If someone stole your bike, you can’t punish him by shooting him. This wouldn’t fit the crime. You are just entitled to a compensation. However if someone is in the process of stealing your bike, you have the right to shoot him in order to stop him. Why do you think in the second case strong physical force is justified while in the first case it is not?
only looney anarchists believe in this. You don’t have such right at all (not mentioning that rights are just principles of peaceful social interaction). If someone is stealing, you are only allowed to use force to stop them. Killing could be justified if the thief was pointing a gun at you while stealing a bike or smething.
I think if no other means can stop the robbery, you have the right to hurt the thief badly.
Yes, maybe you are right, but that’s a problematic issue, because you’ll still have to bear the consequences if the judge or whatever that will be in Libertopia decides that you used too “inappropriate force”. I mean, you are responsible for your actions and to mindlessly shoot a criminal just because you thought there is no other way isn’t proper way to live in free society.
Libertopia is not wild wild west, that’s my point.
I certainly would not say that if you catch a kid trying to steal your bike you can shoot him to stop the theft (perhaps he’s getting away and you can only shoot him to stop him). Immediate self-defense is, as I see it, subject to the very same constrains as retribution: proportionality. If general terms: if you cannot do it in retribution later on, you cannot do it in immediate self-defense either.
The issue with immediate self-defense is only that you do not have all the information you may need, and that uncertainty must be factored in. So if a burglar is in your home in the middle of the night, you’d probably be entitled to shot him because it is reasonable to assume that he’s armed. But a kid stealing a bike? I don’t think that it would be reasonable to assume he’s armed and dangerous. If he, after being surprised, pulls what at the time seemed to be a gun, than sure you can cop him right there. It’s all a matter of what seemed a proportional response to a reasonable person.
I agree with what Merlin wrote. I’d like to add that shooting someone can easily lead to his death, even if the intention wasn’t to kill him outright. In the context of someone stealing my bike, I’d hardly say that shooting him is appropriate, even to stop the theft.
Yes, but by the very same principle you can shoot him after he has seemingly completed the robbery by taking off with your bike if there is no other way of getting your bike back.
Because you’re conflating defense and retribution. By the time you’re thinking about what punishment is appropriate you have already gotten your bike back or been compensated for its loss. This (and only this) ended the robbery.
While the robbery is still taking place, however, you are in the phase of defense. And as no one may force you to let go of your rightful property and accept a loss if a more extreme means of defense would let you preserve it, you are free to escalate your means of defense until one that will work and let you keep (recapture) what is yours.
It isn’t appropriate because if you were actually in a position to shoot the kid you can also simply ask around who he was and go tell his parents who will give you your bike back or pay you for it. It isn’t appropriate because a less extreme means of defending your property that will work almost certainly exists.
Obviously there’s also the chance something will ultimately get in the way of getting your bike back with these less extreme means, but who exactly is going to gamble with their life over their bicycle on this possibility?
Good points, Marko, and I certainly agree with them. In fact, I agreed with them before you posted them. 
Do you?
You hit the heart of the difference right there.
I think I agree with Marko on this.
You can escalate the use of force each time the previous efforts did not produce results. So if there is really no other way to return your bike, you can even kill the robber. If you tried to persuade him and he didn’t return the bike, then you tried to take the bike by force but couldn’t because he hired armed guards to guard the bike, you can eventually use whatever force is necessary to get your property back.
However retribution is completely different. It is not defense of your property.
I really don’t think that’s what Marko said.
You have the right to use the minimum amount of force needed to prevent your bike from being stolen. Most courts would hold that shooting someone stealing a bike is definitely non-commensurate and goes too far and becomes a case of murder. Because the thief is not threatening your life by stealing a bike, so you cannot make it a matter of life and death.
Now, if the thief is stealing your insulin and you’re on a desert island, that’s another matter.
I don’t know any looney anarchists that advocate that. I do know a few looney statists who believe it is ok to use excessive force against brown people for non-threatening trespass or other instances of using excessive force that do not involve self defense.
So according to you the thief can continue steal my things, move them into his house and put armed guards around the house until I am left with nothing?
Because that’s clearly what he said…
That’s not what Live_Free_Or_Die said. You’ve knocked down a strawman.
In any case, my argument is that you should use the minimal force necessary to prevent the theft. If nothing else works except killing the thief, then you have the right to kill him, even if he steals your bike. If you think otherwise then please explain how the scenario I presented above with armed guards can be solved.
You can use enough force, on the spot, to regain your property and no more, certainly not lethal force. It is the commensurate force doctrine. If the thief then attacks you, you can use enough force to put down their attack and defend yourself. A direct attack on you has a lot more leeway than an item being stolen because an attack on you can very easily be life-threatening, the bike stolen cannot be.
At that point you need to bring the law into effect to get your stuff back. Unlike the anarchists, I accept a role for law enforcement and courts of law. In an anarchist society, yeah, he would steal your stuff, put up a guard and you’d have no resource. In a min-cap republic, where laws are enforced, his guard would be invalidated and his house forced to give up the stolent goods.
You’ve pointed out one of the major flaws of anarchism, but not of the kind of society I would choose to live in, where individual rights are enforced by a legal organization. As such, your bike would be returned to you by responsive coercion, and processed by objective law.