Why does the libertarian conception of aggression include the threat of force?
I understand why force itself is bad: it is a violation of property in someone’s self or belongings, property is to be respected, therefore no force against another person is to be tolerated.
But the threat of force or extortion is different. It isn’t an actual violation but the threat of a violation, and threats on their own are ok. I can threaten to withold love from my children if they don’t eat their vegetable but I can’t threaten to step on my neighbors garden if he doesn’t paint his house blue. I can threaten to tell the neighborhood about Mrs. Smith’s affair if she doesn’t pay me off, but I can’t threaten to vandalize her house if she doesn’t repent.
So my question is: on what grounds does aggression and by relation the NAP come to include the threat of force?
If the threatening party creates a reasonable impression of immanent force, he is estopped from making legal claims to the contrary… That would be a condolence of misrepresentation/fraud.
Self-defense isn’t possible if you can’t react to threats of immanent force. You can’t act to prevent harm that’s already been done.
“Witholding love” is a bit vague to know whether you’re actually threatening force against your children. It could mean anything. That exact same threat to your neighbour certainly wouldn’t be construed as a threat of force, though it might be construed as a bit weird.
A person who threatens is a dangerous person. It could lead to people voluntarily disassociating from that person (a business disallowing him). But if the threat is really bold then it could result in people acting on it to make sure the person isn’t able to do any harm.
Ok, but all that means is that If I extort someone, I have no legal recourse to not be extorted myself. Not to mention, estoppel as a legal theory doesn’t just exist in the abstract. In order for someone to actually be estopped, there would have to be a legal framework in which that were true. The NAP doesn’t provide such framework, so estoppel doesn’t really explain why the threat of force is prohibited.
“Pay up, or I will take the money by force” – at what point is self-defense to be used? The threat itself doesn’t justify any act of aggresion besides another threat. In other words, it wouldn’t be ok to tie someone up and lock them in a room after -just- saying that because it would be unproportional and constitute a new act of aggression.
I didn’t mean anything by this really. I was just illustrating how certain threats are ok, so long as they don’t violate property, and how sometimes what is permissible and impermissible according to the NAP borderlines absurdity (I can’t tresspass, I can ignore a drowning man, etc.)
I agree, but its not really what I’m trying to figure out. There are tons of reasons why extortion would not be tolerated and I have no doubt that a stateless society would be able to mitigate it just like any other problems.
All I want to know is why the NAP includes the threat of force. The threat is ok on its own, and the force hasn’t yet been committed. Accodingly, the NAP should allow for extortion.
A threat of force is not ok because it’s anti-social. It is the start of the initiation of violence.
If someone starts building a nuclear reactor in his backyard, that is also the start of the initiation of violence, because there is an X chance that thousands will be killed.
If someone is driving 100 mph and flying past other cars, that is also the start of the initiation of violence.
All of these things are OK to take action against.
The axiom is more fundamental then the NAP though. It is absolute property in one’s self and Lockean homesteading which are taken as axiomatic, from which the non aggression principle is derived and not the other way around–its feasible that someone accepts the NAP first, and then reaches conclusions about property, or just accepts every normative libertarian claim at face value, but I’m addressing the logico-deductive approach in the Rothbardian tradition which includes Block and Hoppe (somewhat).
By threat of force I really mean extortion. A verbal or written threat that if you don’t comply, I will use force against your property. According to both Rothbard and Block (and I assume Hoppe and other Rothbardians) extortion is an act of aggression, which, is to be prohibited on the grounds that aggression violates property. The scenario you bring up has problems, but I will cede to you that a swing and a miss counts as inititation of force.
Here is where my whole point is going:
Taxation is a threat of force. If you do not pay taxes, the state will put you in jail. The threat itself though, does not constitute a violation of property. To prohibit taxation on the grounds of the NAP is to prohibit something on the possibility of a future act of aggression–that is, people who choose to pay taxes (however grudgingly it may be) are not being aggressed against in that capacity. So the NAP cannot allow for force to be used against taxation without allowing for force to be used against any act which might lead to future aggression (a very slippery slope). Therefore, the NAP is not sufficient grounds for opposing government.
Ultimately, anarcho-capitalism in the natural rights /deontological tradition rests on faulty reasoning.
Please note that I do not advocate taxation or extortion. What I’m trying to express is that the theoretical framework which the NAP is built upon does not actually lead to the NAP as it is defined in the Rothbardian tradition, but rather to a principle which is unworkeable without an appeal to utilitarian grounds. And once there is an appeal to utilitarianism, there is no reason to believe that natural rights and property are able to deductively lead to any meaningful political philosophy which can stand on its own.
