vahleeb

It's funny that you quote the exact place I use to illustrate the difference between having a capacity and exercising a capacity, and still show you don't understand the difference between having a capacity and actually exercising that capacity (Like drinking water). You have the capacity to drink water all the time. You're only exercising that capacity when you're actually drinking water. Now replace that with sentience (the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively) and you'll see what I meant by saying the comatose and the asleep possess that capacity. Just in case I wasn't clear, sentience is defined as a capacity so when you say "the capacity to exercise sentience" you're literally saying "the capacity to exercise the capacity to feel/perceive/experience", so... I'm not really sure what your argument is here. Are you just repeating that children at certain stages of development lack sentience and self awareness? So what? The question is whether force can be administered against the mother to keep the child alive. Yes I am, because for the purpose of my post I am debating Natalia who is of the opinion that abortion is murder, because foetuses are equals to human beings in terms of morals. I am aware of what the original topic was, but I was under the impression we moved away from that. Which is probably why I give out the impression that you got of not being aware of a certain difference, but if you wanna expand on that topic, I'd welcome finding out more about it.

I get it now, thanks Libertus. And yes, you're right. It makes no sense at all.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that everything is "owned" in common.

That should be "moral" in quotation marks since it's obviously fake morality. I'd say the following qualify as the "moral" tenements upon which communism is based: - there is no personal right to private ownership - business owners (it was applied to factory owners at the time of communism's inception) are exploiting their workers by pocketing the profits instead of sharing them evenly among their worker base (because ownership is immoral from the argument above) - no one can be asked to contribute more than what they can contribute - no one should be left in need Did I miss anything?

First up you should review a little bit of history. The bible was not put together by The Vatican, the concept of the Vatican didn't even exist back when the bible was compiled which was in 3 councils: Laodicea 363AD, Hippo 393AD and Carthage 397AD. Second up, while the bible was composed by compiling different books by different writers, the actual books themselves (especially the ones in the old testament) are mostly single sourced and argumented as having been passed down through divine inspiration from god to prophet. When you find contradicting information within the same book, your argument of "cpmpilation" and "variance on a given theme" doesn't quite hold up. I guess at this point I'd ask you to restate your purpose/position in this debate because this is tangent number three I feel we have engaged, and I don't even know what we're discussing anymore.

So if the bible contradicts itself and the bible is written from divine inspiration what does that say about the divinity? Deuteronomy 17:1-5 - commands stoning to death of non-believers. Deteronomy 5:17 - "You shall not murder". It's the same f-ing book within the bible!!!

No, the capacity is actually closely correlated to the ammount of brain matter in the organism. You keep saying "time" as though that's supposed to have been my argument. Read again, please. The comatose and the asleep possess the capacity regardless of wether they're actually in the exercise of that capacity or not. Foetuses don't possess that capacity. You do understand the difference between having a capacity and actually exercising that capacity, right? (Like drinking water). Also the quote you are giving me from the article is doing the same "confusion" you are. Sentience is a capacity (as defined a few posts above). You have a capacity even though you don't exercise that capacity. Now about your argument that embryos are humans. Undoubtably they are homo sapiens embryos. What you fail to grasp is that they are not moral agents in any way shape or form and that is the actual heart of the discussion. Either you have just created a separate category of humans that have no moral obligations or agency but that generate moral obligations to others, or the moral obligations HAVE TO BE connected to something other than their "personhood" which you and your beloved article define as the belonging to the homo sapiens species. This is what I am saying all along actually, that the moral obligations are connected to something other than their homo sapiens-ness: to sentience which is something that foetuses do not have. (I would actually go even further and claim that self-awareness is the characteristic, but that's another discussion.) The rest of the discussion is simple: you don't have "a" term for this separation while I do (I call them "human beings", with all of their precursory forms being referred to as "potential human beings") and you're just confusing the language. You're free to come up with a term and I'll adopt it just to continue the conversation. But first, you should resolve the contradiction in your own reasoning that I outlined above: when does moral agency begin and why, and when do moral obligations begin and why. Because right now, you seem of the belief that a human being is absolutely identical in moral status at the moment of conception as well as at the moment of achieving full brain maturity if you take time out of the equation and that in spite of the fact that you, yourself, do not hold up children and foetuses to the same standards that you hold adults to. Because if we put two people (moral agents) in a situation of restricted resources to the point where the both of them cannot sustain their own lives at the same time, then the one who lives by eating the "share" of the one who dies, is morally responsible even though we may just describe it as "dying" and not "murder".

