Is it moral to not intervene? Is it immoral to intervene?

[Grizwald]

I don't understand why libertarians support non-interventionism when asked about problems such as ISIS, or oppressive states such as N. Korea, Iran, ect... 

 

I myself am a libertarian but this is an issue I've had trouble understanding. Even in an anarchist society, how can we say that interfering in another part of the world is immoral. If I hired a private army to enter Iraq and totally annihilate ISIS, how is that immoral? I'm helping the people of iraq who are getting butchered, shot and murdered. I don't think you can get around that. It is helpful and humane to help these people overcome a violent and oppressive terrorist group.

'

Now another problem I run into is whether or not we are being immoral by not helping them. If we do not do anything, even though we have the ability to, is this immoral? A great example of this is slavery. If I know my neighbor is holding people captive and forcing them to work for him, would it be immoral for me to kill my neighbor and rescue the slaves. And in this scenario, the free market doesn't exist. Please only analyze both me and my neighbors actions in regards to the slavery. My neighbor is forcing the slaves to work for him through his own force. The slaves are forced through violence to work. My neighbor takes almost all of the food they produce and gives only enough to the slaves. Is it immoral for me to not intervene even though I have the ability to?

[dsayers]

If you're looking for the truth, try and keep things simple.

 

For a behavior to be eligible for moral consideration, it must be binding upon another person. For it to be immoral, it must also violate property rights. Inaction is not a behavior, so there is no moral consideration.

 

In order to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem. For example, if you're hungry, buying pants won't address the problem.

 

It seems I can't do anything without having to hear about ISIS. I know NOTHING about what that is BY CHOICE because I understand it's a distraction. The people who are telling you that ISIS is what you need to focus on don't want you to focus on what's actually important or what you actually have the ability to do with your own resources. I mention this since "having the ability" was a recurring theme in your post.

 

A lack of rational thought, empathy, and acceptance of one's own capacity for error and the self-ownership of others is the foundation of EVERY man-made woe in this world. Childhood trauma is the foundation of all of that.

 

Hiring a private army for action half way around the world is incredibly inefficient compared to not hitting your children which you can do right now for free. If you did hire a private army, you'd be using violence to try and solve violence, which is only practical IN THE MOMENT out of necessity. If your private army accomplished your goal, others would retaliate and it would only perpetuate the very problem you espoused to correct.

 

Even if you don't have children, you can still help others to grasp rational thought, accept that they don't have the right to rule over others, etc. It may not have results as grandiose as mass murder, but the changes you make will be lasting and will lead to (and is a necessary component of) effecting the change you're talking about.

[McBeer]

If you really want to help, then I don't see any problem with that.

 

When you are talking about things that WE should do, then I have a problem. There is no "WE" in this situation.

Do you mean using the force of government to steal money from me to pay murderers to murder bad guys?

 

I need my resources to take care of my family. Using my resources for war hurts my family. You are suggesting hurting my family. I am not OK with that.

[Josh F]

Morality isn't a force field.  If you want to fund some private group of people to kill ISIS or invade North Korea the more important considerations are the consequences.  Anytime someone uses violence its like a drive by shooting, not all the victims are your intended target.  Ron Paul talks a lot about this, he and the CIA call it BLOW BACK.  Blow back is the consequences of interventionism, unpredictable violent actions in the future.  Its only postponing evil, at best, intervention never ends it.  Interventionism reminds me of the old quote by Tacitus:   Rome makes a wasteland and calls it peace.  

[Pepin]

There is always much more context to any event. With the example of ISIS, foreign intervention was the cause of their formation. Of course from our perspective they are just some random group which came out of nowhere who for some reason want to kill us, which leads to the perspective you illustrate in your post, but in actuality they are not an uncaused anomaly and intervening more will only create more groups.

 

It isn't an easy problem to think about because we want there to be an easy solution, to just be able to ride in and set everyone free by killing the dragon, but there is so much complexity to any possible interaction that it is difficult to say if there are any cases where intervention could cause more good than harm.

 

To be more blunt with my retort, there is little to no evidence which demonstrates that intervention in the modern age brings any positive result in the long term. 

[Grizwald]

 

Hiring a private army for action half way around the world is incredibly inefficient compared to not hitting your children which you can do right now for free. If you did hire a private army, you'd be using violence to try and solve violence, which is only practical IN THE MOMENT out of necessity. If your private army accomplished your goal, others would retaliate and it would only perpetuate the very problem you espoused to correct.

 

 

No if I'm threatened the moment the threat reached me does not negate my justification for violence (defense) to counter violence. And your adding scenarios. I'm asking, if I go and kill only my neighbor, leaving all others unharmed, why would this not be a good thing? If I sent a private army to North Korea to DEFEND the oppressed people why would this be a bad thing? Violence to counter violence is not a bad thing. It's called defense.

