What is Ron Paul's, and other libertarians', take on this? I am a libertarian, but in order to be consistent, I want an answer to this question.
They keep saying (and want to agree) that either you believe in freedom and property rights or you don't. There is no middle ground.
Thus, what is wrong with allowing a man to make his own nuclear weapons in his own garage? What if Bill Gates would suddenly develop a passion for making nuclear weapons on his own property? He just wants to make them, but doesn't intend to use them. Just like a stamp collector who collects stamps for the sake of collecting them.
So, libertarians are, by definition, not against such nuclear weapons development by individuals, right? And if not, why not, and what are the implications? How would the free market handle this, and prevent the eventual use of these weapons?
We had a decent sized thread not too long ago about this:
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/16041.aspx?PageIndex=1
There was disagreement. Though also some issues in communication and understanding of each other's position, methinks.
Imagine if your neighbour was assembling a massive armed force of men and machines on his property and didn't like to be questioned about it (by his neighbours, not police). How would you react to it? That would probably guide the outcome of what happens to the neighbour and his private militia. I suppose one could otherwise indulge in a neighbourhood arms race contest, though!
I imagine the core question here should be: is a nuclear weapon appropriate for the self-defense of a small flat or townhouse, or would its destructive power pose a grave risk to others in the event of malicious or accidental denotation of the weapon, enough to have them run the nuclear-weapon holder out of town?
In all seriousness though I doubt this is a burning issue for libertarianism as the only people capable of affording and maintaining such weapons would be of the Bill Gates variety, and then there's the question of why one needs nuclear weapons (or a small army) for personal self-defense anyway…
Ludwig von Mises: "We must see conditions as they really are, not as we want them to be."
There is no such right. Now that we know the conclusion, someone make a libertarian argument for it. Go!
scineram:There is no such right. Now that we know the conclusion, someone make a libertarian argument for it. Go!
Why stop there? I want the right to maintain my own flotilla of battleships, too! Imagine a world where everyone, instead of collecting boring stamps, stockpile vast quantities of nuclear weapons in warehouses, bunkers and caves and drive into town Kim Jong-Il style behind a massive motorcade of armoured vehicles, tanks and motorcycles with cool sidecars, plus the million man force hired from the local Wal-Mart.
Seriously, given the nature of a nuclear weapon and its destructive potency I doubt any realistic argument can be made to legitimise it as an inalienable right: ask yourself, would you trust your neighbour with a nuclear weapon? What if Fido the dog accidentally set it off when frolicking in the garage?
There are arguments stating that since a nuclear weapon poses a clear and present danger you would be justified in aggressing against the person's property in order to get rid of it. I don't buy that argument, but that's the only half decent argument I've seen.
ask yourself, would you trust your neighbour with a nuclear weapon?
No, but you can ostracize him to death, give him dirty looks, and not patronize his wife's coffee shop. Plenty of ways to show him that the nuclear bombs in his garage are a no-no.
What if Fido the dog accidentally set it off when frolicking in the garage?
Then you can seek tort damages (from him, not Fido) at a (mutually agreed to) arbitrator. I think.
EDIT: /sarcasm
If Bill Gates does that insurance rates are going to skyrocket in Washington state.
Not if you're dead.
Yeah, that could be a problem.
/sarcasm
Edited previous post to make sarcasm more obvious. Apologies.
The general consensus among libertarian thinkers is that WMDs cannot be owned by anyone. This is because a WMD not only damages/kills one person or one group of people, but all the innocents around them as well. Thus, a WMD is by nature an aggressive weapon so it would not be allowed in an ancap society.
Political Atheists Blog
z1235: ask yourself, would you trust your neighbour with a nuclear weapon? No, but you can ostracize him to death, give him dirty looks, and not patronize his wife's coffee shop. Plenty of ways to show him that the nuclear bombs in his garage are a no-no.
If someone shows their intent of aggression towards you by either holding a gun to your head or building a nuclear weapon near by, then you have every right to retaliate towards the aggressor.
So if someone builds a bomb inside their house with the intention of using it for self defense, but it would automatically bomb my house upon use, could he have it?
A nuclear weapon can't be used for self-defence by a private citizen that makes it a big no no in my book.
If my neighbour was building nuclear weapons in his basement I would view that as clear and present threat on my life and stop him.
Some organisations could be allowed to have nuclear weapons, for instance those whose business model is the defence against foreing states. But in general I would say you act in self-defence when you stop people from building these things. There is really very little reason to do so unless you plan a mass-murder so that would justify a pre-emtive attack.
People who want nuclear weapons have to make there intentions clear and gain the trust of the community.
