Here’s one way: Strict control of detonators. The United States imposes criminal penalties on anyone who possesses detonators without explicit state permission to do so. As a result many nutjobs who might whip up a truck bomb are unable to acquire one of the key ingredients. But my right as an individual to build or buy detonators without state oversight is infringed. My right to peacably possess detonators is also infringed.
Own a gun. And pay for protection services.
Libertarianism doesn’t protect you. Libertarianism empowers you to protect yourself. No one can protect you, without stripping away your liberty.
That is the deal. If you want to be free, you take on some risk. Considering how ineffective state protection is anyway (corrupt, uncompetitive) I can’t see how people could be any worse off. As it is, the police spend more time and resources terrorizing citizens than they do criminals anyway.
The US also imposes strict controls on Marijuana. How is that war on drugs working out?
Guy, you can get nuke specs on the internet. A federal ban is meaningless. The bad guys don’t obey the law.
When detonators are outlawed, only outlaws will have detonators.
Seriously, it takes more than just a “nutjob” to plan and execute a terrorist attack with a car bomb. The great fallacy is to think that banning the possession of certain ingredients will cause them to disappear magically. That is not the case. They will simply become more expensive and of worse quality. Thus, maybe your bomb that was intended to destroy the US embassy instead destroys a kindergarten. Nothing gained here.
No it wouldn’t. If I want to commit a random act of mass murder right now all i have to do is go someplace I know there aren’t going to be any weapons around (like a school or college). We live in a society where the lawless all have weapons and the law abiding citizens depend on the state to protect them. In a free society most of those law abiding citizens would be armed and it would actually be much more dangerous to commit crimes.
The fact that some government has instituted an unjustifiable or ineffective ban (say on guns or marijuana) doesn’t in itself mean that all bans are unjustified and ineffective.
Many plots to build bombs for nefarious purposes have been thwarted thanks to the extremely tight controls on acquiring and possessing detonators and refined nuclear material. I would also suggest that the impact on individual liberty of these regulations has not been excessively negative.
So perhaps we can reduce the question to:
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Either argue that unfettered access to refined nuclear material or to detonators will not increase the risk of random mass murder, or
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Argue that the cost of maintaining coercive controls on these items exceeds the benefit, or else
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Establish a clear and principled line on when coercive controls (which infringe liberty) are acceptable and when they are not. E.g., detonators yes because XXX but small firearms no because YYY.
I really don’t see why, if it could’ve happened it already would’ve happened.
Well this is just the classic argument on whether loosing freedom vs. security is worth it. And I personally believe that those who do not believe that full freedom is worth it will just enter in concentual union with others that believe the same and set up a more “secure” community.
I don’t really see the point in establishing arbitrary boundaries, they’ll obviously hold under XXXYYY but not under WWW or ZZZ, a small change in reasoning will render them useless. The crazy lunatic guy will get his hands on a detonator some way or another. I really don’t think people will go around selling detonators to self-described maniacs, but the “terrorist” will be able to get his supplies. If you withdraw the political/religious pretext for these attacks, you’ll be left mostly with the crazies, and although they’re crazy, they’re often easy to deal with.
You’re right, but other theory does. In a market (black or otherwise) what happens when you attempt to limit supply…? Price goes up and people are more willing to take the risks to get that product because the payoff is higher. Bans are losing battles for whoever is trying to enforce them.
I just did.
Do you really believe this stuff?
Name 3.
That’s your own evaluation, and the only person you are qualified to assess the impact of that, is on yourself. Not anyone else.
Why can’t we just make an argument for liberty? Period. Why does it have to be consequentialist? Why does it have to be utilitarian? Why can’t there be a moral and ethical argument?
I mean seriously, you are arguing for coercion. Which is a sin. Which is a crime. If it is wrong for me to coerce, why is it right for a government to do so? What superior moral authority to do evil belongs to people when they work in a group? Is a single killer a murderer and a gang of killers a government?
