From my last post of refuting the six arguments that Dr. Zwolinski used to refute the principle of non-agression (NAP). I still have three more refutations to go:
4_ No Prohibition of Fraud
Dr. Zwolinski argues that" According to the pricniple of non-agression, only legitimate use of force is to prevent or punish the initiatory use of physical violence by others. And fraud is not physical violence. ". The problem where he lands is the claim of "initiatory" , where if one were to accept that then it would always look at the starting point of things, which the NAP doesn't just look into that.
Since the NAP is based on the theory of property, we should look exactly on the parts were the parts of agression has been contacted. If not, then arguments such as as fraud would be legitimate as well as other cases such as domestic abuse because the individual wasn't agressive "at first". He comes back around by later claiming that it about the physical violence in order to avoid this clash, which then begins TO THE POINT of where the act of agression begain, not in the beginning of were parties were discussing. For example: If I were to buy a house from an individual, and then discover that the seller just gave fake documents to me on proof that he was the owner, so he ran away and took my deposit, then that is fraud. Now I wasn't physically attacked by the person, but I was agressed in terms of my property (in this case my money for the deposit), which is a violation of the NAP. Because of that I am justified in being able to call the police and have the theif arrested. If the individual were resist on the police, then it is not the police who is creating the physical violence, but rather the thief as he is not only stealing from me but resisting arrest from the stolen property.
5_ Parasitic on a Theory of Property
Dr. Zwolinski writes " Even if the NAP is correct, it cannot serve as a fundamental principle of libertarian ethics, because its meaning and normative force are entirely parasitic on an underlying theory of property.". I am quite happy that I get to agree with him on this issue, because NAP is not the starting point of ethics, it is a normative procedue to justfiy property. Saying that we need to use the NAP for the NAP is only begging the question, and it doesn't provide any real guidelines or information, as pointed out by Jason Brennan, another bleeding heart libertarian. A common problem that I see among many libertarians such as Walter Block and Murray Rothbard is that though they are firm supporters of NAP, they tend to have anthropocentric views which distrots libertarian ethics as only applying NAP to humans only.
Now back to the point of what Dr. Zwolinski was making is that the NAP and property tend to have weird boundaries of each other, in a state of competition, that causes some problems that what happens first the NAP or the property.
He makes the case of a person walking in an empty fields and a person comes out to attack you. Now the interesting case is that the person is just there to protect the property and you are trespassing in it. Is the owner justified in attacking? Not if it is in the immediate and clear case since before a person makes the argument that the property is being attacked imminently (walking into the woods) and clearly (full intention of staying there despite warning shots and verbal warnings). The reason why is because the person who will be attacked has only trespassed but can easily remedy the problem by just leaving the area, keeping herself from being ethically responsible as well as defending herself. In this case that the person doesn't know she is trespassing, it is the owner who is agressing since he hasn't explained the process as well as agressing against the other person.
So if it were a case were properties have trouble in dispute, it wouldn't have to be the case of immediately starting to fight as that will create the agression.
6_ What About the Children?
I would say this and number 5 and 6 are the hardest challenges towards NAP, as children don't have full autonomy that adults have. This however doesn't mean that there is no responsibility that when a person takes for having and/or raising a child. I would argue that to accept the conditions of raising or keeping a child with you is to insure that the child would at minimum be healthy and alive. Now why would a libertarian in this case force someone who has kids to take care of them, doesn't that break the NAP? Not at all. If a person were to make a child stay in the house and starve (assuming the kid can't go out since it's a baby) then the property (the child) is being agressed and therefore the individual can be charged for child neglect (among other various things such as murder). If the person doesn't want the responsibility, then the person can always go and put the individual to a foster care, or at the the very least wait untill they are old enough to survive on their own (now that is a hard concept because I will admit that it all depends on the development of a person to survive on their own, which for pragmatic reasons I will accept 18 years as they are recognized legally as adults).
The other argument of an individual trespassing to save the child can be cross referenced to the trolley issue I did on part one, which justifies allowing people to save the child, such as the Child Protective Agency.
One last thing before I end this article is that I am not attacking Dr.Zwolinski or on bleedingheart libertarianism. I appreciate the concerns that the NAP may have and thought those were good objections to be made.
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