This came up in the Animal cruelty thread and the Disease-related emergency thread. I argue that if you save someone’s life, you are not liable for damage caused in the process, so long as this damage did not exceed what was necessary to save the person’s life.
For example, suppose Alice’s house is burning down and she is trapped unconscious inside. She will die unless rescued. Bob comes along and decides to save her, but in order to do so he must break down Alice’s fence. Can Alice recover from Bob the costs associated with the fence?
I would argue no, because Alice cannot coherently argue that Bob should have allowed her to die, because in order to have a preference, one must be alive to prefer one thing or another. Alice can’t say she prefers an intact fence over a broken one unless she presupposes that she prefers life over death, which contradicts her statement that Bob should not have saved her.
Similarly, although suicide is not “immoral” as such (against whom could it be immoral?), it is also the case that someone who prevents someone else’s suicide attempt is not guilty of any crime. At best, this person can be enjoined from interfering any further, and must allow the suicider to finish off the suicide, but they do not have to pay any damages. This, again, is because the suicider cannot argue a preference for death over life and say that others should respect this preference, because only a living person can prefer anything.
This does not, however, justify all manner of intervention “for your own good”: only life-saving intervention. For instance, a marijuana-smoker can argue a preference for smoking marijuana without falling into contradiction, because they will still be alive to prefer this.
So if I stop someone from smoking, have I saved their life, which means it’s a non-crime because if smoking would kill them they wouldn’t be able to exercise that preference?
What about speeding? Or having unprotected sex? Eating greasy food? Not getting enough sleep?
Can we argue that I should be able to restrict the books someone else reads, because they could be destroying their mind, and without a mind, cannot express a rational preference?
And then says the person can be enjoyed from further interference, which sounds like merely an allowance for incomplete knowledge.
I think you’re reading what you want and not seeing the rest. This is not to say that he doesn’t have some issues (such as the person can be liable for the damaged fence in the example), but I’m just not seeing that you’re fully reading what he’s written.
Is swine flu imminent? If it is, does this validate forced inoculations? If it is not, how did you determine that? Who has more authority as a third party interventionist, the W.H.O. or you?
If the state is the interventionist, then isn’t there a conflict of interest when it comes to this form of immunity from recourse? Does this not validate state intervention in any scenario that can be claimed life or death?
As far as suicide, I think it is silly that people have to do-over their suicide because anyone can intervene the first time and plead ignorance. Not to mention that it places a positive obligation on the person committing suicide to prove that it is intentional. It’s their life and property, I can’t understand why any positive obligations should be placed on that.
I disagree. If the person who owns the property chooses to hold you liable for damage you have caused, you still owe restitution. Of course, given the nature of the situation, it probably wouldn’t be seen as a “criminal” matter, and anyway it seems to me that it wuold be unlikely for someone to hold you liable for damage caused to their property that was a reasonable part of saving someone’s life; you kind of look like a jerk, and in a free market, reputation is everything.
That presumes you have insurance. I think Wombatron’s point was more general, in that reputations will take hits if they choose to punish every benign rights violation. Who wants to take the legal risk of dealing with someone who is a nit-picker or prone to litigate over every bit of minutiae, substantial or not?
But the larger problem that persists is how can a third party intervene without an invitation? I do not believe they ethically can. In fact, I would say it is contrary to the nature of voluntarism to presume a relationship where one does not explicitly exist.
But I think the question is more along the lines of “what is right?”
Now I can’t condone aggressive violence ever. But let’s say I could, given that there was a “good enough” justification. The question now is: is attempting to save someone’s life worth definite aggression. OK, I’m making it obvious; there is uncertainty one one side of the “equation” - we cannot know whether our action will have the “good” consequences we desire, but we do know when we engage in acts of aggression. Well let’s get something out of the way: if one is acting as someone’s “outsourced” self-defence then this is not aggression, it is self-defense and there is no problem for us to deal with. The problem comes when coercion must be employed against a third party or the threatened person themself. It seems fairly obvious that we cannot stop someone from killing themselves, being euthanised, smoking or taking drugs, given that these actions are engaged in freely.
So it all boils down to this: given that one has not been employed in someone else’s self-defence, and the person is not killing themself in any way, can one violate a third parties rights in order to save the life of another party? It seems clear to argue that the answer is no. Even if we discount the uncertainty point from before, there is the issue that violation by rational actor and “violation” by mechanical world are not the same. One is immoral, one is amoral. Can we really say that the sea murders us by drowning? That the sun murders us by skin cancer? That fire murders us by burning? No. And we surely can say that a human drowning another human is murder. One final point to be dispatched: could we steal to save a life. I say no - if rights are not absolute, and fail in some circumstances, then why should they be respected at all?
But you can steal to save a life, in the sense of “can” as “able to”, since we’re able to anyway. The difference is accepting the consequences of that action.
I know that, the point of my post though was to say that whatever you might think is the correct answer is unlikely to translate into reality once we abolish the state.
Any insurer who tried to cover such behaviour would increase its chance of conflict, even the possible increase in the chance of conflict would make people less likely to invest in the business.
The thing is, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can either have the price system in which people compete for resources and attempt to provide the best service for the cheapest price, which may result in various departures from the NAP, or, you can have a system in which your idea of morality is forced upon the people, in other words, you attempt to circumvent the price system.
To give the same example I always do: I may have the right to walk through the black neighbourhood in my white robes and point hat. But nobody is going to enforce this right.