You can read about this here: http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_6.pdf
This is a letter I sent to Mr. Block as a reply to this theory:
I'd like to offer an alternative to the "homesteading of misery" thesis.
A group of people can sign a contract which stipulates that whenever suicide bombers take a hostage, you are allowed to kill the hostage if there is no other way to stop the suicide bomber. When a society has to defend against terrorists who use human shields, it will be in the best interest of most people to sign such contract. In general, a contract can be signed for all those cases when the consistent application of NAP goes against common sense (examples:your famous Martians example and other lifeboat situations). Thank you.
Such a contract would only legitimately apply to the people who signed it. Outside parties wouldn't be legitimately bound by it.
And what's this "common sense" you're talking about?
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Of course. But I would assume that most people would sign such contract. Perhaps there won't be an entry to particular private places if you didn't sign this contract.
Sometimes to fight terrorists who use human shields, it makes sense to kill the human shield. Otherwise you strongly encourage the terrorists to use human shields in the future, which makes your fight against them extremely difficult.
Why the heck would anyone sign this contract? "Hey guys, if I'm in danger, kill me"
Because if majority of people sign such contract, the fight against terrorists will be a lot easier. It might be in the interest of society as a whole. Naturally you will only sign this contract if others sign it. You can use assurance contract for that.
Who do you think determines what's in the interest of "society as a whole"?
Eugene:Sometimes to fight terrorists who use human shields, it makes sense to kill the human shield. Otherwise you strongly encourage the terrorists to use human shields in the future, which makes your fight against them extremely difficult.
It might make sense to you to kill the human shield, but that doesn't mean it necessarily makes sense to everyone or in general.
It might be in the interest of a group of people to have such rules if this group encounters a threat from terrorists who use human shields.
Wheylous: Why the heck would anyone sign this contract? "Hey guys, if I'm in danger, kill me" Nice, spot on. Eugene: Because if majority of people sign such contract, the fight against terrorists will be a lot easier. It might be in the interest of society as a whole. Naturally you will only sign this contract if others sign it. You can use assurance contract for that. LOL no. All a terrorist would have to do in order to guarantee the deaths of civilians would be to take hostages and make it really damn difficult to be stopped otherwise. My goodness, their job just got a whole lot easier. LibertyHQ and its awesome forum. | Post Points: 5
Eugene: Because if majority of people sign such contract, the fight against terrorists will be a lot easier. It might be in the interest of society as a whole. Naturally you will only sign this contract if others sign it. You can use assurance contract for that.
Sometimes to fight terrorists who use human shields, it makes sense to kill the human shield.
gotlucky, I don't understand what you mean. If it will be considered legitimate to kill the hostage while shooting at the terrorist (given the initial consent of the hostage) , it will be a lot easier to fight terrorists. If human shields is a serious problem, it will make sense for people to give this consent, and ostracize those who don't give such consent.
Eugene,
If all it takes is for a terrorist to take hostages and "not be stopped easily", then all the terrorist has to do is take hostages and not be stopped easily. The hostages' own police and militaries will kill them on the terrorist's behalf. It has nothing to do with legitimacy.
This is just a really fucked up idea.
What is this... I don't even...
Negative homesteading?
Block has a reply to this rejoinder: http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2010/lp-2-25.doc
Seems a bastardization of the concept of homesteading to use it in this context :\
One example of this type of dilemma is like so: let's say a group of terrorists have smuggled a nuclear weapon into the city and are hiding in a school with children as hostages and have set it to go off in 20 minutes. The bomb will kill millions who can't possibly evacuate in time, unless you blow up the bomb before the 20 minutes is up (nuclear bombs can be disabled by destroying them with conventional explosive). Is it ethical to kill the children along with the bomb, as you surely must in order to end the threat to all.
It seems like it should be, since all are threatened by the bomb directly. The kids here are 'collateral damage' as unjust a phrase as that is. They are unavoidable casualties in the protection of your own life.
Now here's where the utilitarian ethicists step in and say that you've saved the masses by the cost of these kids' lives, but we're not utilitarians, we reject the 'greatest good' rubric of ethical judgment.
Can you ethically save your life at the expense of an innocent's? Have they in any sense abrogated their rights by allowing themselves to become overpowered? I don't think so.
You would have to bomb the building in the real world. No doubt about it. I suppose we could then ethically conclude that the fault of their deaths is really at the foot of the terrorists who forced the situation, but how do we justify that ethically.
I think Block has some other justification of using force in these situations. I really want to find the article.
Block quotes himself in the link I posted above.
His scenario is A takes B hostage and attacks C whose only option is to shoot through B to kill A else he'll be killed by A. It's an idealized, generalized version of the nuclear bomb scenario I offer, which I offered because Autolykos asked up above for a realistic scenario.