Escaping Leviathan - regardless of public opinion
"Democracy is the road to socialism." - Karl Marx
I doubt this is a burning issue for libertarianism as the only people capable of affording and maintaining such weapons would be of the Bill Gates variety,
First of all, so? Is your theory that dangerous psycopaths cannot become wealthy?
Second of all, once you got rid of the government, there would be an awful lot of nukes floating around. If the existing weapons made it to the "free market," in the U.S., I would imagine there would be excess supply and some bargain basement prices. The U.S. officially has 5,113 warheads.
Third, supposedly from 1945 to 1990, the U.S. built a total of around 70,000 warheads, while spending at most 2.8 trillion to do so (not couting delivery systems). So that works out to maybe an average of $41 million a nuke? (1996 $), and that's including monsters like the 9 megaton yield B-53 on the high end; I'd imagine the little ones could be made more cheaply.
So even if they sold at cost, Bill Gates could probably afford about 900 nukes, and still have about $2 billion to pay his hypothetical henchmen.
Why doesn't anyone believe me that getting rid of the government just means the rich becoming the new government?
and then there's the question of why one needs nuclear weapons (or a small army) for personal self-defense anyway…
People would primarily want them for purposes of extortion and intimidation, of course. Also possibly for land-grabbing.
Maybe oil companies could hire "private security forces" to pretend to be wacko terrorists and nuke places that have oil deposits, then they could move in and pump without having to purchase the rights form anyone. For example.
If you actually get rid of government and don't just hand it over to the nomenclatura (like Russia) it wouldn't be a problem. Building these institutions from the ground takes massive resources and why would people like Bill Gates want to? He is probably pretty content with his life and doing software development for free. I doubt he want to risk everything to become a tyrant living in isoloation and fear of assasinations and back-stabbing the rest of his life.
This is just not how tyrants are made.
If people start fighting over the power-vaccume we have problem and an enviroments that breeds plenty of tyrants, this would happen if we wake up tomorrow and government is gone. But that is not going to happen and a failing government does not equal anarchy either. The general population in the area actually have to resist authority or there will never be anarchy.
"I doubt he want to risk everything to become a tyrant living in isoloation and fear of assasinations and back-stabbing the rest of his life."
Well, sure, Bill Gates doesn't strike me as the tyrant type either. Still, some people congenitally crave power - supposedly as much as 1% of the population might have full-blown psychopathic tendencies, from the psychology I've read at least. Important not to overestimate them, but important not to ignore their existence either.
Honestly, that's my main problem with anarcho-libertarian thought; much of it seems to ignore that power-hungry and ill-intentioned people exist, and that they get organized if not actively prevented from doing so. If "good people" (people with consciences) are not actively organized and actively opposing aggressive coercion, the people who have no problem with coercion will run everything.
The question then becomes, how does a group that polices against coercion not become taken over by the power hungry, who would probably gravitate towards it?
Transparency and accountability are probably good answers, but then by what mechanisms would those be achieved?
It's a cop-out to just speculate that they'd happen on their own, spontaneously; it would actually take a lot of thought, effort, organization. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" and all that.
People aren't born sociopaths. They become tyrants and criminals because they are unable to deal with circumstances in other ways.
When civil-society breaks down what are you going to do? There is really no other option for survival then to establish yourself as the local warlord or join one. Most of these people are a result of broken civil-societies and a complete and utter lack of trust in there social segment or area.
I am not saying that this excuses anything but its a fact that violence breads violence and that you can't do business without assurance and trust.
But this doesn't happen for no reason, people will opt for the peacefull solution if they think they have one. The precetage of the population that simply enjoy hurting other people is completley insignificant and with the state that is where these people are going to end up as soldiers and police, which doesn't make the situation any better anyhow.
People with extremly high time preferences also tend towards crime but the free market will be more efficent then the state at stopping them.
Notice that people who become rich are the exact opposite of the later category. They become rich because they have extremly low time preferences.
If "good people" (people with consciences) are not actively organized and actively preventing coercion, the people who have no problem with coercion will run everything.
Yes, that is exactly what the problem with our current society is and I have no argument against that this is a problem.
If people empower criminals and don't care about violence and oppression naturally we are going to have. That is why I am an anarchist.
You argument sounds more like "if there was a magical button to remove government tomorrow we shouldn't press it". I agree we can't, the resulting turmoil will create a more totalitarian state then the one we have. But this isn't what most anarchists are saying we should do ... at least not on this forum though a lot of other anarchists are for a coup d'etat style armed revolution. But that has never worked, unless the state is truly terrible to start with it has always made things worse.
Counter-economics and eventually if necessary a war of independence is the only way I see anarchy happening, in such a case the vigilans and necessary institutions will be there when the state is thrown out.
