Against Me

[Buford T. Justice]

Just finished Stefan's amazing "Against Me" talk on rational debate with non-libertarians. In it Stefan asks the audience to hit him with their best statist arguments, and great fun ensues -- highly recommended YouTube watching.

 

If I'd been there I would have thrown out this little bit of devil's advocacy -- a science & tech scare along the lines of...

 

"You use the metaphor of a gun to our heads to illustrate the coercive force of the state in our lives -- but consider more modern weapons: Nuclear and biological weapons in the hands of a single bad actor would violate the non-aggression principle on a scale not seen since, well, ever. They'd wipe out huge swathes of humanity indiscriminately. Isn't •that• the real gun to our heads today, and don't we need the vast tentacles of government to meet such a threat at scale?"

[dsayers]

You don't solve the potential problem of a single person getting a nuke by handing a large group of people many nukes and the perceived legitimacy of deploying them.

[dayna j.]

Governments are the ones with the nukes to begin with...

[Will Torbald]

Maybe. But it doesn't follow that income taxes, government schools, or welfare protect people from nukes.

[shirgall]

Governments are the ones with the nukes to begin with...

 

Because their development is so incredibly expensive, and few individuals would ever commit a significant portion of their wealth into such an endeavor directly.

[dsayers]

Because their development is so incredibly expensive, and few individuals would ever commit a significant portion of their wealth into such an endeavor directly.

I'm glad you pointed that out. While not something I worry about, I know a lot of people newer to the ideas of a stateless society worry about such things. I had lost touch with the fact that without national level of mass theft, such things simply aren't realistically possible.

[Buford T. Justice]

Remember I'm taking the point of devil's advocacy here -- that's what made the Molineux talk so fun. So, taking your points one by one:

 

dsayers: We live in a world where WMD technology is already out there and widely dispersed, licitly and illicitly -- I'm thinking of the Khan network -- and that bell can't be unrung. In fact I think Stefan's stated view in the above-mentioned talk would have been "I fully support your right to build and stockpile such weapons -- do you support my right to opt out?"

 

nobody: Governments are indeed the ones with the nukes -- for now -- but that's a causal fallacy. The question before the panel is how to proceed going forward with the technology we're already swimming in.

 

Will Torbald: Nice. My bet is Stefan would have taken up this line of argument.

 

shirgall: No line of strategic defense I'm aware of assumes the creation of WMDs from scratch. The usual scenario is a rogue nuclear or biological researcher stealing material from a laboratory. But even if you discount this highly plausible scenario, the enrichment of uranium is time-consuming but incredibly low-tech: If you can build a clothes-dryer you can build a cyclotron. Existing weapons-grade biological agents are even easier to replicate on a massive scale.

 

dsayers: To my earlier point, that just ain't so -- the tech is within the capability of any •undergraduate• physics or bio major with access to the materials -- I know this from a wee bit of personal exposure -- and, a statist would say, only the leviathan of government is equipped to meet the threat of weapons that, block by block and square mile by square mile, would violate the non-aggression principle in such a vast and cataclysmic way.

 

Again I say all this from a point of devil's advocacy. I welcome and hope for a good refutation.

[dsayers]

dsayers: We live in a world where WMD technology is already out there and widely dispersed, licitly and illicitly -- I'm thinking of the Khan network -- and that bell can't be unrung. In fact I think Stefan's stated view in the above-mentioned talk would have been "I fully support your right to build and stockpile such weapons -- do you support my right to opt out?"

This does nothing to address that the current "solution" is in fact an exacerbation of the stated problem (pun intended) and not a solution at all.

 

dsayers: To my earlier point, that just ain't so -- the tech is within the capability of any •undergraduate• physics or bio major with access to the materials

...and therefore we need to pretend people can exist in different, opposing moral categories and give all of that destructive power to a select few psychopaths and issue death threats to everybody else that would try to do the exact same thing. Sorry, but there are numerous logical steps missing here.

 

I acknowledge that you're playing devil's advocate and hope you recognize that I'm talking to ideas here, not about you. That said, the inherent flaw in the very question is that it begs the question of State validity. It's like saying the slaves already pick cotton, so how will we pick cotton in the absence of slaves? The answer is that it doesn't matter because the answer has no bearing on the truth that violence is immoral. I don't care how the collective of human consciousness (which is WAY bigger than my own capacities) figures out how to address a world where nuclear weapons technology is realized; the State is still immoral and has no reason to be advocated, supported, or tolerated.

[shirgall]

shirgall: No line of strategic defense I'm aware of assumes the creation of WMDs from scratch. The usual scenario is a rogue nuclear or biological researcher stealing material from a laboratory. But even if you discount this highly plausible scenario, the enrichment of uranium is time-consuming but incredibly low-tech: If you can build a clothes-dryer you can build a cyclotron. Existing weapons-grade biological agents are even easier to replicate on a massive scale.

 

And my point is that few individuals want to invest in this. Yes, it's possible, but it's not trivial. Is it probable that free-thinking individuals would do such a thing? They are far more likely to want to build a community-sized power plant or something more productive than a stand-off weapon (nuclear or biological) that is continental in scope. Free-thinking individuals are far more likely to invest in watchdogs to prevent people from making such things.

[dayna j.]

Remember I'm taking the point of devil's advocacy here -- that's what made the Molineux talk so fun. So, taking your points one by one:

 

nobody: Governments are indeed the ones with the nukes -- for now -- but that's a causal fallacy. The question before the panel is how to proceed going forward with the technology we're already swimming in.

 

It's not a causal fallacy, because I never claimed that governments are the only possible cause of nuclear weapons.  However, governments are a cause:

 

If we know and accept that A and B are "bad", and we accept that A is the only currently known source of B, how does it make sense to leave B under the control of A?

 

It seems to me that there are two separate issues here:  1)  Whether governments are justifiable and under what conditions/argument is it justifiable. 2)  Given that the possibility of nuclear weapons exists, how would that be handled in a free society. 

 

With regard to 1), If the arguments advanced by anarcho-capitalists are valid--meaning that government is a self-contradictory, illegitimate appropriation of violent power--then the existence of nukes does nothing whatsoever to change this.  

 

With regard to 2), no one knows.  I would argue that no one really knows how to handle the existence of nukes under the current system, either.  Governments simply provide a pretense of a solution which prevents the search for genuine solutions to problems.  People may not find that convincing--or comforting--but this just illustrates the extent to which they believe the government provides legitimate solutions to problems,  when it does not.

[Buford T. Justice]

Ach, I see the point now and my apologies. A much stronger argument.