Maybe you’re not quite ready yet for liberty. You seem to think it is ok to hurt other people and steal from them, as long as it is for a purpose for which you approve. That’s statism, not libertarianism.
In principle and in general I would tend to agree, but in this case I believe the real world refutes your theory: The U.S. government has been winning the battle to restrict and control both detonaters domestically and refined nuclear material internationally.
I guess I’m not ready – I didn’t realize liberty is a religion.
I apologize for trying to consider libertarian principles in the context of a world in which people weigh the consequences of policies before agreeing to them.
It’s not a religion. It simply isn’t compatible with coercion.
The primary libertarian principle, is non-aggression. You can try to frame it, and place it in whatever context you want, but if you are talking about coercion or aggression, you are not talking about liberty. Regardless of whatever consequentialist, nationalist, or utilitarian arguments you make.
The defensive strawman is not needed; we were all new to questioning statism at some point, & we all eventually evolve as our respective knowledge bases increases. Questioning Statism, & the basis of it’s power, coercion, is a learning process, not an initiation ceremony.
Coercion for your own convenience most certainly threatens the concept of liberty. You have to look into this & determine whether or not you agree with it yourself, however. [Y]
Here’s the question you must answer: are you prepared to go to war to ban a product that you fear would be used to make war on you?
To most of us that is nonsensical. We are not willing to fight people to take away their means to fight.
I can appreciate all of the appeals to principle, but many of the recent posts have stopped at principle to avoid answering a difficult question. “Aggression/coercion is never justified” is a cop-out, like saying “Killing is always wrong” or “Violence is never the answer.” You’re not going to convince anybody but co-religionists if you can’t reason that your principles work in practice.
Yes, that formulation does sound nonsensical. But the items in question here are a little more nuanced. True, detonators are required components of legitimate weapons. But they also enable a single person to commit a mindless act of violence completely out of proportion to the means of his victims to anticipate or thwart the threat, or to retaliate or seek redress for it.
It may not be intentional, but I actually think the way the U.S. regulates detonators has a certain principled elegance to it: Private entities can acquire them, but only if they demonstrate that they have the means to safely handle and account for their use.
Similarly, refined nuclear materials pose a potential threat orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional explosives. Hence, most people stand behind the effort of global authorities to ensure that nothing short of a state actor that can be held accountable for those materials gets access.
So my request stands: Offer a coherent argument, based on libertarian principles if you wish, that the cost of criminalizing the possession of these items exceeds the benefit. I.e., imagine I am a completely rational person who has been told that I stand less of a chance of being randomly killed if I sign on to an entity – call it government – that aims to imprison any individual who acquires detonators without its sanction.
Or, if you agree that the benefit of control exceeds the cost, then offer a reasoned and principled theory as to when an item can be banned by a coercive entity.
You did not answer the question. Are you ready to go to war in order to avoid going to war?
If I may rephrase it as a non-self-refuting question that applies to this discussion: Yes, I am willing to initiate aggression against a person in order to thwart his attempts to acquire the means to asymmetrically threaten me and my neighbors.
Even if the government can be relatively efficient in certain situation does it mean that the free market wouldn’t be more efficient while at the same time free of various negative consequences such as the loss of freedom? Think about all the laws that actually prevent you from defending against criminals and terrorist. How many governments allow people to have guns to defend themselves? If the airline pilots were armed perhpaps September 11 wouldn’t have happened. In fact, I’m pretty sure that hijacking is would be much harder to pull of in a free society because people would be more used to active defense instead of waiting for the police to help them.
Let’s say that instead of one monoplist government who forces everyone to pay taxes to finance it you have a bunch of competing private defense agencies. They have to be profitable to survive and they have to find ways to serve their customers better than their competitors. Don’t you think they’ll try very hard to track violent individuals and transactions involving dangerous materials?
You do realize that there’s a difference between you as an individual (or even a private organization) taking preventive measures to protect yourself and a war started by a government monopoly that can only exist by forcing you to pay for it?
We are not, and so I must sadly inform you that we will be on the side of the defense in this fight, and you will have to kill us to get your way.