I don't think you're right about that. All the 3 main religions in the western world (judaism, christianity in all its sects and islam in all in sects) do not state to do no harm, they say don't kill other members of the same religion, while advocating for the killing of all non-believers, adulterers, homosexuals, etc. Just because you pick and choose what you like from "the religion" doesn't make it factual, spiritual and it sure as hell doesn't make it right.

That's called confirmation bias. You remember this well timed dream, as opposed from all the other times you had traumatic dreams involving loved ones where nothing happened afterwards. One night a few years ago, two months after my father had suffered a TIA (transient ischemic attack) I had this nightmare about my mother having a heart attack while I was with her. As I woke up in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark room, the image of my dad's face formed out of the darkness in front of my eyes and then it faded away as I woke up in a state of fear. My father had not been a part of the dream at all. I waited up for the next couple of hours unable to sleep to receive a "fated" call. Luckily, it was just weird brain connections and my dad is alive and well today. I'd like to re-extend the invite to read through the article that I linked above.

First of all it is the duty of those that make extraordinary claims to bring evidence. The claim is that "God exists" not that it doesn't. The reason why that is the extraordinary claim is because it is putting forth non-intuitive theories about the behaviour of matter. Even still, science and math in particular has given us the method of "reductio ad absurdum" which states that we can temporarily accept as truth any statement and then examine all the derivates of that statement and if we find a contradiction to already established truths/axioms then we can refute the initial acceptance of the statement and consider it false. The problem of positing that God exists is leading off the top of my head to the following two blatant contractions of axioms that can be derived: the existence of consciousness without matter and the inability of an all-powerfull being to change their mind because of their all-knowing nature. The first is a contradiction of the laws of nature as they have been observed scientifically in every observation since science started recording experiments, the second is a literal contradiction in terms that is proposed by the qualities of God and cannot be sidestepped in any way. As far as after life is concerned, I put forth an article I wrote awhile back on the subject that looks at things from a similar perspective: https://bukman.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/20150923-at-the-core-of-it-all/

He was obviously talking about European christian sourced kingdoms as opposed to the rest of the European countries or even the US. And while Saudi Arabia is a theocratic monarchy, a very good example of a much freer muslim monarchy in the middle east is Jordan which stands as evidence to what was chance was lost with the abolition of monarchy in Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Funny enough, the House of Saud is more of a prisoner to the priestly caste and should they even think about enacting any kind of reforms they would be shot down faster than the Shah of Iran was and we'd get an Islamic Republic or an Islamic Caliphate instead of it which would still be a worse option than what we have now. I agree there's a lot of comical exaggerations but there must be some truth behind it and it's the saudi prince that made it happen.

Hi twoms, It might look like that but, in fact it isn't. Both are equally wrong, though. Most likely your prof thinks that about communist, but is a full-on utilitarian so by associating the two you're creating a "trigger warning" in his own mind. Utilitarianism is basically the most good to the most people. Communism is not that. Ideological communism is everything is shared among everyone, "from each according to ability to each according to their needs". It might seem that it is akin to utilitarianism because in the system of communism that defines the two opposing classes (the workers and the private owners) the class that communism preaches to and awards all its benefits to is more numerous. Communism has an effect that is akin to utilitarianism in a certain way, but there is no philosophical link between the two systems.

