How does that differ from a terrorist commiting these actions outside of a government’s borders, especially say if this terrorist is within the borders of a nation which has no problem harbouring them?
-Jon
Andrew, a gated community is not like a state because all of the power it has must be given to it by the people affected by it. You would have to voluntarily allow your land to be incorporated, or you would buy a stake within the community with certain conditions being in place at the time of your purchase. The characterizing feature of a state is sovereignty; the idea that it has an inherent right to its authority over you, whether or not you wanted it to have that authority. The community model does not involve any claim to sovereignty, and so is not objectionable for the reasons that a state is objectionable.
ThorsMitersaw, you’re not attacking from an area of strength here; in any society without ubiquitous surveillence, there will be the potential for someone to launch an attack on others without being stopped beforehand. I make no claims about the community model being able to prevent all of these attacks, or any more than would be stopped in any non-oppressive, rights-recognizing system. The community model exists to ensure that the tool of mutual coercion can be used to produce outcomes which might not arise naturally in a spontaneous order. If I’m worried about people having anthrax, which they have a right to do in a completely unfettered society, I might voluntarily agree to a mutually coercive rule preventing me and other like-minded people from having anthrax. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. But because the rule was a product of agreement, and gains its authority from that consent, I can’t just go imposing it on people who didn’t agree to it. That’s how libertarianism works.
Sure; some crazy might see you as his enemy and attack you. But that isn’t “terrorism” by any stretch of the imagination, and there are much better ways to attack individuals than anthrax or H-bombs.
Why does the state “scrape a victory”? The state certainly doesn’t have any adequate solution to counter such behaviour either. In fact, it causes such behaviour!
When (in textbook collectivist manner) hatred of a certain behavior or attitude is projected onto a group that represents such values and violent steps are taken against the group, we may well speak of terrorism I’d say.
But that surely is a question of personal definition.
Well, at least it (mostly) takes some immediate steps to bring relief to the (potential) victim:
Concerning the case of child abuse, as soon as “hooked” kids are sighted publicly, CPS is very likely to intervene and remove the child from parental custody. Of course, CPS is no benefactors’ association, they’re after their grant money and might take kids just for that purpose, there might be a lot of pedophiles bustling around their periphery, the new foster family might abuse the child and so on. However, the kid doesn’t need to wear hooks for the time being. That’s at least one quick success.
No question that government encourages rogue behavior by various means. But again, I doubt the abolition of government will stop any kind of abuse from happening. My worry was about how anarchists are going to react towards that kind of attitude. However, our little discussion has mostly put the record straight as far as I’m concerned.
Serial Bonker. Authoritarian Bonkist! Purge the Parlour Polygamists!
I don’t think so. What distinguishes the terrorist who shoots up a McDonalds from the crazy postal worker who shoots up a McDonalds? In the former case, the target is not the people who get shot. Terrorism is a tactic to put pressure on someone else - obviously some collective body (usually a government) that has reason to fear the terrorism (or its result; e.g., fear in the population claimed by a government that leads to withdrawl of support; though it’s a tactic very likely to backfire and increase support for the target government…as we’ve seen lately). It’s not caused by “hatred of an attitude”, etc.
Terrorism is almost entirely a statist phenomenon which would cease to exist in the absence of the state.
Would these terrorists not simply target whatever they find oppressive towards them? If a company were to hostily take over his own, and he rebelled against it through terror tactics, he’s fitting your defition of terrorism and we’re not involving the state at all.
I realise this is a weird “what-if” but do you simply choose to define this action under a different file?
Otherwise, our Mr. X terrorist here appears to be irrational, but in infitely long stream of what-ifs appear when we wonder why the gated community ajacent does not simply disarm him. I tend to find that “well he has a right to it” isn’t going to stop me from eliminating anything I feel is a threat on my life unless there’s an equal or greater threat on my life pressuring me from the opposite direction. All of rights in the world aren’t going to stop me from eliminating a percieved threat either through increased defense, disarmament, or assault.
There’s a hostile takeover and former management of the newly-acquired company start recruiting people to blow themselves up in the lobby of the company, or something? [:)] Well, I suppose that would qualify as terrorism, but it’s on a different scale than terrorism against a state, much easier to guard against, and not really credible, either.
I very well understand “how libertarianism works”, thank you very much. I am not argueing about your right to enter such an agreement. I am saying it will be of little use to the problem.
What problem?
the ‘problem’ of a man owning a weapon which you are scared of and using it.
The “and using it” part is taken care of when we say that a person who is clearly about to use the weapon, or is in the process of using the weapon, can be stopped, with force if necessary. The “owning a weapon which you are scared of” part must be tempered by the earlier observation that the object is not inherently a weapon for doing evil, but could serve other innocent uses for which the person was employing it. While individuals have every right to impose mutually coercive rules on themselves and to exclude people from their property, and so could voluntarily agree to form a community in which anthrax is not permitted. But outside of their property, they would not be justified in aggressively dispossessing a person who had not initiated any act of aggression of some piece of his personal property, even if that property could potentially be used as a weapon, just as surely as we would not be justified in raiding our neighbor’s house to dispossess him of his “dangerous” gun.