Should someone have the liberty to point a firearm at your head? No. Then why should they have the liberty to put you within the blast radius of a nuclear weapon? They shouldn't. It is threat of force, which is a tort (and so, is not a liberty).
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
Good point. So are many others above. Thanks!
However, the issue still remains. What if Bill Gates takes his nuclear weapons development to a remote island in his own possession where no others are within the blast radius? Then he is not threatening anyone. He should be allowed to develop his weapons, if we truly respect his right to the liberty of collecting nuclear weapons. Just like stamp collectors are allowed to collect stamps, or gun owners are allowed to collect guns.
^ yes.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
"What if Bill Gates takes his nuclear weapons development to a remote island in his own possession where no others are within the blast radius? Then he is not threatening anyone."
How would we know if he moved the bomb to a more populated locale?
How would you know that you neighbor isn't looking at you through the scope on his rifle from inside his house? Does that mean people shouldn't be allowed to have rifles?
"How would you know that you neighbor isn't looking at you through the scope on his rifle from inside his house? Does that mean people shouldn't be allowed to have rifles?"
The amount of damage a nuke can do and the amount of damage a rifle can do are drastically different. If I knew of a rifle that could do the same amount of damage a nuke can do, you're damn right I'd try to ban it.
And yet, even with government all over the planet (which supposedly have the ability to ban weapons) nuclear weapons are all over the place.
"And yet, even with government all over the planet (which supposedly have the ability to ban weapons) nuclear weapons are all over the place."
Based on my cursory look at the information, it seems that there are 8 declared nuclear states (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea) and one undeclared nuclear state (Israel.)
What if Bill Gates takes his nuclear weapons development to a remote island in his own possession where no others are within the blast radius?
"What if Bill Gates buys all of Latvia and builds roof all over Latvia and says no one can leave"....
its a bit of a strange scenario. If its taken down a few notches and your neighbour decided to convert his house to an explosives storage facility or use the property to store chemical waste, one would hope that there were local rules or restrictions in place without having to wait for some technical trespass to occur
Likewise in the Bill Gates scenario , if he decided to sell his land to modern version of a Fascist state as they wanted to build a base as a prelude to invasion, I dont think a Librtarian would have to conclude that there is a hole in their theory by taking action in advance of a trespass
There are number of absurd practial scenarios you can make where applying libertarian principles becomes difficult. That doesn't make them bad guidelines for ethics...
This isn't really a problem at all, if people feel threatened by someones nukes they will stop him. If they trust the holder of the nukes and his intentions enough that the nukes make them feel safer they will allow it. We don't need ethics that has a precise solution for every possible scenario of everything they are meant as guidelines for what is right and wrong, not as absolute law about every little detail of everything.
Most of this stuff people bring up is pure fantasy. For more likley events there are clear solutions and in the really bizzare cases we can still get help from the libertarian principles though it may not have clear answer.
In this case someone can't interfere with something that was already going on on another property. If I live somewhere that is outside the risk-zone of hazardas chemical plants and so forth then we can say from libertarian principles that chancing those circumstances is a problem and I may be entitled to compensation. But exactly where to draw the line and how much is the job of legal entreprenours to figure out...
Especially when you deal with risk this is really complex. Everyone accept a certain degree of risk by living among other people, but exactly how much and how much can you increase the risk you are exposing a particular person to before it becomes a violation...
In most other ideologies these solutions are all completley arbitrary, that we can even have discussion on what is right and wrong (without basing them on some arbitrary condition like the will of the majority) in extreme cases like this is enough for me to prove the superiority of libertarianism...
'The Government' should stop crazy people from acquiring nukes. The Government should stop crime. The Government should run elections. The Government should protect the environment. The Government should regulate banks.
^this is a very universal theory I am developing.
Also, the government should arrange marriages, because how people are going to marry each other in anarchy???
hkarnoldson:This isn't really a problem at all, if people feel threatened by someones nukes they will stop him. If they trust the holder of the nukes and his intentions enough that the nukes make them feel safer they will allow it. We don't need ethics that has a precise solution for every possible scenario of everything they are meant as guidelines for what is right and wrong, not as absolute law about every little detail of everything.
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".
As I stated in an earlier post: if one grants nuclear weapon ownership as an 'inalienable right', then why not extend that into every individual having the right to assemble their own armies, navies and airforces, too? This topic is rather absurd, considering.
Look at it this way: a nuclear weapon is not a commemorative stamp… I would imagine anyone stockpiling bombs would simply be doing so to make as many enemies as possible or at least scare away their neighbours. Then there's the problem of what do you do with a garage full of nukes when the 'collector' fancies himself as the re-incarnation of Napoleon? (What else are you going to do with nukes; admire them?)