So first of all here's the definition of sentience: Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. (Wikipedia, via Miriam-Webster) Since it is defined as a capacity, the people in a coma and the people who are asleep still possess this capacity because they have possessed it in the past and we know that once their current temporary state expires, they will return to the exertion of that capacity. Embryos and foetuses do not have that capacity, they will at some point in the future, sure, but as of yet and as of their current state of development they do not possess that capacity nor have they possessed it in the past. When sentient people voluntarily migrate into a state of sleep, or even involuntarily migrate into a state of coma, they possess the expectation to wake up and return to their previous state. While this is a possibility (save from the braindead) then terminating their lives violates that expectation. It doesn't matter that they won't "experience" their deaths, because we are still violating against their desires from their last "experiencing" state. This is something that embryos and foetuses don't have until they first develop sentience. But that's not even the crux of it, because we kill sentient beings for food by the millions every day. It's actually self-awareness that turns slaughter into murder and that's even harder to pin down in the baby's development (and i say baby because I currently think that self-awarenes happens some time after birth). Now, the problem with the article you quoted is that it uses language that is contradictory to the state of the foetus. Take the following quote: "One can be harmed without experiencing the hurt that sometimes follows from that harm, and which we often mistake for the harm itself." The word "one" implies both sentience and identity (self-awareness + time) and neither one of those qualities can be applied to foetuses. I wonder if you could expand upon the use of "individual" in biology and how it differs from the definition I have put forward. Because if you substitute "organism" for it, then I have no moral obligation towards an organism. Just as before, "individual" is a concept that has attached to it sentience and self-awarenes which means they are automatically a moral agent (save some serious mental damage). There are three problems with what you say here. First, you are conflating acting morally towards someone with holding someone morally accountable, but they are two very different things. And you're substituting "acting morally" for the NAP (which is less of a "sin", but it serves the above conflation). Moral agents are those that are self-aware and possess enough reasoning capacity to extrapolate from self-awareness to concepts and this is why we hold them morally responsible for their actions. Second, the non-agression principle as moral behaviour. We do not aggress against other beings if they are capable of experiencing that aggression or (as I said before) if they would normally oppose that aggression in their natural state and have a significant likelihood to return to their natural state. Mentally ill people can still perceive that aggression, therefore they fall under the protection of the NAP. Seems to me like there'd be some room for a discussion here about NAP and vegetarianism, but that's not relevant for this discussion right now. I hope, though, that this puts to rest the topic of applying the NAP to the comatose and the asleep. Third, unless you are willing to convict for murder, or at least to hold morally responsible, the foetus that, while in the womb, kills off and incorporates its twin, due to reasons described above, then you are also not regarding the foetus as a moral agent. That's true. I think I expressed myself wrong. What I meant was that they are not human beings. And I was just pointing out some physical differences to pile on top of the psychological and moral differences. Maybe that was the wrong strategy. Actually you were, just like using the term "fallacious slippery slope" is still ridiculing. I invite you to go back over the original text in which I admit the position that we end up is absurd, but it's just a natural consequence of applying the same principle consistently. This was designed to show that there has to be more than just that particular principle in deciding the morality of the situation. And then, in my next post (the "ridiculing" one) I point out that you seemed to abandon by yourself the argument from "potential" altogether in your follow-up post, which makes me wonder if you understood at all what the principle that I applied was, why I applied it and what I was trying to prove. Sentience and self-awareness. This has the result that all the defences that apply to the comatose, the asleep and the mentally ill (because they come from sentience and self-awareness), do not apply to foetuses. Also the article is poisoned by the wrong (contradictory) language from the start, so I don't give it credit for any points.

