If the libertarian society is bombed by China, can the libertarian society invade China to defend itself? and to what length?
thoughts?
Its a little removed from reality. Countries with imperial ambitions don’t bomb countries, they invade them.
We don’t need to talk hypotheticals. The USA(I assume China was a type-o) has provided us with numerous examples of what would happen. Allies would be sought, foreign weapons would be bought, the invaders would be killed, and retaliatory invasions would not be neccesary. Fighters would be volunteers, organization would be spontaneous and would be far more economically effective.
And where invasion builds national unity within States, I think that in this libertarian society it might actually strengthen resolve towards anarchy from both within and without.
The primary problem with invading an aggressive nation is that civillians are invariably harmed.
Such situations are a bit unrealistic or at least unlikey since, from an economic standpoint, the aggressing state would have more to lose than to gain from a war with an economically and therefore militarily strong libertarian society. A war of conquest is really out of the question. If China for whatever reason bombed a free society it would probably be willing to quickly make reparations for damages done just to prevent war.
Under minarchy the state’s military would try to defend the territory as best it could. Maybe militia groups would spring up to help defend the territory and fight a guerilla war against the invaders. Just like militia groups sprang up during and after the War for Independence.
Under anarcho-capitalism the private defense agencies would do the same. But probably be more efficient. Also private militia groups might spring up to help defend the territory and fight a guerilla war against the invaders. This would be more likely to happen without a state because people would realize if they needed something (freedom from foreign aggressors for example) they couldn’t depend on the state which doesn’t’ exist and they’d be more used to taking matters into their own hands.
With the invention of short range battle nukes (davy crockettes) you could set up a dozen or so of them along the border and threaten to launch them against the oncoming enemy forces if they tried to invade and they would probably back down. But than again if the aggressive country knew you were trying to get nuclear weapons they would probably try everything they could to not allow that including launching a pre-emptive strike to destroy your capabilities or even launching an invasion and occupation of the territory.
People will often use the arguement against a libertarian society that what if you had this libertarian territory next to Nazi Germany? How could they ever hope to defend themselves? A good rebuttel to that arguement is how did all of the centralized state powers that existed next to Nazi Germany manage to get defeated and occupied when they had central governments?
That makes no sense. The appropriate response is to bomb China back.
‘’ is not an entity that acts, and neither is ‘the libertarian society’. does not bomb anyone. Individual state-agents collaborate and organize such attacks. The response of libertarians would be to hold only those specific state agents responsible, the bomber-pilots and the office holders who ordered the attacks. This may be done by families of vicitms by taking contracts out on the aggressors. It might also be done by insurance and protection agencies representing the victims, or the insurance and protection agencies might have their own mercenary commando squads to send in and take out the handful of individuals responsible for the attacks.
We can only guess how such a matter would be resolved. In the libertarian society there would be competition and market prices for justice and security, and the best solution would be a matter entrepreneurial speculation and economic calculation. This would rule out an invasion because of the enormous costs involved. It would also rule out retaliatory bombing against anyone other than the offending parties. Harming innocent people would turn public sentiment in the state territory and in the free territory against the retaliating party increasing the costs of security.
I disagree.
The most rational and inexpensive (in every way) reaponse is to assassinate the individuals who ordered the attack.
Just start at the top, and work down until the attacking government officials offer to pay reperations out of their own (or the now dead leaders) personal assets.
Google: Assassination Politics.
Or even simpler: a premium paid to a specialist defensive agency.
In a perfect and beautiful world, there are private armies whose services can be rented. For example, if France wants to tax Dell computers in order to help some local company, Dell could decide to rent a private army to pursuade France to drop the tax.
In a ‘perfect’ world there are no armies. Libertarianism implies free trade and cooperation, not war.
You’re right. I should have said, “In an otherwise perfect and beautiful world with taxing governments…”
An invasion can never be justified by libertarian ethics. However, a retaliatory campaign restrained to the people responsible (i.e., the upper strata of the state apparatus and downward through its military wing), would be justified so long as the bill is paid by voluntary means. And I imagine that if a 9/11-like scenario were to happen, there would be no shortage of volunteers and donations to fund such a venture.
Wonderful. So the Chinese have their government rob them to buy bombs to bomb some other country, then get killed in retaliation for letting themselves be robbed.
What exactly are the bombing in this libertarian society? If it is a libertarian society we wouldn’t have military bases, nuclear weapons site, war ships, etc. Do they just pick a random building to blow up? They certainly wouldn’t strike some government building because they don’t exist. Perhaps they hate the insurance company?
So what if China marched one million men into this libertarian society? You’d probably see militias pop up all over the place to drive the invaders out. I doubt the insurance companies and the PDA’s are really going to do anything under this situation. More than likely it will simply be private individuals who join together to fight the Chinese military. China would eventually lose as they would be bleeding money maintaining a million man army in this territory…or even a 150,000 man army as the US is doing in Iraq. The mounting death toll and the failing economy would eventually force the people in China to revolt against their government and demand a withdrawl.
We can always recruit some Chinese revolutionaries to plant the bombs accurately.