 

 

 

I need my resources to take care of my family. Using my resources for war hurts my family. You are suggesting hurting my family. I am not OK with that.

 

No I'm not suggesting that. I'm talking about private cooperation in the defense of others. No government is involved.

 

  Its only postponing evil, at best, intervention never ends it.  Interventionism reminds me of the old quote by Tacitus:   Rome makes a wasteland and calls it peace.  

 

Are you trying to say that removing immoral behavior from the world is immoral?

 

 

If innaction is not an immoral behavior then what is it? I cannot see how minding your own business and allowing people to suffer is morally good. Soif it is neither moral nor immoral then it must be neutrality. And if it is neither moral nor immoral, but a neutral behavior, then it's not getting us anywhere.

[JeanPaul]

If your neighbor is mistreating his slaves or whatever, you should not hurt him because you should not use initiation of the use force. Period. If you do so, you are in the same boat as him because moral is not analogical. Through peaceful parenting, there will be no more slavery.

[shirgall]

It's okay to use force to defend oneself or the innocent from death or grave bodily harm. Someone who is being held as a slave seems pretty innocent to me. If they are threatened with death or grave bodily harm for trying to end their slavery you are justified in defending them with force.

[Josh F]

 

 

Are you trying to say that removing immoral behavior from the world is immoral?

 

I tend to say what I mean.  Shooting people in ISIS will only cause more violence, not less.  You're only imaging that what your purposing is a solution, it is absolutely not.  

[JeanPaul]

Someone who is being held as a slave seems pretty innocent to me. If they are threatened with death or grave bodily harm for trying to end their slavery you are justified in defending them with force.

Assuming that a slave is pretty innocent lacks empirical evidence.

Defending someone else is self-contradictory. Defending these slaves would imply that one considers that we have now ownership of them, which is a property right violation, which is immoral. Since we do not own these slaves, we should not defend them. The only thing we can do since we must respect the NAP is to advise the slave owner to do a therapy.

[shirgall]

Assuming that a slave is pretty innocent lacks empirical evidence.

Defending someone else is self-contradictory. Defending these slaves would imply that one considers that we have now ownership of them, which is a property right violation, which is immoral. Since we do not own these slaves, we should not defend them. The only thing we can do since we must respect the NAP is to advise the slave owner to do a therapy.

 

Defending someone else does not require that you own them, therefore your conclusions that arise from this are not valid.

 

It is totally appropriate to help people defend themselves from someone else's initiated force.

 

If ISIS rolled into town announcing that all the women in town would be converted to Islam and married to their fighters would it really be inappropriate for me to defend the town and even my daughter?

[dsayers]

JeanPaul, in the phrase "the initiation of the use of force," the word initiation is the operative one, not force. If somebody is initiating the use of force, to use force against them is not an initiation of the use of force.

[JeanPaul]

Should we intervene in the Middle East to save the innocents who are victims of the initiation of the use of force? Who should intervene? A private army? What if that Middle East country is not stateless?

[shirgall]

Should we intervene in the Middle East to save the innocents who are victims of the initiation of the use of force? Who should intervene? A private army? What if that Middle East country is not stateless?

 

Difficult to get to a "should" but if individuals think they know enough about the situation they are free to do so. That's entirely different than a state stealing money from you, mortgaging your children, and throwing its weight around casually murdering people (and droning is definitely casual murder) to earn enmity for you and the people that live in your part of the world.

[fractional slacker]

Libertarians who recognize the principle of the NAP won't morally intervene in the affairs of others in so far as initiating force.  A libertarian/anarchist works through positive re-enforcement, not via coercion and force.  

 

A libertarian group or a collection of anarchists could, in the interest of expanding self defense and the NAP, supply weapons or intelligence to a group who is being attacked. But they are not morally obligated to do so.

[JeanPaul]

Libertarians who recognize the principle of the NAP won't morally intervene in the affairs of others in so far as initiating force.  A libertarian/anarchist works through positive re-enforcement, not via coercion and force.  

 

A libertarian group or a collection of anarchists could, in the interest of expanding self defense and the NAP, supply weapons or intelligence to a group who is being attacked. But they are not morally obligated to do so.

What if some people in this libertarian society are completely horrified by what is going on in this free world? Should they witness unarmed people, weak people, kids and women being butchered?

[shirgall]

What if some people in this libertarian society are completely horrified by what is going on in this free world? Should they witness unarmed people, weak people, kids and women being butchered?

 

i think the trouble is that we're talking about helping people defend themselves, but not in carrying war to others. Is it really "intervention" to help someone defend themselves? Not really.