People in commas are sentient, the impairment is temporary. I think killing people in their sleep violates the NAP too. People who are brain-dead on the other hand can be described as no longer sentient which is why we have the procedure of "pulling the plug". It seems to me that your argument is predicated on the embryo/foetus being a "human being". But I don't think you're right about that. Human beings have moral agency, foetuses/embryos do not. Human beings can be described as individuals (definition: a separate entity containing its own identity completely delimited from any other entity both physically and psychologically - you may put forward an alternate definition of individual, if you wish), embryos/foetuses can't. The closest category of humans that we could have to embryos/foetuses is children since they also lack moral agency, but even that is not close enough because if a child causes the death of a fellow child, we do hold them responsible (at least morally, if not legally), but if a foetus kills off its twin in the womb (numerous cases have been recorded, due to too many embryos and not enough room/resources) we don't hold them responsible at all. Also the case for "humanity" is rather hard to make when examining the embryos during that intermediate phase when they still exhibit gills among other characteristics. In fact, we can't even use the appropriate gender pronoun before the sexual organs are fully formed and have to resort to calling the foetus "it". I don't understand why after doing away with the "potential human being" as a description of the foetus, you still feel inclined to "ridicule" my argument from potential. Which I'll say you haven't succeeded. First of all, with regards to gays, the analogy holds if you're making the argument that sexual orientation is genetic, where it breaks is the part where by definition marriage is consensual and children/animals cannot offer up consent. As far as "individuals within themselves" I think the definition of individuals that I put forward above explains why they actually are not.

This is a very interesting subject to me and I was going to make my own thread on it because I want to approach it from a different (NAP based) angle, but I still have to work out all the kinks before putting that theory forward. In the meantime there are a few aspects in this thread that caught my attention. First of all the way the problem is laid out from the get go is wrong, I think, because it tries to impose a situation of equality. This is tentatively addressed throughout the thread but I think it's not pressed enough. The reproductive function of males and females is probably the very essence of what makes men and women different and as such not equal. To try and establish some philosophical rules around the whole process being motivated by equality is akin to trying to make 2 equal to 3. Basically what I'm saying is that you can't have equality here because there is no equality here. Second of all, when skimping through and seeing people talking about contracts and outcomes and a woman's right over her body the concept of slavery popped up in my mind and soon enough I found it in the discussion as well. There seem to be people on this forum that think all the wrong in the world can be made right if you sign a contract and somehow contracts have this amazing power to whitewash any situation. But what all of you seem to lose track of is that slavery, in the past, was also "regulated" by contracts (bills of sale, falling into debt, etc). And all we do is focus on the "moral" aspect of it: humans can't be property because property can't own property and humans can't belong to two opposing categories, but the truth is that humans can't be property because of a different reason. Humans own their bodies. And when the concept of slavery is brought up, it supposes the transfer of the property over one's own body to a third person (the master). But regardless of the contract signed and the voluntarism that is involved this transfer cannot be made in the perfect way that is presupposed by slavery (that is 100% of the time). The acts of waking up, of falling asleep, of being hungry or being thirsty, of needing to pee are actions of the body that cannot be commanded externally by a third person, therefore the transfer of property can never be fully realised because it is broken by these instances. This is why slavery cannot be "whitewashed" by a contract because it's the slave that cannot deliver on the terms of the contract. It's this line of reasoning that leads me to the conclusion that a woman cannot sign over control of her own body, even for the limited but continuous period of time that would take a child from conception to delivery. The third thing is the (deliberate I'd say) confusion over life and "life". Most people here equate "taking a life" with killing a sentient being and use the term in that manner. It may be less biologically accurate, but it also has the advantage that we don't get taken to jail for cutting down a tree. On the other hand, I have also seen the advocacy that an embryo is a "potential" life and should deserve the same protection as a "real" life. While I do understand the argument, why do we have to stop there? Why does only a fertilised egg qualify as potential life and not the process leading to it? Why shouldn't we punish the "potential" parents who choose to use contraception or the man who releases his semen outside of the woman's vagina as having taken away the "potential" of that life? The problem that I see with making an argument based on potential is that there is virtually no preceding (original) limit where we can "delimit" it. If the embryo deserves the same "protection" because it is the direct predecessor of the foetus (potential foetus) who is the direct predecessor of the baby (potential baby), then aren't the semen and the ova the direct predecessors of the embryo? Shouldn't we accuse a man having a vasectomy as murdering all of his "potential" babies? Shouldn't we accuse the woman that fails to have unprotected sex during one sexual cycle that she killed the potential of that particular egg? These are unreasonable positions, I know, but the argument "from potential" can be made in all of them. In the end I'd say to the OP, there is no notion of equality in the whole matter because there is no equality, not until men can get pregnant, anyways.

