You want the NAP you better be prepared to enforce it. If you’re outgunned or outmanned, or can’t find anybody willing to protect your ‘right’ to spout vulgarities any time you feel like it, then you’ll just have to mind your manners.
I’ll say what I wish to say whenever I wish to say it. If this were a real situation, you would just have to either sit there and listen, walk away or try punching me in the face and have justice brought against you whether you complete your task or not.
In a free society, justice is a commodity subject to the market along with everything else. If nobody cares about rude people getting punched in the face, then rude people won’t get ‘justice.’ The more likely response will be, “He had it coming.”
Yet violating the NAP is one of the most basic offenses of a libertarian society. Even in a statist society it is illegal. Its nice to know that the first action you would commit towards ‘bad manners’ is to use your fists. Barbary is really cool no matter what us crazy libertarians tell you. I mean just look at this guy:
That’s the face of cool.
See, this whole debate just seems to be an attempt on behalf of Laughing Man to find some justiication for circumventing the price system in favour of his conception of justice, no different from what many other men of the left do. The fact is if you want a free and wealthy society you’re going to have to accept certain institutions. Certain forms of conduct are frowned upon for good reason, and being a vulgar and crude individual just won’t work out for you when you can’t externalize the costs of acting in such a way because certains types of behaviour are more likely to cause conflict than others.
If you want to see a good example of the point Byzantine is making, go to the UK. You’ll be more than free to say all swear words you would ever want, and people do. Of course, go out to any major city on a thursday night and you’ll see all the fights that occur because of this.
Pure conjecture. Perhaps that would be your response. I for one would readily join a posse formed to bring such a thug to justice.
You’re out of argument, you big thilly!
It is no coincidence that when government was far smaller, social mores were more strict. It is only the centralized state that protects the ‘right’ to act like a twelve-year old. This is why I say most self-styled anarchists are going to be really disappointed when anarchy does in fact roll around.
You and what band of gay street mimes?
The question is, how far are you willing to go? Are you willing to defend the right of the 50 year old guy to take other people’s sons for long walks in the park?
That’s like saying ‘because we have condoms in society, people want to screw more.’
Yes, I blame those crazy things like free-will and liberty. Clearly swear words must be eliminated in order to sustain the facade of harmony. Or lets invent new non-confrontational phrases like ‘Go carrot yourself, you kiwi’
I think you’re missing the point, certain institutional arrangements favour the production of wealth. Some of these institutions are those that “regulate” the behaviour of individuals within society. I’ve lived in fair few different countries, and I can tell you that people over in the US, Switzerland and Portugal tend to be rather polite. On the other hand, people over in the UK lack any social skills at all, walk along any busy street for more than a few minutes and you’re bound to hear a few vulgar words.
Now, guess which countries has the most fights and other such related problems?
How often in real life do people tell you that you are an annoying twat?
Anyhow, here is some necessary reading for the others here actually in search of truth:
The Market for Liberty (from ch. 7 - Arbitration of Disputes)
Punishment and Proportionality by Rothbard
Libertarian Punishment Theory: Working for, and Donating to, the State by Block
P & P: The Estoppel Approach by Kinsella
This is an incredibly dangerous view that collapses libertarianism into total relativism, and functions as a lame rationalization for aggression. Justice is not a commodity that can be defined by whoever pays the most money for it.
If anything, this makes it rather chrystal clear that you only oppose “the state” (in a fairly narrow, modern sense of the term) because you view it as a competitor to your prefered forms of authoritarianism - apparently “anarchy” is only a means to be able to get away with shoving your authoritarian social mores down people’s throats, with aggression to boot.
Apparently you haven’t been to New York City where you are told to go fornicate yourself multiple times during the day. I’ve been to the UK and I see it very much like the US. You have people who are snobs and people who are nice. Its ridiculous to assert that swearing causes fights.
What needs to be eliminated is the state, which subsidizes loutish behavior. In the real world, there’s no dole or council housing or education grants to keep crude idiots who can’t hold a job afloat.
Are you implying that swearing is a idiotic form of language? Or that swearing is ‘loutish behavior’?
You can argue for a right to display pornography on your front lawn all you want; it doesn’t mean that your house won’t be burned down and nobody will give a shit.
The obvious solution is to let people self-segregate (like they do whenever and wherever they are allowed) into communities of people with compatible values, but that would drive the egalitarians crazy.
Actually I was thinking about painting it on my garage door. It involves a dolphin. I can’t say anymore because I want to surprise people.
No. There is a time and place for swearing. There is also a time and place for restraint. You shouldn’t wolf-whistle at a father’s 12-year old daughter, for example. I suppose you may have every right to do so, but I still wouldn’t advise it.