Does the individual or group making the threat have the means to carry out the threat? It’s not a child saying “Give me your money or I’ll put you in jail”, it’s a group of people who will and have put people in jail. If I get a letter from the government saying if I don’t pay my taxes I’ll go to jail I take this as a threat, in their case a ‘warning’. I know the threat will be carried out if I do not comply. If someone comes to your house and points the cannon of a tank at your front door, that’s a threat. These are serious and have damage to life and property. The example of threatening your neighbor with stepping on flowers isn’t life or property threatening (except to the flowers, and unless it’s a rare flower that deserves some special seat of honor in a botanical garden, I don’t seeing it being that serious). I also want to distinguish between blackmail and a threat. A threat is an action against a person(s) or property. Blackmail on the other hand is the witholding or releasing of information in payment, that the payment will keep the information private and/or safe. It’s not a physical crime, and doesn’t lead to physical crime. “If I don’t receive a thousand dollars I’ll release the information I have on your affair”. This person could release this information or not, and it’s generally negative in most cases, but the blackmailer is actually now going within the market and putting a price on the information he has. It’s up to the person being blackmailed to really think if it’s worth the price.
But the NAP on its own doesn’t have any way of determining whether the threat is likely or, whether the severity of the threat makes it more or less ok. In either case, you must appeal to some other rule (usually utilitarianism) which could have been used as an ethic or law to begin with.
I’m using threat differently, as in “If you don’t do x, I will do y.” Now, Y can either be force against property (what I call extortion) or it can be some other action (blackmail). I think this is a pretty fair definiton that fits in with how its been used in most libertarian literature.
First off, I think Rothbard was quite clear on the point.
“No one may threaten or commit violence (‘aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.” - Rothbard
Second, by your logic a person has no legitimate recourse until he’s already been shot. Such interpretations of the NAP would be practically useless, let alone potentially fatal.
Last I checked, there was no inanimate thing called a NAP walking around and doing things. So your use of phrases like “the NAP does this” or “the NAP does that” leads one to believe that you’ve overlooked the human action part of the equation.
And you’ve done nothing to show any faulty reasoning in the Anarcho-Capitalist position. Don’t expect us to do that for you either.
I was under the impression that the NAP was derived from a theory of property first, otherwise, it is just a proclamation of how society must organize itself according to Rothbard’s vision. I know that the threat of violence is prohibited and thats exactly what I’m questioning–on what grounds is that conclusion reached?
I don’t feel like going through how Rothbard (or Hoppe) come to justify self-ownership, but assuming that self-ownership and right to property are true, then it follows that any use of force against a person or his property are a violation of someones rights. This is the general position of natural rights libertarians, its not me making things up.
The problem is, the THREAT of violence does not guarentee violence, and, if violence doesn’t occur, using force to prohibit the THREAT alone constitutes an act of aggression, not self-defense.
I’ve granted to Autolykos already that I’m not talking about imminent danger, but a situation where the threat is significantly in the future (at least days). If i were to say “pay me $100 or I will kill your daughter in 25 years,” I think there is a serious dilemma as to whether or not you can use force against me right now.
I was using those statements as shorthand for “those who advocate the NAP on objective ethical grounds say/do/think…”
Not the anarcho-capitalist position as a whole (which I fully support) but the approach which says that a consistent application of the NAP necessarily leads to anarchism and not minimal government. That is true, except that the NAP (when it includes the threat of violence) is not consistant and is therefore not a true statement based on previous axioms. It only makes sense as a baseless normative claim, which is not at all what Rothbardian’s believe it to be.
Actually, I didn’t mean for my question to imply that one or the other possible answer was “correct”. I asked the question in the hope of gaining more insight into your personal semantics - if that makes sense.
With this issue, as with just about any other, semantics is paramount. How are you defining things like “force” and even “initiation”? One definition for “force” is “physical harm”. By that definition, A throwing a punch at B’s face and missing does not constitute force. However, another definition for “force” is “physical harm or the threat thereof”. Using this definition, the situation above does constitute force. Which definition is the right one? Neither. They’re simply different definitions.
Regardless, does “aggression” have to be defined exactly the same way that “force” is defined? Of course not. In fact, Rothbard and Hoppe both seem to define “aggression” as “the initiation of force or the threat thereof”. This is as good a definition for “aggression” as any other, if not better (because it seems to coincide well with our instinctive attitude here).
If I hold a gun to your head and demand that you give me your money, would you say I’ve initiated force against you? Or would you say I’ve only threatened to do so? Either way, if you define “aggression” so as to include both the initiation of force and the threat thereof, I don’t see how the deontological tradition of anarcho-capitalism necessarily rests on faulty reasoning.