Personally I feel that this is a wasted opportunity. Here's the ultimate evidence, sprawled out there on every tv screen in the world, that taxes are theft and that people who can afford to buy a safe (an offshore) will do it just to keep the grubby hands of the governments off of their money. Instead of discussing everything in this key and highlighting the hypocrisy of the politicians who live on taxes to admit themselves through this behaviour that taxation is theft, somehow everything got reframed into a rich vs poor perspective and "the classes" are busy tearing each other apart.

1. Let me try to make it clearer. When I say "brains are more important" I'm talking about pure military tactics. Good tactics are sometimes superior to better numbers, therefore a good tactician is sometimes more valuable that 100 foot soldiers from a pure militaristic standpoint. That's why "generals" are usually kept from the front lines where a stray bullet can nullify this tactical advantage that exists from having that tactical mind on one's side. This is naturally implemented in the military through the ranking system but for the life of me I don't see it arising from a voluntary perspective. You might say that voluntarism leads to inefficient military practices, which is actually proof that voluntarism is inherently opposite to violence, no? 2. The thing I was referring to was the fact that no country possessing nukes has ever been invaded in history. Stefan has made this case numerous times in his videos and the reason for it is that the guy from the invading country that gives the order has to give that order knowing that if one nuke makes it out of the country he's invading, it'll target him and he'll most likely not survive.

I'd say ancap for the long-run. But a plethora of small nationalist-minarchist-monarchist states that do away with taxation, despite it being morally inconsistent, might bring us better short term effects. That being said, I can't vote since I support two different paths depending on the temporal horizon.

I numbered the above 1-3 so I could reply per points. 1) It's quite possible that the reason why guerrilla forces have been organised hierarchically is because they are trying to violently substitute the state which is in itself a hierarchy. But I think it also has to do with efficient military tactics. I think that by definition to escalate from random violence to guerrilla warfare the attacks would have to be coordinated and this coordination can't really be done by committee. This also implies that the "brains" are more important (from a military standpoint) and thusly less prone to being risked in battle. This means some people will be taking more risk of death than others and would do so voluntarily and from a pure ideological standpoint (cooperation would not kill them, just their ideals). Truth be told, who knows? But ancap is all about trade and no rulers which results in peaceful cooperation and guerrilla warfare is like the complete opposite of that. 2) I think here we come into a difference in the way we see ancap working. You seem to think that there is room for a DRO that handles external defence, but I (in my World Ancap view) have never found a purpose for that. And I think that even if you start out with a Defence-DRO for an ancap region before ancap takes over the world then, once ancap does take over the world, that DRO needs to disband its service because everything that remains is "policing" and not "defending". I can see nukes (due to the obliterating retaliatory force that can take out the leaders of the invading state) working as a defence for an ancap region, but then you need a state that has nukes to go ancap first, which is why I made the comment about the big guys going ancap first. Iceland could go ancap and try to buy a few nukes, but who would sell them? 3) I agree and the thought did cross my mind but here's how I reconciled it. It's highly likely that everything will be covered in propaganda and political spin (rape, child abuse and afterwards terrorism) and then the incentive of the normally opposing states to cooperate with the spin, because of the "kill the free city" policy will ensure that Russia or whomever is not disturbed in their genocide.