Anenome: Can you ethically save your life at the expense of an innocent's? Have they in any sense abrogated their rights by allowing themselves to become overpowered? I don't think so. You would have to bomb the building in the real world. No doubt about it. I suppose we could then ethically conclude that the fault of their deaths is really at the foot of the terrorists who forced the situation, but how do we justify that ethically.
This is a far more useful question than Eugene's. First, I would just like to clarify why I think Eugene's question is not a useful hypothetical. Nevermind the fact that most people avoid risk and danger to their person, this idea actually incentivises hostage taking by terrorists as the police or military instead will kill the hostages. For a similar situation, look at why some people do not want to be organ donors - they want everything to be done to save them instead of the possibility of someone looking to organ harvest. Fortunately, there is an inborn sense of decency that probably helps limit this kind of thinking. Whether or not this is widespread or rare does not matter, it gives incentives. In the case of terrorists, why would you want to incentivise them to do more terror?
Second, on to your question. I think the answer is clear if we rephrase the question: Is it okay to wrong others while trying to accomplish your goal? If I am fleeing from someone trying to murder me, can I ethically shove people out of my path? I think it's clear that I am certainly wronging these people I shove. Maybe it is the case that my only options are to die or shove these people, but that does not change the fact that I am wronging them.
There is another part that often gets overlooked, and it is the matter of what is likely to happen in a decentralized society. Let's look at what happened in NYC recently. The police killed the gunman, but in the process they shot and wounded several innocent bystanders. These police officers wronged many innocent people in the process of killing a murderer. Now, we can see that in a highly centralized society, these police officers are not going to be punished severely, and certainly not to the extent that a private citizen would have been punished had he acted similarly.
But what would have likely happened in a decentralized society (especially one with strict liability)? Those police officers could be sued by their victims. Now, we know that some of the victims were angry at the police and called them reckless, so it's likely that those victims would sue. Maybe only some of them would sue. What is likely is that the more reckless and unreasonable the victims perceive the cops to have acted, the more likely they are to sue. If the victims believe that the cops acted reasonably and rightly, it is less likely they would sue.
In other words, the more reasonably people perceive the cops to act, the more likely they are to forgive them for any wrongdoing they do. If the cops just start shooting hostages because they think it's too much work to find out a better option, people and especially the family of the victims would not stand for that.
Regarding the nuclear bomb scenario, it comes down to strict liability. Perhaps you will save many people if you bomb the children, but the one thing that must be made clear is that you are murdering people. You are doing wrong. You should be able to be held accountable for your actions. Part of the problem with these types of hypotheticals is that they end up with a false dichotomy: Which choice is the "right" choice? Well, that's not the issue. If you act one way, you are "letting" some amount of people die, but if you act the other way, you are murdering some amount of people in order to save the greater amount. I know that you are not doing this, but I've seen too many people try and rationalize the murders as if there ought to be no consequences. Whatever choice the libertarian makes, he cannot be a libertarian if he is against even the possibility of punishment for the murders.
Because if majority of people sign such contract, the fight against terrorists will be a lot easier.
Where are all these terrorists coming from? Do they just grow out of the soil like weeds?
For a society to be terrorized by armed fanatics is not a normal state of affairs. It happens, pretty much without exception, because that society (or rather, the State governing it) pissed off a bunch of people by oppressing them and/or killing their friends and relatives.
That said, as a purely theoretical matter, there's nothing wrong with this contract you've proposed. Though I rather doubt many people would sign it, and I really doubt there'd be any terrorists to fight in a free society.
Whatever choice the libertarian makes, he cannot be a libertarian if he is against even the possibility of punishment for the murders.
Well, at best it would be involuntary manslaughter, not murder I think. And secondly, where does moral culpability lie?
Because if you didn't know there were children in there and you bombed the place, it's still involuntary manslaughter. Ideally their relatives would refuse to convict the person who made the final choice to go ahead and take out the nuke. Even more ideally you could contact their family up-front and ask their opinion, but you'd probably still have to go ahead with bombing the nuke even if they were against it.
Ultimately technology will solve both problems. It'd be just as easy to take out a nuke with a kinetic energy missile which is fundamentally nonexposive. But you need advanced imaging capability to aim it.
My question is if it's not unlike the terrorists setting up a trap of this sort: suppose the terrorists setup a door with a string on it and tied to the string is a trigger pull of a weapon aimed at a kid. Someone randomly walks through and the gun goes off. Is this person now guilty of involuntary manslaughter?
No way. He simply walked through the door. It's instead the person who setup the malicious boobytrap whom is themselves guilty of murder. So, I think a case could be made that the terrorists have murdered the children in the nuke scenario.
Anenome I think you are right. The terrorists are at least partially liable. Your trapdoor scenario is a very good analogy