So I am not sure how exactly I want to phrase my thoughts, but here goes.
The libertarian creed is pretty much to never harm or steal from another unless another is trying to harm yourself, in which case it is then OK to use force to stop them, up to and including killing the other.
The pacifist creed states it is never OK to use force, even to stop an aggressor.
To me, it seems that the pacifist philosophy is the more moral philosophy, since it is more consistent. It is very easy to live by, you just never use force on others. Whereas with libertarianism, you have to decide if a violent response is necessary and how much it should be.
However, if anyone were to ever harm my child or try to harm me, I don’t see how I could not have a violent response.
It is an interesting question. I think the NAP in Rothbardian libertarianism results from the self-ownership axiom. You are allowed to harm others if they harm you since they do not respect your property rights. Of course, if you say the NAP is an axiom, it is more consistent to say that every form of aggression is wrong. Orthodox Buddhists for example embrace such a principle and are safe from robbery and such since they live in voluntary material poverty. I do not know how you can be strictly non-violent in a property rich country, but that would be a really interesting question. Personally, I think a strict non-violence principle is more beautiful but not practical. On the other hand, until a year ago I did not think of anarchy as feasible.
I also wonder how many feel that it is a moral obligation for someone to use aggression if necessary to defend their property, since failing to do so undermines private property and rewards the aggressor for his anti-social behavior.
The pacifist creed requires the belief in self sacrifice in order to support it. How else could you justify just sitting there and letting your aggressor get the best of you. Libertarianism utterly rejects any belief in self-sacrifice. Therefore, it cannot be blamed for being inconsistent. On the contrary, it must uphold the right to self defense as part of its creed if it is to be consistent with the preservation of private property rights.
Well, I think it’s a complex and worthy question. This is my view:
Human nature is inherently violent. I do not mean by this the “killer ape” hypothesis but, rather, that the use and threat of violence is built into our psychological wiring and even our biology. Your body is built to kill (other humans, as well as animals) and you have the necessary neurological wiring and hormones to make sure you’ll kill if you need to.
The fact of the violence of human nature is not a moral question since it just is what it is. The question is how do we resolve violent conflicts between humans when they arise? This is the origin of law.
Pacifism is less consistent than it seems at first brush. Property and ownership (rightful possession) is, ultimately, founded on the more basic concept of possession. Possession, in turn, is determined by violence - violent threat or violent dispute if need be. The threat of violence is every bit as important as violence itself.
Pacifists are, in this regard, essentially “free riders” on the use of violence by other to defend their own property. Criminals don’t walk into anybody’s house any time they feel like not because of the cops but because of owners who may be armed or otherwise equipped and prepared to defend themselves and their property. Pacifists renounce their intent to defend themselves and their property but so what? That’s not what made them safe in the first place, it’s all the other people who defended their life and property that make them safe.
Violence is more complicated than whether it is used in self-defense or not. Retributive violence evolved long before law or governments or maybe even language itself (other animals engage in retributive violence). Yet retributive violence, like defensive violence, is also a public good. Those who disavow retribution (I’ll call them non-retributionists) are free-riders on the disincentive to violence created by those who do engage in retribution.
How do you internalize the costs of murder? There can be no “restitution” or “making whole” since life, once ended, cannot be restored. No payment can bring back my dead child. Hence, violence (property seizure, corporal punishment, whatever) in response to murder is necessarily punitive. If we truly followed NAP to the letter, you could fight tooth and nail to defend your family if an intruder broke into your house trying to murder them BUT if you walked in the moment after he had succeeded in murdering them, you could not lay a finger on him without engaging in a whole new crime (aggression). This is patently absurd.
Fortunately, nature has already solved the problem of internalizing the costs of murder: violent revenge. If you kill my family member, I will be enraged and likely kill you. Of course, we are all aware of the theoretical potential that tit-for-tat has for feuds but this too has been solved by nature (those families too partial to exercise judgment in whether the actions of their own members were justifiable or not tended to get involved in too many feuds and not pass on their genes). There are limits to people’s partisanship and clan-loyalty.
