[Nunt]

Cars inevitably threaten the lives of innocents. It is impossible to use a modern car these days without harming innocents, due to the pollution associated with internal combustion engines, if nothing else. You could argue that such harm is mere side effect of its use, but I could argue that threatening a random group of unidentified innocents is a mere side effect of my detente strategy.


This is another thing that I don't get. I can own a botulin toxin and breed it and enhance its applicability for being weaponised, and do whatever I want with it, but as soon as I intend to use it defensively I somehow run afoul of the NAP. Please note that my actions are not the issue here. It is, inexplicably, my intent.



Which innocents am I threatening, exactly?



Would our hypothetical cross-burner be allowed to yell "kill all the N*****" loudly on his front yard? That would be a clear act of threatening violence against innocents.

These questions are all pointless. There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. Nor is it a problem that there is no exact objective answer. The NAP is a broad and general rule of how interaction between members of society should occur: "the initiation of aggression or the the threat of aggression is unjust". Somewhere a line must be drawn between normal, just behavior and aggressive, unjust behavior. And this line must be drawn for the continuum of all possible behaviors.

You can spend your time imagining scenarios that lay in the blurred gray area of the continuum. But to that I can only say that human communities (not brainless automatons) will have to decide where to draw the line when the answer isn't clear. They will have to decide this based on their shared values and beliefs and it must be in the spirit of the NAP.

About WMDs I can say that within the NAP-framework it is possible that communities will place strict limitations or prohibitions on the ownership of WMDs. Furthermore, it is my belief that indeed many communities will severly limit the development and possession of WMDs.

Additionaly, this is even more pointless because this is no strict criticism of libertarianism. Any society that wants to maintain a rule of law will have to decide about this gray area. Courts are deciding today about this gray area. For example, it is no problem that I am using a big steak knife to eat my dinner. Belgian courts will not punish me for that. It may be a bigger problem if I go outside with the knife drawn. It is even a bigger problem if I run around like a crazy person with a knife. How can Belgian courts ever make this distinction if there is no clear yes/no answer to the question "is it ok to own a steak knife"? This is really what your criticism of libertarianism boils down to. Imo not something worth debating over for pages and pages.

[Pants-of-dog]

The pollution associated with cars only minimally impacts the health, rather than positively marking the doom, of innocent bystanders. The difference between car pollution and a nuclear bomb is too obvious to dwell into.

The other obvious difference is that it is astronomically improbable for a person to live in modern society and not be harmed by car pollution, while it is astronomically improbable for a person to live in modern society and get hurt by a WMD.

The fact that some people are allowed to get away with definitely hurting others while someone else gets penalised for threatening to harm an unspecified group of (possible) innocents seems like a contradiction of the NAP, and the fact that you have to jump so through many verbal hoops (i.e. intent, type of damage, ignoring the chances of it happening, etc.) in order to make it consistent with your supposed ideology also speaks volumes.

At issue is your intended use. IF it were really defensive, it would be perfectly legitimate. But WMDs, by their very nature, are incapable of pure defensive use. They cannot be used without killing innocent people. The question isn't one of intention (though using weapons as a deterrent effectively advertises your intention to deploy it in a deadly fashion) but one of overall risk. The risk of harming innocents, together with the magnitude of that potential harm, are components in any decision as to whether a project is deemed "peaceful" or not.

These aren't questions that can be determined by robots, mechanically. They require human judgement.

Is a botulinum toxin a WMD? Yes or no? It seems to be.

Yet the person who grows it for medical uses is somehow all right, but if the exact same person does the exact same thing and only changes the intent (i.e the thoughts in her head), she can be shut down.

Those that would inevitably be killed if you deployed your WMD "defensively". For example, if you are trying to deter North Korea from using its nuclear weapons by brandishing your own nukes, the innocents would be the residents of Pyongyang.

So, it's not a specific group of people. It is an unknown and hypothetical group of people.

In other words, I have not actually threatened a real and specific innocent person.

Again, that depends on context. For example, are there any N***s around? Is there a crowd of hooded white folks listening? Are there security forces nearby who would most likely prevent any violence from taking off? A verbal threat has to be credible and present "clear and present danger" before pre-emption is justified.

Then the mere possession of WMDs, and the stated use of them as a defensive weapon, is not enough reason to take me to court. There is no present danger.

--------------------

These questions are all pointless. .... This is really what your criticism of libertarianism boils down to. Imo not something worth debating over for pages and pages.

My criticism boils down to the fact that no one has been able to show how a restriction on careful ownership of, and defensive intent concerning, WMDs defies or contradicts the NAP. Eran has tried to do so and I commend Eran for doing so.

[Phred]

The other obvious difference is that it is astronomically improbable for a person to live in modern society and not be harmed by car pollution…

A modern society such as, for example, urban Toronto? No one is being harmed by car pollution in Toronto these days. This has been true for several decades at the very least, most probably since the invention of the automobile.