Rothbard is not against the word aggression but the concept denoted by the word–the concept of “the intitation of force or the threat thereof.” And he is not merely against the concept for the hell of it, but because it is a violation of the natural rights of property (which I am assuming to be valid for the sake of discussion). However, what I keep trying to demonstrate is that:
the “threat” part of threat of force doesn’t constitute a violation of rights
the prohibition of “the threat of force” DOES constitute a violation of rights so long as the threat is never carried out
This isn’t a matter of confused definitions, it is using the terms as they are defined by Rothbard et al.
This is a whole seperate issue which I’m trying to avoid. The fact that the threat of force and the use of force can be similar enough in some examples doesn’t change the fact that they can also be significantly seperated in other examples. If you want to press the issue, my ultimate position is that until you touch my body, no force has been initiated. Obviously, thats kind of a problem for me (and most people) which is one of the many reasons why I don’t support the non-aggression principle.
Because of points 1 and 2, the prohibition of taxation is a violation of the NAP, on its own grounds. Taxation is only the threat of force and in the vast majority of cases never results in actual force. According to the NAP, taxation is to be prohibited, but it cannot because doing so would be an act of aggression. The solution is to allow for threats of aggression, which means taxation is permissible, which means anarcho-capitalism is not necessarily the ultimate conclusion of the non-aggression principle.
I don’t think your first point is so clear-cut. Take the case of trespassing. Someone sets foot on your property, but doesn’t cause any physical damage to it (in your own estimation). Was there a violation of (property) rights or not?
Here’s another case: non-violent sexual assault. This is akin to trespassing against someone’s own body. Again, assume no physical damage occurs. Was there a violation of (property) rights or not?
Regarding your second point, if threatening to initiate force is part of Rothbard’s definition for “aggression”, then one does not have to actually cause physical damage in order to be considered a (Rothbardian) aggressor. Essentially, you seem to be claiming that Rothbard’s definition of “aggression” is somehow incorrect or inaccurate. Yet how can that be the case when definitions are inherently arbitrary?
First off, I certainly hope that your last sentence didn’t contain an argumentum ad populum.
Second, to say that no force has been initiated until I touch your body (assuming you mean the hold-up example specifically) is fine by me. The question then is, what do you think constitutes a threat of initiating force?
If I understand you correctly, your fundamental claim is that violations of rights occur only when force is initiated (per your definition thereof - physical contact with [if not damage upon] a person or their property). This is contra the Rothbardian view, which also considers threats of such contact or damage to also constitute violations of rights. Now, if your claim is a priori, it’s simply your definition of “violations of rights” and nothing can be argued here. Otherwise, if our claim is a posteriori, I’d like you to provide reasoning that you think serves as a basis for it.
Taxation doesn’t result in actual force in the vast majority of cases because the vast majority of people simply go along with it. But again, I think your view of “violation of rights” and the Rothbardian view are simply different a priori, and so they can’t be resolved or reconciled. Under the Rothbardian view, prohibition of taxation is certainly not a violation of rights, for the reasons I stated above. Since you seem to define “violation of rights” differently, your conclusion is necessarily different.
On another note entirely, I think the line between government and anarchy is blurrier than many may think. Indeed, it could be argued coherently that we already live in an anarchic world, and what we anarcho-capitalists want is simply a different kind of anarchy. Conversely, it could be argued coherently that we simply want a different kind of government. Once again, it all depends on your definitions.
I don’t think I brought up physical damage a single time so I don’t know why you suddenly made that a criteria for rights violation. Assuming property rights to be valid, both situations you bring up are violations, and have absolutely nothing to do with what my first point says.
Rothbard can define aggression however he wants. However, if he wishes to prove that aggression is to be prohibited following logical deductions from property rights and homesteading principles, the the definition of aggression must be such that it contains only the acts that violate the rights he concieves of. By including the threat of force as part of its definition, he has introduced an act that does not violate rights on its own. You said you understood that, but I don’t think you do.
Forget about my definition of what consitutes the actual initiation of force–I was giving my personal opinion and has nothing to do with my argument. It seems to me that you believe the NAP to be a arbitrary proclaimation which is no more than a value reflection of how natural rights libertarians choose to define their terms. Basically the answer you seem to give me is that the threat of force is aggression because Rothbard said so and aggression is bad because Rothbard said so.
My conclusions still hold unless someone can explain why the threat of force violates property rights.
I don’t think the threat of force alone violates property rights, but it depends on how feasible you believe the potential violation of rights is. If somebody points a gun at me, it is reasonable to assume that this person’s intent is to shoot me. If I don’t comply with his demands, then he will shoot me, hence it’s not a free choice since he will initiate violence against me, hence the violation of my freedom. Maybe that’s what it’s getting at?
This is where you and Rothbard disagree. He claims that the threat of force does violate rights on its own. The split is not over the definition of agression, but whether threats of violence are themselves rights violations. Rothbard says yes; you say no.
