Why I don't believe in the non-aggression principle.

[John_James]

@Positive Agorist

Suppose market anarchism was unworkable and everyone knew this (I don’t believe this, but just suppose), and there was no state. I would feel justified in going from house to house, taking payment by force to fund a legal and defence monopoly - if that was the price for avoiding chaos and societal collapse. In short, the argument from the NAP doesn’t work against minarchists.

That is one of the biggest non sequiturs I’ve seen in a while.

It might be a moral wrong to use force in one circumstance, but it doesn’t follow that this standard can be applied to all others.

NAP does not disagree with this.

See Stefan Molyneux’s Against me argument in which he makes this fallacy of removing context from an act of aggression.

Obviously whether a problem arises or not hinges on your definition of “aggression.” If you define it as most adeherents to NAP do (as, generally, “initiation of force”), then context is included. (Much like “murder” versus “killing”.) (See “‘Aggression’ versus ‘Harm’ in Libertarianism" for more on this.)

I see similar decontextualisation (not a real word, but it should be) in Hans Hermann Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics - the idea that by engaging in debate you are conceding certain libertarian ethical prescriptions.

Quite a few libertarians/NAP adherents have issues with Hoppe’s ethics.

The fallacy is the same: just because you hold this value in the context of a debate, it doesn’t make you inconsistent for holding a different value in a different context. (It’s also an appeal to hypocrisy, which is an ad hominem fallacy)

Huh? It sounds like you’re saying that one can be said to abide by a principle…even if one doesn’t abide by the principle in different circumstances. In other words, you’re redefining the entire concept of “principle”. The whole point is that it doesn’t change regardless of the context. That’s why it’s a “principle” and not a “recommendation based on circumstance”.

@Positive Agorist

I think this extends to the broader point that deontology matches our intuitive morality better for small scale situations and consequentialism for larger scale ones. When there is little to be lost, we prefer principles, but when a policy can affect society’s aggregate utility, you can’t apply that same deontological morality.

Why not?

Another fallacy in the Against me argument is saying that, “if you wouldn’t coerce me, you’re a hypocrite to think anyone else should”. This is another fallacy of decontextualisation. For example, I wouldn’t like to become a builder, it’s a line of work that I wouldn’t enjoy, but it doesn’t make me hypocritical if I hire builders.

How in the hell is entering into a voluntary contract with someone the same as forcing them? That’s like…the exact opposite, in fact.

I support the idea of a legal system based on private defence agencies and private arbitrators, but does it make me a hypocrite if I would personally not want to work for a private court or defence firm?

No…why would it?

@Positive Agorist

In the same way, if someone is uncomfortable with personally coercing you, it doesn’t make them a hypocrite if they advocate you being taxed.

…It’s really interesting that you would ask this question when you’re the one who brought up deontology. The answer is found in the reason the person is uncomfortable coercing you. If I hire someone to build a house for me, it’s not because I find it morally or ethically challenging to engage in building the house. It’s because I find it physically challenging…or I just don’t know how. That’s completely different from the argument Molyneux is making when he appeals to the average person who wouldn’t stick a gun in your ribs and demand money.

Most people aren’t going around mugging people not because they don’t know how…but because they have moral and ethical issues with it. Molyneux’s argument (I have to assume, as I haven’t seen the video) is that someone who won’t do it personally because they find it morally wrong to extort, but then has no probablem when someone else does the extorting on their behalf…is not being consistant. Extortion is extortion. If you find it wrong in a moral and ethical context, then it should make no difference who is committing the act. (Unless of course you believe in one set of morals for some people and another set for others…like “I need to follow the Ten Commandments, but the king is morally right in whatever he does.”)

Now granted, there may be people who do not find it morally wrong to put a gun in your face and demand your property. Obviously these people are not included in the that particular argument.

NAP-based arguments against taxation, for example, rely on thought experiments which rely on how “moral” things seem on the surface. The problem is that there are many things that seem wrong on the surface, that end up being morally justified. Is it morally justified to ether a person, knock them out, cut open their body, let their blood spurt out and cut out a body part? Almost everyone would intuitively say no. But what if the body part was diseased and this person had consented to the operation? Thought experiments are often intuition pumps, and don’t help in deciding whether something is desirable or not.

I’ve never heard of anyone saying an act that didn’t involve aggression violated the non-aggression principle. If you could find some examples of people doing this (as you are alleging here is the case), I’d be interested to see them.

In other words, I guarantee you if you were to have created a thread and simply asked “Is it morally justified to ether a person, knock them out, cut open their body, let their blood spurt out and cut out a body part?” The immediate “answers” you would have gotten would have been clarification questions asking you about the circumstances under which this took place. Because the act itself is irrelevant to the litmus test of NAP…obviously the issue the “non-aggression principle” is concerned with is…surprise surprise…whether aggression took place.

So again. How do you define “aggression”?

I’ll play your game your way:

“The problem is that there are many things that seem wrong on the surface, that end up being morally justified. Is it morally justified to ether kill a person? Almost everyone would intuitively say no. But what if the person was on an operating table and it was the doctor attempting a risky life-saving surgery that inadvertently ended the person’s life? Thought experiments are often intuition pumps, and don’t help in deciding whether something is desirable or not.”

Now if instead of the word “kill” I had used the word “murder”, many people would have stopped me and said it was a false premise…because they would argue that what occured was not congruent with the understood definition of “murder”. This is what you are doing with the word “aggression”. You’re pretending “aggression” (in the context of “non-aggression principle”) is completely synonymous with “violence” or “force”. And again, this is NOT the case in the understanding of adherents to NAP.

In other words…you tell me…Is there any possible circumstance under which it is morally and ethically justified to murder someone?

@Positive Agorist

Someone might say, “people need to be free to choose, otherwise there’s no virtue in people doing the right things.” But that doesn’t apply to the potential coercer. Coercion doesn’t destroy choice, it just shifts it from the coerced to the coercer - so “free choice” justifications (also known as “virtue ethics”) for the non-aggression principle fall short. I may be taking away any possible “virtue” from the person’s choice if I coerce the person not to commit suicide, but isn’t there “vice” in me choosing not to prevent something considered highly undesirable from happening?

So bascially, might makes right?

In Friedman’s example of the man trying to commit suicide, the consequences are extreme, which is why most people don’t feel their moral intuitions strongly points towards leaving the person alone (even if that is the conclusion you come to) - and which is why we can’t use the NAP per se as an argument against statist economic policies, because the consequences are huge, affecting hundreds of millions of people.

So basically, whatever most people “feel”, makes right?

Slogans like “taxation is theft” are also contextual. “Theft” relies on an idea of who the legitimate owner is. In a communist society, everything produced is common property, so hoarding stuff for yourself is theft, relative to communist property norms. The fruits of your labour being commonly owned is theft, relative to libertarian property norms. When you say “taxation is theft” you are assuming libertarian property norms. In the same way a private defence agency might enforce libertarian property norms, agents of the state that enforce taxation are just enforcing a certain set or property norms, and so can’t be said to be objectively committing theft.

So basically, whatever the majority says, goes? (aka, mob rule)?

I agree with Friedman that the belief that complex societal problems can be solved with simple, sweeping moral principles is believing that difficult problems have easy answers.

I still have no idea where you’re going with this Friedman example. Friedman’s conclusion in that example was that “no, you are not justified” in ultimately preventing the man from committing suicide. Your own example disagrees with your conclusion. So I have no idea why you are introducing it…

Milton Friedman - Self Interest & Self Ownership