Here is a scenario. There are two neighboring cities, Fascismo and Liberto. Liberto is a libertarian city with peaceful residents. Fascismo is a city of very primite, impulsive and hateful people. Most of the residents of Fascismo are just living their life with relative peace, but there are also many residents of Fascismo who sneak from time to time outside the city gates and kill innocent people, mostly people from Liberto.
The heirs of the victims who are also residents of Liberto want to take revenge on the killers, but alas the gates of Fascismo are closed, and the residents of Fascismo refuse to open them.
Question #1. Do the heirs of the victims have the right to forcefully open the gates? If they are met with resistence, do they have the right to use violence? What is more important, the property of the residents of Fascismo, or the right of residents of Liberto to avenge the death of their relatives?
Now let's say residents of Fascismo, despite their utter hatred towards residents of Liberto allowed the heirs of the victims to enter the city. Now the heirs face an impossible task of finding the killers, even though no one cooperates with them.
Question #2: Do the heirs have the right to use violent interrogating techniques to find the killer? If not, then how can they find the killer if no one cooperates?
Do the heirs of the victims have the right to forcefully open the gates? If they are met with resistence, do they have the right to use violence? ... Do the heirs have the right to use violent interrogating techniques to find the killer?
...
Do the heirs have the right to use violent interrogating techniques to find the killer?
Rights are necessarily tied to laws, conventions, or ethics. It is quite possible that they wouldn't have a legal right, but would have the "right" to do so according to social conventions or certain ethical codes.
What is more important, the property of the residents of Fascismo, or the right of residents of Liberto to avenge the death of their relatives?
To me? To you? To the victim, the aggressor? To God?
they said we would have an unfair fun advantage
That's why I am asking you about the conventions. Which conventions do you think are just, moral, whatever.
Question #1
This action immediately seems foolish. They are unlikely to go unnoticed in Fascismo because the gates will likely be guarded all around. What they should do is hire more private defense and I would assume that after these events, the self-defense of individual Libertoans would become much more intimidating to Fascismoans. Their losses will be a lesson learned in the area of protection.
If they are able to sneak in, either bring back the killers for punishment or kill them, and make it back to Liberto, they would probably be punished in Liberto (if their action was discovered) for violating Fascismo's property rights (for a reasonable duration) but not for their actions against the killers (NAP). If the killers remained alive I would assume they would be put in jail in Liberto as well, but for much longer.
Question #2
They certainly do not have this right. If they can, they should hire some sort of team if dedicated enough to do so. But it may weaken their chances of being allowed in. If there really is a killer amongst the Fascismoans, I would think even they might uneasy about it. Assuming they are fascists as their name implies, they might be angered by the impulsive action taken by the killers under the "Fascimo flag" and call it treason. Because the killer acted as an anonymous Fascimoan, he effectively acted as a representative of Fascismo without their consent. In order to prevent further trouble they could just throw the killers under the bus. Sure, perhaps no one would cooperate with them, but I think this is an unlikely hypothetical denying human action. People could be bribed.
Fascismo is a city of very primite, impulsive and hateful people.
How dare they! Don't they know how politically incorrect that is?! They must be breaking half a dozen laws of PC right there. Not that I am surprised, going around naming their city "Fascismo" like that! We should not stand for this type of folk in the 21st century. I say we whip up a lynching party and go burn them out of their lairs! Yeehaw!
resist272727, that's a strict interpretation of the non-aggression principle you've got there. I just don't see how this can work in practice. Let's also add that residents of Fascismo are eternal enemies of Liberto. Although most of them do not engage in military actions, but they definitely don't punish their co-residents for doing so. Worse, they protect them behind the walls and their property rights.
I think under such circumstances Liberto has very little chance against Fascismo. Liberto residents will have to suffer enormously, while the residents of Fascismo slowly kill them one by one.
Let's also add that Fascismo people have super powers and are super strong and Liberto people are little gnomes with short legs and very weak. In this scenario people of liberto are DOOOOMED!!!11
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
This is a very realistic scenario in conflicts between nations. Take Sparta and Athens for example. Spartans would definitely not allow Athenenians into their city to search for killers. The same is true for the conflict in the west bank between Jewish settlements and Palestinian villages, Palestinians routinely protect terrorists inside their property. But let's not start debating about these particular historical scenarios because that would derail the thread. Let's focus on Liberto and Fascismo please.
that's a strict interpretation of the non-aggression principle you've got there. I just don't see how this can work in practice. Let's also add that residents of Fascismo are eternal enemies of Liberto.
This is a very realistic scenario in conflicts between nations.
Don't you see how frustrating it is to respond to you're scenarios? There are a million unknown variables that would effect the outcomes, and only you know what they are (this is YOUR thought experiment). So a strict NAP approach is as good as any other until we know all the relevent details (what are the current laws in these cities and their neighbors)?
OK fine. Then the important questions would be: what sort of institutions were in place to lead to this scenario in the first place? How were the people of facismo able to gather wealth (was the the rest of the world complacent towards their actions? Why?) Why were the people of Liberto unable to flee to another city or why were they unable to defend their city?
Okay I guess I have no alternative but to stop with examples. So let's talk about Israel and Palestine. There are many terrorists who come from the west bank and explode in Israel. We have no real borter with the west bank, there are just Israeli and Palestinian cities side by side. So it is relatively easy for a terrorist to sneak into an Israeli city and muder a sleeping family or something of that sort. Then these terrorists flee to their Palestinian towns. The residents of these towns will never cooperate with the Israelis, and in most cases they won't even allow Israeli forces to enter their town. So although they do not actively use aggression against Israelis, but they defend the killer in such way that it becomes simply impossible to catch him. What should Israel do? (and please without being smartass, I am only talking about this specific problem, not about the entire relationships between Israel and Palestine).
You may do whatever you feel is right, but you can never expect or demand impunity for breaking property rights.
A libertarian would either not pursue the terrorist if that implied trespassing. Or he would trespass over the property for only as long as needed to apprehend the terrorist, after which he would give himself up to the man whose property he had trespassed on and would accept a just and proportional punishment for his act of disregard of that man's property rights.
The problem is that the bad guys will usually win in this case. If it becomes so difficult to find the exact killer, if collateral damage will be considered a crime, then the free minded people will have no tools in their disposal to punish the bad guys. So for instance if Britain couldn't hurt German civilians, then it wouldn't be able to use air strikes at all. Hamas terrorists hide behind civlians because they know that Israel will hesitate to hurt them. I think such strict interpretation of NAP gives the bad guys huge advantage and basically disarms the good guys.
There are no inherent bad guys and no inherent good guys.
Good guys are those who comply with property rights, either by not breaking them, or by not evading punishment for breaking them. Bad guys are those who demand for themselves a privilege to break property rights with impunity.
When the British were killing German civilians they were not being the good guys.