I guess those in an-cap land would have to get used to a permanent state of cold (or hot) war with their neighbours when heavy weapons and ICBMs become everyone's 'natural right'… Disagreements like Fred sleeping with Wilson's wife or George not returning the lawnmower he borrowed three days ago will never be the same!
Putting others at risk is putting them in danger of potential property rights violations and is actionable. If I drive within 6 inches of you at 100mph while you are standing on the sidewalk, I am threatening your safety. You have good reason to believe that a violation of your property rights (in the integrity of your body) is imminent and you are thereby justified in taking action to defend yourself. If you neighbor begins building even a conventional explosive device that is capable of damaging your property, you are justified in taking action to disable, disarm or destroy the device because the device's mere existence and its indiscriminately destructive nature give you good reason to believe that a violation of your property rights is imminent. Groups of individuals can not reasonably have greater legal rights than individuals acting independently. Therefore, governments have no more right to build weapons of indiscriminate destruction than do individuals and - at least on an ethical level - we are all justified in taking action to disable the indiscriminate destructive capabilities of any government (including bombers and other weapons whose only possible use is indiscriminate, aggressive property rights violations).
Because I believe retaliation is a natural part of human social behavior, I do think offensive weapons have justifiable uses, namely, retaliation. However, indiscriminate offensive weapons cannot have any justifiable use because even if used for retaliation, they cannot be targeted, meaning, any use of such a weapon will necessarily violate the rights of innocent bystanders. A great deal of the weapons in any national government's arsenal (especially Western governments) are indiscriminate offensive weapons. Anyone with the ability to disable, disarm or destroy such weapons is morally justified to do so and - in a natural order law system - would be fully legally justified, as well.
Clayton -
"People aren't born sociopaths."
I used to think so too, but apparently a lot of adult sociopaths started as child sociopaths. I even read about cases of identical twins where one would be totally normal, the other would apparently have no conscience or compassion from the time they were a toddler.
The theory is that "higher emotions" like empathy, compassion, love, etc. have to do with a certain part of the brain, and some people are simply born deficient in that area of their brain. In other words "born without a conscience" and physically incapable of developing one.
They're not "crazy," in fact you could call them super-rational, because they act only in what they perceive to be in their personal self interest, regardless of possible consequences for others.
Additionally, some theorize that such people are often well suited for climbing the ranks of hierarchical organizations, simply because they're 100% ruthless and often crave power over others.
Psychologists have even developed a brain scan which can identify such people, which involves showing people both neutral and highly emotionally charged positive or disturbing images while they undergo an MRI of their brain. Normal people involuntarily have increased brain activity when shown the charged as opposed to boring images, while psychopaths have exactly the same amount of brain activity in either case. They have no real human emotions.
The sociopaths studied by science are the ones who 'got caught,' but they might be mainly the dumb ones or the bonkers ones. There are very predictable traits and tics sociopaths display; for example, lying constantly and showing no embarrassment when caught in a lie, being unable to admit fault or guilt, grandiosity, megalomania, being superficially charming, but seeming to be 'acting' when displaying emotion.
Remind you of anyone you've seen on t.v.?
Strange, disturbing, but as far as I can tell, true.
http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When-Psychopaths-Work/dp/0061147893/ref=pd_sim_b_2
political ponerology
There's a really strong case that 1% of the population will always be going around and acting like criminals. How does a free society deal with this problem?
The answer would seem to involve taking away liberties from hopeless criminals, but who would do this, under what authority, and how? Who would pay for it? And if there's a group that deals with the hopeless criminals, who keeps that group accountable, and how?
Benjamin:but who would do this
Benjamin:under what authority
Benjamin:Who would pay for it?
Benjamin:And if there's a group that deals with the hopeless criminals, who keeps that group accountable, and how?
Nothing is perfect. Positing a whole bunch of 'what if' scenarios can make any society fall apart on paper. The challenge is to give society its best shot at achieving justice/prosperity/etc.
So, a classic example is a con man who goes from town to town gaining peoples trust, taking their money and splitting.
Who is at risk?
Everyone, obviously. The trusting and vulnerable especially.
Let's say that was done to you. Are you going to make it your business to track them down personally, knowing they probably used an alias and could be anywhere? Hardly anyone would even attempt that. Certainly an old lady just defrauded of her savings wouldn't attempt that.
Positing a whole bunch of 'what if' scenarios can make any society fall apart on paper.
You're calling my assertion that criminals exist a "what if" scenario?
Will there still be an internet in this anarchist society, Benjamin?
Will there still be telephones? Will there still be criminal databases?
What are the current laws regarding extradition? What happens if a criminal commits a crime in Ohio and then is caught in Illinois?
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.