gaborhelesfai

I liked the rebuttal, though I would like to make a case for another perspective. As I view it, the NAP - since it is a principal - does not include a) how to treat people who violate the NAP or b) tell you how to live your life and what decisions should you make. If we take these into account, then the most problematic issue - risk taking - can be dealt with (pollution is a special case of risk taking). If there is a conflict, people want to solve it, and if they can't, they go to to a third person to settle their debate. Why do they do that? Because they are both part of a larger group, and they are dependent of that in one way or another. Not taking this path will result in mistrust from the other members of the community, which would affect the life of either parties. if you use violence to solve your problems it means you lack empathy since you don't want the other person to react, thus aggressive people are generally untrustworthy. For example: if someone shoots a kid because he climbed through the fence for his ball, the shooter would likely be ostracized from the community. This is the way the legal system emerges in a free society. If we accept this, Zwolinskis all points can be rebutted. Let's take the case of pollution. No matter what you do, you will have an affect on other people - sometimes more, sometimes less. But some may see it as an act of aggression - for instance you smoke weed on your property, but the smoke goes to the neighbor, who does not like it -, thus there is a conflict between these people. If they want to live a peaceful life in their community, they should solve their dispute without aggression, otherwise they could be no longer part of that community. In the mentioned example, in theory the neighbor could shoot the smoking person, but this would cause the others not to trust him, so a friendly talk or in extreme case a court hearing is much better solution.