I don’t know, in person, a single person I think could beat me in a fight, nor do I fear the police. Most people I know do not own guns. I have not stolen anything since I was a young teenager (and then never from people, always from businesses… which I thought at the time, naively, was justified).
I do not refrain from stealing because of any threat of punishment (I do not believe in an afterlife or reincarnation). I refrain from thievery and assault because they are the wrong thing to do.
If more people worried less about punishment and more about what is right/wrong… government would have disappeared long ago.
Conflating aggression with force will put you in that paradox you stated in your OT. Force does not always necessarily mean aggression, so the pacifist philosophy is not necessarily the more “Moral”.
Defense is not aggression. Furthermore, If you think it is more moral to stand idle while being beaten, well that will always ever boil down to a matter of opinion anyways now won’t it*.*
*shrug - I consider it a self-evident truth along with any other praxeological axiom. Humans frequently choose interpersonal violence as a means to achieving their ends. This lies outside the scope of catallactics but it’s still under the umbrella of praxeology.
The answer is “of course not.”
Yep. So, whether or not you - in particular - will defend yourself, you benefit from the fact that some people do defend themselves.
*shrug - I consider it a self-evident truth along with any other praxeological axiom. Humans frequently choose interpersonal violence as a means to achieving their ends. This lies outside the scope of catallactics but it’s still under the umbrella of praxeology.
What is this “human nature” you speak of? Are animals not violent? Human nature is a fallacy. We do the same things as animals do, just on a grander scale.
Yep. So, whether or not you - in particular - will defend yourself, you benefit from the fact that some people do defend themselves.
If this were true there would never be any crime as long as one person was willing to defend themselves. The fact of the matter is people make subjective valuations on the need for violence. Once again, I personally (to bring up an anectdote) do not refrain from stealing because I fear punishment. I refrain from violence and theft because I subjectively view it as wrong.
I’m using it in the weak sense that it is used in evolutionary psychology. There are identifiable features or patterns of human behavior that transcend cultural norms. These “culturally universal” attributes of humans are “hardwired” into our biology. Hence, they are part of our “nature” in the sense that they are not subject to alteration by nurture.
I do not use the term as strongly as Rothbard or Hoppe do.
Of course. And humans are animals. Therefore, we too are violent.
*shrug - take it up with the field evolutionary psychology, I’m sure they would be interested in your views if you believe you can “debunk” their use of the term “human nature”.
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???
I’m Joe Crook. I burgle houses. I canvass neighborhoods looking for houses to break into. Specifically, I want to get the best bang for my buck, that is, the most payout for the least risk. I look for neighborhoods where older/retired people live since they are likely to have more valuables in their home and are more likely to be gone on vacation. But then, they’re more likely to have alarms (defense), too. So maybe I steer clear of those neighborhoods and look one rung down at homes where there are likely to be some valuables, but unlikely to be alarms. Then, I wait for the residents to apparently be out on a long vacation and break in.
The more houses in a neighborhood have the “Brinks Home Security” or “ADT” signs in front, the less likely I’m going to even target that neighborhood to begin with. Like forget about a gated community, not because there aren’t a lot of valuables there but because it’s just too well defended.
The likelihood that an individual in a group will defend himself is all-important to determine whether I, Joe Crook, will target him or her. And since I can’t just walk up and ask, “Are you going to defend yourself if I break in to your house?”, I’m going to profile the group. I’m going to look at the neighborhood. The easiest way to profile this is to hang out around places where other crooks hang out and listen to the chatter… if lots of people get sent up for trying to break into Neighborhood A, I’m probably going to avoid Neighborhood A. If somebody gets shot and killed trying to break into a house in Neighborhood B, I’m probably going to stay away from Neighborhood B. This is elementary praxeology.
The same goes on a wider scale. The more likely individuals are to defend themselves, the less likely it is - at a fixed level of risk/reward tolerance - that a criminal will aggress against any one of them. Steven Landsburg discusses this subject in this insightful Slate article.
Yes, and this is true of everybody (except sociopaths)… in every culture! Which tells us that there is something about human nature that plays a role in regulating the incidence of crimes. It also suggests an evolutionary explanation.
