Because nuclear weapons (weapons, not technology, that can someday explode, like plants etc.) are with the sole porpuse to destroy things, and because it’s near impossible to “defend” onself with atomic bomb and not kill simple “bystander” in a process it’s hard to maintain an explosion radius), I think, that they should be outlawed in Libertopia.
It applies to all of them. Both the chemical factory and the nuclear plants are responsible for all their wastes that intrude others’ property. The hydroelectric dam… I assume you mean what if it breaks? Then the dam owner has to pay the property owners for their loss (I’m assuming they didn’t waive liability?)
While none of these things function as weapons of mass destruction in their use (actual or designed) and is mobile to boot - the odd man out, nuclear weapons, is both.
Ah, so these things are the same but one is called a weapon and the others are not. Sorry but I myself am not convinced at all.
You see how we’re using two distinct rules here: one is that the mere possibility of the thing causing damage is reason enough to outlaw it. The second is that you can keep your toy (the dam) but you must pay if you cause any actual damage.
So, why would we apply two differing principles to the same things? Please do not tell me that nukes are called ‘weapons’ and that’s that, because I think it’s a very superficial ‘argument’.
An argument could be that all such things can be considered immediate threat and if I intend to build a dam I must buy wavers of liability form all the people living downstream.
The issue at hand concerns the nature of a threat. I think we can agree that if a neighbor aimed a sniper rifle at you, you would consider that a threat. Meanwhile, his 700 hp classic motorcar parked in the driveway pointed at your property is not a threat. Likewise, if a directional explosive such as a claymore mine was emplaced facing your property, you might also consider that a threat. So how come it isnt a threat when someone puts an explosive near you that is large enough to annihilate you inside your dwelling, in the absence of explicit permission?
No, I am not saying that at all. All of the tens of thousands of government-owned nuclear weapons don’t just have a “possibility” of creating damage; they were designed, built, and tested to ensure that they absolutely do cause immense explosive destruction over large areas.
It’s not the “weapon” so much as the “indiscriminate mass descruction” that is necessarily unleashed when it is used.
Ok, than how isn’t it a threat when someone builds a huge concrete wall 50 meters from your house which could obliterate you within milliseconds (the dam)?
But you completely miss out the real service that nukes provide. Nukes where not build to kill billions, but to deter conventional warfare that could kill hundreds of millions. You may say that they did so by putting billions at risk, but then again, how is this different form the dam which is not build to kill tens of thousands, but to make life easier for millions, and yet could kill tens of thousands in the process?
Both are technologies that serve a purpose but have a probability of causing huge damages. Why treat them differently?
It could be. Like how the brazilian dam that is going to flood land that has been owned by aborigines since pre-colonial times is an act of aggression.
A nuclear bomb is a weapon which cannot be legally used. It is a weapon whose sole purpose is extortion (do what we say or we blow you to smithereens). Building and storing a nuclear bomb is not necessarily criminal but it is prohibitively expensive for anyone but a tax-funded government.
Storage of nuclear weapons would have to be in massive, remote areas of the desert, underground, where their accidental or otherwise detonation could not hurt anyone. Removal of the weapons from such safe storage sites would be an actionable tort. It would be illegal to transport the weapons because they could not be safely transported from one safe storage site to another.
To reduce the costs and risks associated with owning a nuclear weapon, any private actor would immediately defuse it (and invite independent parties to verify the defusing). As far as I know, it’s only remaining legal use would be as a museum.
Clayton -
Posession of a nuclear device confers on one de facto sovereignty on the international political stage. Surely that is worth something, Clayton.
@Malachi: Yes, it’s valuable to imposing a coercive, tax-funded regime onto a subject populace. After all, that’s what sovereignty really means.
Clayton -
It is my firm belief that if we somehow achieved anarchy tomorrow (say Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed and Confucius all descend again and make us all into anarchist) and we also somehow lost the know-how to make nukes, we’d be back with states in a few generations. Defense is subject to huge economies of scale. Right now, no country smaller than Germany, Iran or Turkey is truly sovereign for it cannot defend itself conventionally. Of course I may be wrong, but perhaps the day will come when we’ll see nukes for what they are: what really turned the high tide of statism in 1945.
As for the thread, perhaps the position that nukes, dams, chemical factories and such objects constitute threats in the radius of danger can be the best way to deal with such issues. The owner would have to buy wavers of liability form the guys around him (or bring his nuke there before anyone else settles) or his nuke would be subject to seizure with impunity.
my reasoning is that if someone wanted to make a nuclear power plant, then one had to prove so to speak to the community living around the location, that his business is safe and won’t commit any harm. But the atomic bombs, which work quite diffeently than NPP, are seperate matter. It’s a WMD, simply. Why would you like to confuse the both, I don’t know. I only agree, that both things are potentially dangerous to community, but WMD are specifically designed to destroy, not to create power.
That’s ridiculous. nukes are statist invention. It would be hard to believe, that people in Libertopia would created atomic bombs. I personally wouldn’t sign a contract with a DRO having an atomic bomb. But we are talking about completely different mindset. People were hungry for power and demolition (those, who created the atomic bombs designed to be used in warfare). It’s not about atomic energy, but atomic demolition.
