Seems to me that the only "rule" an anarchist needs to check, very roughly stated, is: "Is the subject's behavior interfering with me or my interests?"
That sounds like the wrong question to ask. "Is the subject's behavior violating my, or anyone else's, rights?" would seem to be the correct question.
I agree. When I suggest eliminating the state, I typically get a response like "Eek! Blood in the streets!" and nothing I say dispels that image.
Is the state necessary?
I don't believe that all human communities require a governmental structure in order to function. If we're talking about twelve people stranded on a deserted island, to suggest that they should have elections for a representative assembly is ludicrous.
So, the idea of a frontier society existing with minimal government like the one in EFT isn't implausible to me at all.
The state does, though, seem necessary to me to achieve these goals:
- to organize into a single entity an unnaturally large number of people, who are diverse rather than sharing common goals, and
- to organize a continued and ongoing defense against the depradations of other states.
That's it. Incidentally, I do also think that even if people can voluntarily organize to defend themselves in a crisis, a crafty state enemy can bide its time, and wait until people get bored with constant effort for no apparent reason.
It seems like you're trying to play a "gotcha" game here. I'm not playing. It's not too hard to figure out that an extraproportional response to aggression is something other than defensive or restitutive force, and since there's only one other kind of force (aggression), there's not much room for ambiguity, regardless of what your definition of aggression is.
To start with, since the purpose of defensive force is to prevent an aggression from being accomplished, proportionality does not apply. The limitation on defensive force is to ensure it doesn't hit innocent targets.
To distinguish restitutive force from aggression, I agree that community involvement of some sort is likely to be a requirement. That can bring in a requirement that the amount of restitution is proportional.
My question is whether such a requirement is consistent with the zero aggression principle.
Maybe this sounds silly to you. You appear to be starting from an assumption that excessive restitution constitutes aggression.
I do think that there is a good case for ensuring that excessive restitution cannot be demanded for inadvertent or accidental injuries to others, on the basis of the kind of society most people would want to live in.
But when it comes to a deliberate and intentional violation of another person's rights, I'm not so sure.
In some cities, there are laws against fortifying your dwelling place, because criminals running crack houses have fortified those buildings - giving them time to destroy the evidence when police come to search. Such laws would not exist in an AnCap society. So, we can agree that a potential robber's rights are not violated by building your house in such a manner that it is impossible for the robber to succeed in breaking into it.
If that is the case, how are a robber's rights violated by decreeing that the penalty for breaking and entering with intent to commit theft is death? If he wishes to live, he may choose not to rob. Increasing the severity of the penalty for robbing until it is unreasonable... is just another way of effectively making robbery impossible. It isn't quite as certain as fortifying every house, but it's a lot cheaper.
That, of course, is an example that presupposes the existence of a government, going around decreeing penalties for crimes. If you don't have a government, it would seem that
a man's home is his castle.
Each sovereign individual has authority over that which is his. You may only have that which is his by voluntary agreement with him. Period.
So, if A steals from a sovereign individual, and B decrees that the sovereign individual may demand no more than X from B as restitution - then, A and B together have obtained something that belongs to that sovereign individual... for a decreed price of X without the necessity of the consent of that sovereign individual.
The power to limit restitution for torts is, therefore, inherently equivalent to the normal state power to initiate force arbitrarily.That's why I am insisting that, at least on a
theoretical level, demanding proportionality flies in the face of the Zero Aggression Principle. That doesn't mean it's "bad", just that if you want to include proportionality in restitution as part of AnCap, you should write it into the definition explicitly. And some thought as to the cases where proportionality is "obviously reasonable" might help in determining how that principle might be written.
The problem is that a way to avoid abusively low definitions of proportionality is needed - good old
quis custodiet again. Even an AnCap society can't seem to get
completely away from it. But then, maybe that was admitted all along; I know, for example, that I've been, quite reasonably, chided for demanding that an AnCap society should do better than a totalitarian state at completely suppressing crime.