Hello Hive account@dwinblood.

I have been a quite dogmatic Rothbardian Ancap once and probably would have defended the NAP in many situations. But with more thinking and reading I came to the conclusion that the NAP is way too fuzzy to count as an axiom that is underlying a social philosophy.

If you want to say every aggression against life and property is illegimate, you have to find a definition of aggression and property first. And if this definition is binding for everyone you are again in legal positivism and statism.

The NAP is not the basis but the result of human interaction, it is optional. I can correspond with it or not, like I can agree with every other man-made law.

Therefore Max Stirner gets to the point:
"As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, i.e. “concede", to eachother. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected, the children had nevertheless “by nature” the right to exist; only the Spartans refused recognition to this right. But then they simply had no right to this recognition — no more than they had to recognition of their life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown."