates for good earthbound Law puts the greatest weight on such Law as being moral. The Law is not empty of normative values (at least, they should not be for you in so much as you follow Rothbard, if you do… perhaps you do not follow Rothbard…)
the NAP is not a normatively empty proposition and Rothbard did not treat it as such, Hoppe does not treat it as such. Unfortunately with Block, sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. there is some confusion over there on his part.
This is obviously the right answer. Property does not exist for its own sake; rather it exists for the well-fare of humanity and when the common good requires that property rights be put to the side then it is only proper to do so (human life > a door).