Certainly, a person could still set up camp outside of an anthrax-prohibiting community and plot to destroy it from the outside. But that’s a risk that we take every day by living without wearing a bombproof, bulletproof, biohazard suit outside of our maximum security bomb shelter. If people want to kill each other, there’ll probably be a way to do it. It’s not very difficult to kill a human. But protecting everyone from every risk of harm would require that we coerce people who have done nothing to us, and who want nothing to do with us. That’s the role of the anthrax owner living outside of the community. As libertarians, it seems that we have no choice but to allow this thus far innocent person to continue on his way. Perhaps we can offer him an agreement by which he voluntarily moves away or disposes of his anthrax in exchange for something from us. That would be fine too. But since we’re dealing with someone who has not yet done anything wrong, we are prohibited from using force. I don’t think there’s a problem there, besides the fact that people can kill each other if they really want to. But making sure that didn’t happen would require a perhaps impossible level of constant and ubiquitous surveillance and enforcement which would be much worse than the seemingly tiny risk of being attacked by berzerk fanatics in the world I have envisioned, or else it would require that we give up all dangerous things, even those which we need to protect ourselves, and even those from which we derive great value in completely innocent ways.
As a former conservative, I was very alarmed by the specter of Islamic terrorism. When I became a libertarian, I realized that the threat of terrorism does not justify the draconian measures conservatives propose to combat it, and that an an-cap society could defend itself better. Here are a few things to consider:
- A libertarian society would lack a centrally-controlled national security apparatus. There would not be a single organization designed to protect the entire country; instead, each property owner would have the incentive to protect his or her own property (be it airplanes, chemical factories, power plants, etc.). This would be more efficient and effective.
- A lack of gun control would ensure that everybody is capable of defending themselves against aggression–by individual criminals, invading armies, and wanna-be dictators; and if one individual could not defend himself, they could band together and form a militia.
- An anarcho-capitalist regime would be non-interventionist, and would not get its fingers burnt in Middle Eastern conflicts; thus, they wouldn’t be attacked as often by deranged Islamic fanatics.
- An an-cap regime would not have restriction on domestic drilling and energy production, and would not be at the mercy of oil-producing states.
- A an-cap regime would be very free and prosperous. Free and prosperous people tend to become very hedonistic and self-indulgent, and are not inclined to strap bombs on themselves to advance their 7th-century religion.
- Did you know that, according to Mark Levin’s America Alone, many prominent Islamic terrorists in milked the welfare system for thousands upon thousands of dollars? An anarcho-capitalist regime would not attract immigration from people who prefer plunder over labor, as does the welfare state.
- The lack of controlled-substance laws would prevent criminal organizations from making billions of dollars on the black market—thus, less terrorism and organized crime.
- The free market would supply terror-busting firms which would specialize in locating, infiltrating, and prosecuting criminal organizations if there was a demand for those services.
Does that answer your question?
-Jon
wow… brutal, harsh, but funny [:P]
Lol! Did you make that yourself, Jon?
Nope, I just google’d “thread lich” under Pictures. I don’t mean to disparage anything the poster said (after all I agree with it), I just thought it’s funny.
-Jon
truth
It does differ in terms of the risk level. The problem is of course that any “terrorism” threat can be an excuse for intrusive action.
I don’t see how the original posters case constitute an example for the infringement on property rights.
Where there are reasons to believe someone is planning an attack, I see no reasons why one shouldn’t go over to a pre-emptive strike. Infringing on people’s security and peace is also a kind of violating their property rights and interests. The problem is that this can become a joker argument.
prevent hostile ethnic groups from entering your country, while having good relations with them on an international level - Withother words don’t be intrusive into their affairs as well. The present “terrorism” threat has a lot to do with the violations of the principles that I just mentioned.
OK, given that this thread is pretty old. This one is even older:
I read through the xSFx thread, thinking the whole time that the real crux of the matter is in the credibility of the threat, and how immediately and credibly I feel threatened.
I believe that it is safe to say that everyone here thinks it is OK to own a gun. Perhaps even carry a loaded weapon holstered. Or to carry it in your hand, pointed at the ground, if you feel under threat. But as soon as you point it at someone else, who wasn’t threatening you first, you have become a credible immediate threat to that person, and he/she would be allowed/excused for using violence to prevent you from harming them. Perhaps even at the “having it in your hand” level. As Stephen points out, it would come down to an evaluation of the situation by peers, PDO, someone. You don’t have to wait for them to shoot you (and actually violate your property rights)! Someone did point this out in February. 
If I own property, I do not have the right to use it in a way that credibly and immediately threatens others, whether that is pointing a gun, building an unstable tower that could fall on my neighbors house, storing a lake of cyanide that could enter a river, or conducting research on the Super-flu of The Stand. The immediacy and credibility of the threat determines what level of response is justified in dealing with the threat.
Shooting the guy possessing the anthrax and shooting the guy that is pointing a gun at you are different levels of the same act - protecting yourself from what you perceive as an immediate, credible threat. Whether you committed a crime or not would depend on an evaluation of the particulars of the situation by whatever authority administers justice - whether it be the homeowners association, the PDO, a county jury, or a mob.
I will do a little review of Mises.org this weekend. I would like to discuss the boundaries of property ownership - that even unquestioned ownership of something doesn’t mean you have the right to do anything you want with it (like point the gun that you own at someone else’s head).