I agree that it wouldn't be the breaking of the NAP to fight in guerrilla warfare. But, if they were to organise in a guerrilla force it would have to be a totally new style of guerrilla since most if not all guerrilla forces have been historically extremely hierarchical. It's this top-down structure that I think would be the impediment of ancaps organising themselves into because it presupposes some kind of rulers and that goes against the ancap philosophy. Also the second argument is ancap's preference to trade rather than fight. And the third is the disparity of force which would be very in favour of the occupiers. I think these three taken together will put out that the rational self-preserving conclusion would be to submit because the odds of success are too long and the risk of death is too high. That's just my assessment, of course. Occupation and invasion is much more expensive when you're trying to rule whatever you occupy (that is leave the tax-base reasonably intact in order to tax them later), but if you don't care about the population, if you're just in it for the industry and bring your own people over to work it, if you brand all the locals as terrorists and adopt a shoot first ask questions later strategy, 300.000 bullets seem pretty cheap to me.

I'm afraid the arguments you put forward are defeated by the geographical reality of Iceland. It is a self contained territory (the people can't just up and leave unless they're really good swimmers) that currently has no standing army. There is no need to bomb Iceland, you can just invade it with boots on the ground and encircle the strategic objectives (mining, geothermal plants) and not care about the "people" who live there. An AnCap society can't really organise itself into a guerrilla war situation (because they prefer trade to war, and any militaristic style organisation is far removed from AnCap philosophy). In the end, the islanders would have a simple choice, submit to the new rulers and renounce their AnCap ways, or subsist around the remains of the island that isn't taken over by the Russians. You're committing the age-old sin of assuming something (war) will guide itself by the guidelines that are set in stone thanks to the status quo of today, even though tomorrow the status quo that set the guidelines will no longer be relevant. It is more cost-efficient to demand surrender from a state today because the concept of state exists, but where there is no state, what's to stop just a military expedition with the goal of taking over industrial locations? Remember that the biggest deterrent of violence in an AnCap society is ostracism which is why they afford not to have a military which they couldn't afford without taxation anyway. I don't think you have the correct chain of events historically. Vietnam, prior to the French colonisation in the 1800s was organised as an empire similar to the Chinese style with the Imperial capital at Hue. The royal family swung back and forth between support for the French and being the symbol of national opposition. During the War, the Empire of Vietnam was proclaimed again under Japanese occupation with Emperor Bao Dai in charge. After the war it was decided that Vietnam would return under a French mandate, but due to the fact that France was incapable of re-taking Vietnam, it was agreed that the PRC would enter from the north and establish control while the British entered from the south. Both powers were to stabilise the region and prepare for a handover to the French. That was something that the PRC were unwilling to do thusly creating the Republic of North Vietnam. South Vietnam was supported by the non-communist countries and as late as 1954 it was organised as an Empire under Emperor Bao Dai and the direction was unifying the Empire under Bao Dai. However, after the French were defetead at Dien Bien Phu and the Americans picked up the fight, and one year later, the problem had changed from the reunification of Vietnam under a historical and constitutional form of rule, to a competition between which republic (North or South) should have dominance over the territory each with much the same historical legitimacy. The Iranian denunciation of petro-dollars is something much more recent that belongs to the Islamic Republic period rather than the Shahdom, so it could not have been a reason for the toppling of the Shah.

The best militant for the AnCap cause is an increase of the authoritarian nature of the state coupled with a moral discrediting of said state and politics thanks to inept rulers. There is an action to reverse the trend and that is peaceful parenting. If the need for rulers is pretty much born out of the moral slight of hand performed by authoritarian parents, then removing the base cause should break the chain. Also, people of high IQ and no parental corruption when coming into contact with religious nuts don't just surrender themselves, but instead rather outright reject them. I agree with you that maintaining a pure moral position seems like a losing cause, but if we start using arguments from effect instead of arguments from morality, we're no better than statists. That being said, I have long flirted with the idea of moving to New Zealand myself.

I don't think you're confusing it. That seems like the theory I remember reading as well. The one objection to it is what RoseCodex pointed out in the post above that you cannot vaccinate against mass delusions so if the topic you're investigating is vulnerable to a mass delusion then the "specialists" would easily be overwhelmed and their signal would be lost in the madness. To sum up again, crowd intelligence (from the theory) can only work if the subject it is faced with is dispersatory enough that the common man opinion will be an inert scatter allowing you to see the direction coalescing around the signal from the specialists. Whenever you submit a subject that is "controversial" all you get is a popularity contest much like the democratic system of voting .