I don’t see that at all. If you look at what constitutes the vast majority of a military’s activities (training and logistics), these are very mundane sorts of tasks that are also produced in the private sector and almost always at dramatically lower cost.
My brother-in-law is in the Marines and he is currently on recruiting assignment - he got sent on a medium-distance trip to meet several recruiters in his local area and transport a few materials. They sent him in their duty pickup with an extra-heavy rear-axle, full time 4WD, etc. etc. a real gas-guzzler. He spent about $4k in fuel for a trip that would have cost me about $250 in gas, round trip. That’s 16x base cost, and that just for a handful of recruiters to meet and transport some items from one recruiting station to another.
What does the military do that is so expensive that the private sector could not do it, at a profit? Operate ships? Private sector operates the largest ships on the planet. Operate aircraft? Ditto. Shoot lots of ammo? It’s all manufactured in the private sector, anyway. And so on.
I see no reason to believe that the extreme specs of current military aircraft (in terms of flight-ceilings, operational radius, speeds, etc.) are actually demanded by anything but the uniquely militaristic urge to win every pissing contest. Relax the specs a bit and you could have 10x as much equipment or the same equipment at 1/10th the cost. The outcome of war is first and foremost determined by economic factors. The Third Reich collapsed due to economic weakness brought on by Hitler’s maniacal economic policies.
In another thread discussing the potential that the US government will succeed in its bid to start war with Iran, I pointed out that our “enemies” - Iran, China, Russia, etc. - are thinking economically where we are not. They’re thinking about getting the biggest bang for their buck. We’re just thinking about the biggest bang at any price. If we do go up against Russia-China-Iran, we will get our ass whipped. “But the US has never been beat!” Not true, and even if it were true, there’s a first time for everything.
I think the “economies of scale” in the production of defense are exaggerated by the apologists of the status quo.
Clayton -
Nukes have already been covered on here. Here is the link to my response:
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/an-cap-and-nuclear-bombs/21019/9
And here is the relevant text:
A gun is legal. Pointing it at a random person is illegal. Why? Pointing it is a threat. What constitutes a threat? A reasonable realistic 3D scenario which endangers others.
Thus, pointing a gun at the sky and shooting is generally not a threat. Hence, the use of a gun is inherently not illegitimate.
Now consider nuclear weapons. What is a reasonable realistic 3D scenario which would constitute a threat? Anything. There is no “pointing” of nuclear weapons.
If you are in the middle of a mall with a gun and you want to threaten others you can 1) whip it out and point it 2) Yell “I will kill you all”
We all know scenario 2 is illegal anyway.
Scenario 1: How would this apply with nuclear weapons? It can’t. There is no whipping out of a nuclear weapon. Because with guns, to create a threat you aim. With nuclear weapons, there is no aiming.
The reasonable 3D idea of a threat flies out of the window with nuclear weapons, because their existence is a threat due to their nature of not being able to be contained. It’s like carrying a gun sphere, where there is a gun pointing out at every direction. By carrying it around in public, you are inherently aiming at everyone you walk by.
Thus, the existence of a nuclear weapon such that people involuntarily live within its blast radius is illegal. This means that you can own nuclear weapons on Mars if you’d like, or on the Moon, or in Australia if you own all of it. Yet as soon as you bring it within blast radius of people, it becomes a threat and is illegal.
and also
“a nuclear weapon is like walking through a mall with a sphere made of guns pointing in all directions. It’s like constantly pointing a gun at someone’s head. Now, if you can find a way to contain the explosion in nuclear facilities, power to you, you can have one. If you want to have one 500 miles away from all other living beings, have it. If you homestead a piece of land with no one in the blast radius and then people settle, their problem. If the people within the blast radius authorize you to have the bomb, glory to you. But you can’t simply waltz into any city with a bomb.”
Tl; dr - a nuke is like a sphere made of 1000 guns pointing out of the center. It is always a threat to those around you in the blast radius, and hence (typically) illegal. You cannot join a new community and carry in a nuke unless literally everyone allows it. You can have a nuke when all civilization is outside the blast radius, however, and if you’re the first person to settle in an area which is otherwise uninhabited in the blast radius, then anyone who settled later is the one who has to deal with your homesteading of the blast radius.
Also, I must add that being Bulgarian and knowing what Bulgaria is like, this video is shameful to me.
“Dirty” bombs are a joke. Some wiseguy just has to sell a bomb lined with 241Am and everybody can “ooh” and “ahh” like they are at the State fair when the Geiger counter clicks and pops. But the government is interested in it because of what new things they can try to do if you believe in the threat of The DIrty Bomb.
Same with the whole “Global Warming” debate - government’s interests are heavily weighed by the obvious new revenue sources that will come with regulations. It even comes with the same promise of being a tiny tax… just like the Income Tax (only 1-7% in 1913).
Good point. I was only thinking about the immediate danger.
I personally doubt there would be single families owning entire planets - but I could be wrong. Or else I’m not quite sure what you mean here.