[Ken Cotton]

Given that ISIS has threatened to kill pretty much everyone that disagrees with them, I think it falls under self-defense to kill ISIS.

 

I don't know enough about the NAP to know if you're allowed to hurt peoples' feelings or not. If someone goes to kill your family member for example, that's going to cause you a lot of pain and anguish. Are you allowed to stop them by force from hurting your family member in that case, or is the family member obligated to do it themselves? It seems to me at least that you should be able to intervene on the behalf of people that consent to your involvement.

 

They kind of have that here in Canada with medicine. In a first aid situation, you are supposed to anounce who you are and your intention in doing first aid. A person has the right to deny your assistance if they want. If they are unconscious, then their consent is considered to be assumed until they regain consciousness. I think a similar rule for international conflict resolution could be generally agreed on. You show up, and you ask if they want your help, and if they do then you help them.

 

The sticky wicket is figuring out how to help a whole geographical region if say, 10 people say no. Do you just override their lack of consent? Do you kind of just, avoid driving on their property or over their airspace? Is that voice of opposition considered collusion with ISIS?

[JeanPaul]

i think the trouble is that we're talking about helping people defend themselves, but not in carrying war to others. Is it really "intervention" to help someone defend themselves? Not really.

How do you help people defend themselves without killing the aggressors?

[shirgall]

How do you help people defend themselves without killing the aggressors?

 

Defense is not the initiation of force.

[JeanPaul]

Defense is not the initiation of force.

How do we defend the civilians that are being butchered in the Middle East and Africa?

[dsayers]

How do we defend the civilians that are being butchered in the Middle East and Africa?

 

Who is "we"? Why are you asking? The undertone of the thread is that if people can't answer these questions, then we must need institutionalized coercion (the State). Who cares who's going to pick the cotton? Slavery is immoral.

[shirgall]

How do we defend the civilians that are being butchered in the Middle East and Africa?

 

There's a reason I said earlier on that the people that really think they know enough have a choice to do the defending. This stuff is personal, individual. I'm not talking about indiscriminately bombing everyone driving a white Toyota.

 

Let's start with the moral principle that applies to individuals (and therefore also to states): the circumstance that justifies the use of deadly force is the immediate, otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to yourself or the innocent. Having sufficient knowledge to meet this standard is difficult, as I keep pointing out.

[JeanPaul]

How can I personally defend these women and kids who are being butchered?

[shirgall]

How can I personally defend these women and kids who are being butchered?

 

Go over there and risk your life to defend them. The whole point of this is that you should be risking your blood and treasure if you think it's right and not be risking someone else's. What people's issue is with NAP is that it generally means that someone will risk themselves to save their family and friends, but that tendency diminishes the less people know about a situation, and that's probably a good thing.

[thales]

It should be obvious that people have a right to come to the defense of innocents anywhere on the planet, and that they have a right to organize to do so. It is also true that forcing others to defend these innocents (via involuntary taxes or conscription) is improper.

 

But it is likewise improper to force people to build roads, monitor aircraft for safety, punish rapists and thieves, etc. etc.

 

The ideal is a society that is structured on the basis of perfect consent. This ideal is possible, but not when advocates are preaching a confusion and have no sense of priorities. The first priority is to help people understand how a society based on consent is moral and practical, not to try to end road-building, policing, air traffic control, or protection of innocents abroad (whether or not the US is actually doing this is something that is debated well-enough by those who are not concerned with a perfectly consensual society; it is a waste of time to be dragged into such arguments.)

[JeanPaul]

You know what, I came to this board after having listen to Stefan’s podcast. I thought that I was a libertarian. Thanks to all the discussion over these past few weeks, I realized that I am no longer a libertarian. I find this very strange. How can one become less libertarian after having listened to brilliant libertarians? Do you have a comment about this?

What about other people, who are even less receptive to libertarian ideas, how will you convince them that we should go stateless? You succeeded in making me completely skeptical about libertarianism, and no longer willing to look into this direction. I am now beginning even to question peaceful parenting with my own kids. Thank you all.

[dsayers]

You succeeded in making me completely skeptical about libertarianism, and no longer willing to look into this direction. I am now beginning even to question peaceful parenting with my own kids.

 

So it's okay to assault your children, but if people don't give you a satisfactory answer on how to address assault happening half the globe away, 2+2 no longer equals 4? Your parents made you skeptical about libertarianism by inflicting authority upon you for their convenience, which you've normalized to avoid facing the truth of your abuse. You've demonstrated in your every post that reality is of no interest to you and you are willing to discard any portion of it that doesn't conform to your prejudices.