You raise two excellent points, RichardY, but I think I can still rally Both of us have left out the one major incentive for why Russia or China (North Korea can't probably afford to invade a McDonalds, let alone fly an invasion battalion all the way across the world) would go Red Dawn on Iceland and also one of the major incentives why no-one would intervene on behalf of Iceland, which is: "statists cannot allow an anarchist society to succeed, because it will show the monkeys that there is life outside the cages" which would trump the "cheaper to trade than to invade" argument. Countries don't go around invading other countries today (unless they're named the USA) because either they are content with the state of status quo or they don't want to risk the US objecting and beginning an armed conflict by proxy. The only countries that still do it, though, are Russia (see Ukraine, Georgia a few years ago, Transnistria more years ago) and China to a smaller extent (just some China Sea territorial disputes with Japan and South Korea). The second point is the IQ issue and I do think that might be insurmountable with the current world trends. But going back to Stefan's "crusade", stopping the abuse on children is the best way to "grow" IQ and probably the only constructive approach that we can take world wide. I'd argue that out of all the countries in the world Switzerland is closer to a place where ancap could take roots (a foundation of direct participation democracy that goes back to the depths of history and a healthy respect for their own population - the single country that banned the building of mosques through referendum thus blocking the influx of low-IQ population, used to have a forfeiture-style tax system - pay this much then we don't audit, we don't ask any questions) but the current influence of the US has taken them back somewhat especially on the banking side of things. There may be intermediary steps on the way to a world of ancap which involves advocating for smaller states, for the introduction of a voluntary tax, but if you just want to stay consistent from a moral standpoint, then you can't really support the intermediary steps and all you're left with is "stop hitting children" because it will grow the IQ all over the world and once you get a high IQ society people will stop needing rulers. The trouble that I see with an AnCap region springing up somewhere on the globe is that all the states will get an infinite incentive to destabilise and occupy it as fast as possible and if that happens it will put out the flame of AnCap for the entire world. Interventionist policies based on political ideology is not something that is exactly foreign. For instance, after the US independence they have been dedicated to spreading republicanism all over the world and abolishing monarchies regardless of the destabilisation or the human cost of that program. Just look at Iran and Vietnam as the last two examples of a very long line of monarchies that saw their fates end at the hands of American intervention.

Correct me if I'm wrong RichardY, but your point was let's focus on Iceland and have them realise how cancerous the concept of state really is and convert every Icelander to the AnCap philosophy. At this point you are making a targeted call to action, so an examination of outcomes might be warranted. Let's assume we're successful and Iceland becomes the paradise where all governement services are disbanned overnight and no one pays an ounce of tax anymore. Iceland is a member of NATO, but since ancap means no rulers, that membership would become void. Iceland is also sitting on a lot of free energy (geothermal). How long before one of the states opposed to NATO who haven't converted to ancap invade? Iceland's 3 ships and 4 planes aren't going to put up much of a fight (btw, I know it sounds made up but those are real numbers). At this point what's going to happen to all the Icelandic ancaps? Well, they'll either accept their new russian rulers or die and since the state of Iceland has no more allies due to ancap policies, no one will step in. Historically, if Iceland goes ancap first, they might end up as the case study to the dangers of becoming ancap. Stefan's prefered go to when discussing why ancap states can never be invaded is because there is a natural defence provided by a large stretch of land, that is densely populated, not minerally valuable and with zero tax structures in place. Iceland is a sparsely populated island, that's sitting on a "pile of gold". That's three out of the four natural defences put out the window and people can invade for other reasons than to take over the tax base, like to get the free energy. I, on the other hand, am making an argument for "the entire world" needing to turn to an ancap philosophy, because ancaps need to disarm the guys with guns first (US, UK, Germany, Russia, China), otherwise it's a losing battle.