Why would it be ‘bad’ to own a nuclear weapon? If you have a nuclear bomb in your basement it’s arbitrary to say that the very act of owning such a weapon is aggression. Assuming that the NAP is going to be followed there isn’t really any justification to unilaterally state that you can’t store a nuke in your basement.
If there wasn’t a new thread on this exact same topic every single week, maybe you would read my responses and the paper explaining this.
Why is the idea of a libertarian society being held to such a high standard as oppose to the current statist world we live in? This sort of a question implies that somehow, if some of the threats that exist today under statism will continue to exist under a free society, then the free society is rejected on account that it is a utopian idea, while the alternative of statism is again embraced.
This sort of rationalization against the libertarian society is what is at the heart of all current interventionism philosophy. The Nirvana Fallacy is at the heart of all such faulty rationalization. What is to prevent a major oil spill under a libertarian society? What is to prevent a car manufacturer from designing faulty brakes? and so on and so on… Therefore, we need the State.
Libertarianism doesn’t guarantee a nuclear weapons free world anymore then it guarantees no oil spills. What can be shown, however, is that perverse incentives are the inevitable consequences of nearly all statist policies, and not the result of a free market. Systematic behavior that promotes destruction is a manifestation of statism. I don’t see how such behavior can be used to reject freedom. It’s quite absurd.
Those arguments that owning a nuclear weapon (or any weapon of mass destruction) is aggressive I side with. Obviously, these weapons are not designed to remove a single threat. They’re designed to destroy as much as possible in a given area. Unlike a gun, the destruction caused by nuclear weapons would hurt innocent people and property in a given conflict. Because this can’t be controlled by a nuclear weapon, owning one is tantamount to threatening aggression against innocent third parties, and using one of course would be aggression against innocent third parties. I would say in a free society, people would have the right to make sure nuclear bombs are not produced, and if they are, then to do whatever is in their power to destroy them.
Well and good. This brings us to the non-free society, modern states, etc. I would say the same philosophical argument against a person developing a nuclear weapon in a free society applies equally to a person developing a nuclear weapon for the state. By their nature, nuclear weapons necessarily destroy innocent third parties, and so should be seen as a threat of aggression by everyone in the world. Those opposed to aggression, mostly libertarians, at least consistently, should be calling for complete nuclear and WMD disarmament worldwide.
Is there a difference between state-developed and private-entity-developed weapons of mass destruction? I don’t see why there would be.
Would it be okay for a person to build a nuclear weapon in the middle of no where?
The point of having a gun is to protect oneself. What is the point of having a nuclear weapon? To protect yourself from a several groups of people? I think that if a person built a nuclear weapon, someone will eventually take it to court. Perhaps the court would make the weapon developer warn all the people in the radius of the weapons explosive power. Maybe it would be to remove the weapon to the middle of nowhere, or to disassemble it. Of course if the defendant doesn’t do either of these there could be some sort of boycott like on BP. Not sure if all this sounds right, but I think it will first start in court.
Would it be okay for a person to build a nuclear weapon in the middle of no where?
Read the thread I linked as well as Block’s geospatial analysis. It gets really old having to repeat myself. Having them in outer space might be okay, because they could reasonably be used without targeting something that will surely harm innocent people.
" I would say in a free society, people would have the right to make sure nuclear bombs are not produced, and if they are, then to do whatever is in their power to destroy them."
Somebody may be developing them but will publicly deny it and insist he is doing something else? What are you going to do? Send UN inspectors?? Board their supply ship with commandos descending down from helicopters by ropes??
“Obviously, these weapons are not designed to remove a single threat.”
What about a double threat?
Seriously, you are committing a serious fallacy here. There is no such objective fine point of distinction between weapons designed to remove single threats or weapons of mass destruction. Sure, the two extreme points seem obvious, e.g., a handgun vs. a nuclear bomb, but there is an entire spectrum of such things between those two points.
It is likely that a free society will make it extremely difficult and impractical to develop and acquire such weapons, but you can’t just declare them as violating property rights on the basis of some mythical libertarian guideline. Worse, justify by some fallacious objective criterion, some sort of preemptive aggressive initiative.
I don’t think libertarians must insist that their philosophy somehow forbids, in principle, anything that is evil. That would be indeed utopian.
@DD5, I never argued for invading someone’s property and thereby their privacy. If someone manages to develop a weapon of mass destruction secretly, there’s nothing anyone can do about it until it’s no longer a secret. The fact that certain weapons will always destroy innocent third parties makes their existence an act of aggression against those innocent third parties, who have a right to defend themselves. I’ve also never insisted that libertarian philosophy forbirds anything that is evil, just anything that is aggressive or threatening aggression.
“The fact that certain weapons will always destroy innocent third parties makes their existence an act of aggression against those innocent third parties”
What about weapons that will only most of the time or just sometimes destroy innocent third parties? It seems like a rather arbitrary and inconsistent value judgement to make that distinction.
@DD5, name a weapon. In the case of nuclear weapons, they will always destroy innocent third parties (or their property) when aimed at an enemy.
You’re evading the question. I don’t need to name a weapon. This is a question about principle and not this or that weapon.
@DD5, I just read this provided on another thread that I think answers this better than I have:
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/theory_gun_control.pdf
@DD5, I just read this provided on another thread that I think answers this better than I have:
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/theory_gun_control.pdf
Let me ask you this. What deity will come down exactly and enforce all of these libertarian rules? Which position will it take on such issues such as abortion for example?
Block is tackling the issue from a different perspective. One of natural rights and ethics. That’s fine for philosophical debate on ethics, but it doesn’t necessarily apply to what will take place in a real society with no government. I think he would acknowledge this also. The market may not precisely produce all those things that you deem ethical, or it may not take your view on where to put boundaries, such as in the case of defense and purely offensive weapons.
So to say that this or that will or will not be allowed in a libertarian society is nonsensical. We can only assume that it must, by definition, evolve along the lines of private property. I think this allows us to predict to a fairly high degree the superiority of such a social system over our present statist one. But I don’t think you can guarantee anybody that this or that will or will not be allowed. Nor should we. We’re not selling Utopia, but just something that is far more superior. That is all.
@DD5, I have no quarrels with what you’ve written. My initial concern was with whether or not libertarians should be calling for nuclear disarmament by all those currently possessing nuclear weapons.
In what way would “they” be different from a state in the eyes of the nuclear weapon owner, or from the perspective of any individual whose concepts of freedom and property rights differ from the majority around him? This and similar scenarios logically explain how states have been emerging through history. State = whenever “they” impose their fears and preferences over the “non-they”.
I have already stated some libertarian justifications for stopping people from having nukes. Mainly I think that there is a point when someone have so much firepower that the burder of proof have to switch. Instead of other people proving that the holder of the firepower are intending to do harm, the holder of the firepower have to prove they don’t intend to do harm. Because the immense firepowers speaks so for that they intended to harm people.
It could be a tansgression also. I don’t think a voluntary system of law will always reach completly libetartian solutions especially not in cases where libertarians can’t even agree on what the libertarian solution is.
But I don’t think that is a real problem and the fact that we can debate these extreme issues from a basis of solid principles gives a libertarian system a much better chance of reaching sound solutions then any other system. That is what matters, not the exact the details of every special extreme case.