Quote from: J Thomas on April 25, 2011, 11:31:01 PM
Sometimes it's less clear. If the other guy has been aggressing against me there might be some circumstance where it's appropriate for me to punch him in the nose in response.
Sloppy, sloppy use of language and sloppy critical thinking. Let me red letter it for you. There are several formulations, but for our purposes here, L. Neil Smith's should do. "No human being has the right, under ANY circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation."
In your almost-a-scenario, you use the wiggle word, "aggression," without any clear definition. If your guy has verbally "aggressed" against you my saying that your mother wears army boots, there is no "force," so you would unequivocally be violating the ZAP if you punched him in the nose. If he had "initiated" (i.e., started it) "force" (i.e., physical aggression) against you, it would have been he who violated the ZAP.
Now, there are nuances. Fraud is usually included with the initiation of force, as is the threat of force, but for most situations, the key words are initiate and force. Got it? [/quote]
Sure. But there's a great big gray area with a slippery slope on it. I think that gets a lot narrower when people agree about common sense, and a community of like-minded individuals can probably do just fine.
So, here's a silly example.
You own a large plot with a nice home and a lot of trees. One day you are busy writing when you hear a chain saw nearby. You check on it, and there's this weird-looking skinny guy cutting down your trees. Being a level-headed sort, you ask him what he's doing.
"Some idiot is harboring dangerous trees here. They're a public danger, and I'm cutting themk down before they do more damage."
He's on your land cutting down your trees. At a minimum you deserve to take him to arbitration to get it established that he has no right to do that. But if you just argue with him about arbitration he'll cut down every tree you have before you can get it organized. Do you have a right to stop him by threat of physical force? I say you do. Probably better to stand back with a firearm and threaten him, since he is running a chain saw at the moment.
He then claims that you threatened physical force against him when you had no right to do that. It goes to arbitration. The arbitrator listens to him talk about the danger of allowing trees, and listens to you point out that it's your property, and I strongly expect the arbitrator will decide in your favor.
But what if it wasn't trees, but malaria-carrying mosquitoes? Lots of Americans agree that it's OK for the Public Health Service to come onto people's property and demand that they eliminate mosquito nesting sites, because in places with malaria or avian encephalitis etc it really is a public danger. If there wasn't any Public Health Service I'd figure anybody who knows that you're raising mosquitoes that leave your property has a right to make you stop. And if they are draining your mosquito breeding areas and you point a gun at them, or even shoot them?
Somewhere between cutting down your trees and killing your mosquitoes, there's something that's real real iffy, where reasonable people could go either way.
I say that when that issue comes up, reasonable people can find a reasonable way to handle it. Things like that don't in any way invalidate ZAP. But ZAP does not tell you which side to take when it's all iffy and debatable whether somebody is aggressing at you or instead protecting the public from your aggression. It can't do that, and we can't expect it to.
So, again, when we decide what's aggression and what isn't, whether it's you initiating force against him, or him initiating force against your trees, or your mosquitoes initiating force against everybody whose blood they spit into and then suck, the ZAP does not tell us what to choose. We have to depend on common sense and reason and so on to come up with good answers, and the ZAP can't substitute for common sense.