[MMX2010]

So it's okay to assault your children, but if people don't give you a satisfactory answer on how to address assault happening half the globe away, 2+2 no longer equals 4? Your parents made you skeptical about libertarianism by inflicting authority upon you for their convenience, which you've normalized to avoid facing the truth of your abuse. You've demonstrated in your every post that reality is of no interest to you and you are willing to discard any portion of it that doesn't conform to your prejudices.

 

The way I see it, JeanPaul is "questioning the use of peaceful parenting with his own children", because he's disappointed that no libertarians in this thread want to violently intervene in the Middle East.  Now, if only he could prove that every libertarian who disagreed with him was raised by Peaceful Parents...

[shirgall]

You know what, I came to this board after having listen to Stefan’s podcast. I thought that I was a libertarian. Thanks to all the discussion over these past few weeks, I realized that I am no longer a libertarian. I find this very strange. How can one become less libertarian after having listened to brilliant libertarians? Do you have a comment about this?

 

What about other people, who are even less receptive to libertarian ideas, how will you convince them that we should go stateless? You succeeded in making me completely skeptical about libertarianism, and no longer willing to look into this direction. I am now beginning even to question peaceful parenting with my own kids. Thank you all.

 

It's totally okay to be skeptical or just not like something, but I hope we're getting across what the non-aggression principle is, what it implies, and that a libertarian philosophy does not have logical contradictions. I also hope that we have demonstrated that other approaches *are* fraught with logical contradictions, if not abuse.

 

The way I go about it is to point out contradictions where I see them to people that are interested, but I generally try to leave people alone, and to leave people that want to do me wrong out of my life. I dabble in politics, but I hold it at arm's length (so to speak).

 

What I encourage is self-examination as to what appeals to you and what doesn't and understanding it for yourself. There might be useful knowledge to you there.

[thales]

It would be a huge disservice if you all are teaching him that libertarianism is about just what you say it is, because there is a long and rich tradition of libertarians disagreeing about things like anarchism/minarchism, intervention, NAP, etc. IOW what you get here is mainly *Molyneux's* take on libertarianism, not libertarianism in the broad sense.

[dsayers]

It would be a huge disservice if you all are teaching him

 

Like him, you're misrepresenting the chain of causality. If I cannot convince somebody that 2+2=4, that's not a reflection upon me. His parents would've been the ones that taught him that 2+2=5 is dogmatic, or exposed him to those who did, or generally did not instill the capability to arrive at what 2+2= for himself. If you'll look again, you can see that from the very beginning, he had his prejudices and an unwillingness to alter them if they were revealed to be flawed in any way. To then later claim that others are responsible for his closed-mindedness is misdirection.

[Grizwald]

Thanks for everybody sharing in. 

 

I'm beginning to think that intervening (private army that does not hurt innocent) would be morally justified. But this would only be true depending on what you agree to be justified as moral. 

 

This has been raising my other questions, particularly, what is justified as moral behavior? Why is the NAP justified as moral? 

 

I know this is kind of going off topic from the thread but I'm asking for some clarity. I am not as well versed in moral arguments as everyone else on this site. My question is why is selfishness upheld as the ultimate moral good? The problem I see is that if selfishness is justified as moral, while selflessness is immoral, then how can the NAP fit into this framework for morality? Just saying that selfishness is moral lacks the non-aggression principle and also promotes aggression of individuals who would be acting selfishly. It is because of this that I'm beginning to conclude NAP as the ultimate moral good and selfishness is not.

[shirgall]

This has been raising my other questions, particularly, what is justified as moral behavior? Why is the NAP justified as moral? 

 

I know this is kind of going off topic from the thread but I'm asking for some clarity. I am not as well versed in moral arguments as everyone else on this site. My question is why is selfishness upheld as the ultimate moral good? The problem I see is that if selfishness is justified as moral, while selflessness is immoral, then how can the NAP fit into this framework for morality? Just saying that selfishness is moral lacks the non-aggression principle and also promotes aggression of individuals who would be acting selfishly. It is because of this that I'm beginning to conclude NAP as the ultimate moral good and selfishness is not.

 

One way to look at determining morality is universality. Look at the opposite of non-aggression, where it would be moral to initiate force. If you universalize it, so that everyone, always initiated force against others, does that make a consistent moral framework? I think such a society would fail pretty quickly, and it would be next to impossible to raise offspring (let alone procreate). So, if aggression cannot be universalized, it is not a a valid moral rule.

 

As for "selfishness," what do you mean by the term? We should settle on clear definitions.

[dsayers]

My question is why is selfishness upheld as the ultimate moral good?

 

What are you talking about? Behaviors that are moral are binding upon another person but do not violate their property rights. How is not violating the property rights of others selfish?

 

Morality begins with self-ownership and universalizing that to everybody owns themselves. That means 7 billion people that you recognize that you have no claim over. How is accepting that you only own 1/7 billion of people selfish?