The fact that some people are allowed to get away with definitely hurting others…

Name someone who is definitely hurting others and getting away with it. I mean, give an actual name. For example, when I visit my mother in Ottawa and drive a rental car for the two weeks I'm there, is it your contention that I am definitely hurting others?

...and the fact that you have to jump so through many verbal hoops…

The irony… it burns. Pants-of-dog of all people accusing others of jumping through verbal hoops is just too funny. I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

Is a botulinum toxin a WMD? Yes or no?

A few milligrams of toxin in a vial in a laboratory glovebox, of course not. Kilos of the stuff treated in a specific manner and incorporated into a broad dispersal system (such as the spray tanks of a crop duster aircraft), of course.

Then the mere possession of WMDs, and the stated use of them as a defensive weapon, is not enough reason to take me to court.

Of course it is. Because your stated intention to deploy the stuff if you feel threatened is in itself a statement of aggression against innocents. You cannot unleash, say, weaponized smallpox against the biker gang living next door to you without also unleashing it against the people two houses over.

My criticism boils down to the fact that no one has been able to show how a restriction on careful ownership of, and defensive intent concerning, WMDs defies or contradicts the NAP. Eran has tried to do so and I commend Eran for doing so.

No, Eran has done so, as I just did above. You can defend yourself against the bikers - and only the bikers - living next door with a handgun without causing harm to the people three streets over. You can't do that with a cloud of aerosolized botulinum toxin or a tactical nuke. As was already pointed out, your declared intention to unleash WMDs on your surroundings is the equivalent of saying that if you are threatened by the bikers you'll head to the nearest mall and gun down a few dozen folks before heading over to the biker's house and (perhaps) wiping them out as well.


Phred

[Pants-of-dog]

A modern society such as, for example, urban Toronto? No one is being harmed by car pollution in Toronto these days. This has been true for several decades at the very least, most probably since the invention of the automobile.

http://www.citynews.ca/2007/11/05/car-a ... ear-study/

You don’t have to drive to be affected by those who do. A new report on the dangers of air pollution and health shows what doctors have long suspected – the effects of the sometimes invisible emissions from all those cars crowding GTA streets is killing more people than ever before.

The study, from Toronto Public Health, estimates that more than 440 of the estimated 1,700 pollution-related deaths in the city every year come directly from traffic emissions. And the city’s Medical Officer of Health fears unless something is done soon, the toll could keep going up.

Name someone who is definitely hurting others and getting away with it. I mean, give an actual name. For example, when I visit my mother in Ottawa and drive a rental car for the two weeks I'm there, is it your contention that I am definitely hurting others?

Yes, you are definitely hurting others by increasing the number of carcinogens they are inhaling.

The irony… it burns. Pants-of-dog of all people accusing others of jumping through verbal hoops is just too funny. I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

Please note that you have yet to explain why someone can definitely hurt me with impunity by driving down my street every day, but I cannot own a WMD despite the fact that no one is being hurt.

A few milligrams of toxin in a vial in a laboratory glovebox, of course not. Kilos of the stuff treated in a specific manner and incorporated into a broad dispersal system (such as the spray tanks of a crop duster aircraft), of course.

Let's say I have crop dusters and vats of toxin. Can I simply own these without intending to use them as WMD?

Of course it is. Because your stated intention to deploy the stuff if you feel threatened is in itself a statement of aggression against innocents. You cannot unleash, say, weaponized smallpox against the biker gang living next door to you without also unleashing it against the people two houses over.

There is no clear and present danger.

According to Eran's claim, "a verbal threat has to be credible and present "clear and present danger" before pre-emption is justified".

Since there is no clear and present danger in my verbal threat to rain WMDs down on anyone who initiates aggression against my property, preemptive action is not justified.

No, Eran has done so, as I just did above. You can defend yourself against the bikers - and only the bikers - living next door with a handgun without causing harm to the people three streets over. You can't do that with a cloud of aerosolized botulinum toxin or a tactical nuke. As was already pointed out, your declared intention to unleash WMDs on your surroundings is the equivalent of saying that if you are threatened by the bikers you'll head to the nearest mall and gun down a few dozen folks before heading over to the biker's house and (perhaps) wiping them out as well.

I realise that there is a risk that I will hurt innocents. That risk applies to all weapons to varying degrees. I also have noted that WMDs, by definition, carry a significantly higher risk for doing just that. And I also pointed out that cars are actually doing that right now.

Thus, I must ask again: why can someone definitely hurt me with impunity by driving down my street every day, but I cannot own a WMD despite the fact that no one is being hurt?

[Eran]

Yet the person who grows it for medical uses is somehow all right, but if the exact same person does the exact same thing and only changes the intent (i.e the thoughts in her head), she can be shut down.

We routinely make legal distinctions based on intentions, as manifesting themselves in behaviour, and as their are indicative of probability for harming others.

As per Nunt's example, the difference between brandishing a knife in a threatening manner vs. in a theatrical performance is all about the intention of the knife holder, but that intention has concrete implications for the risk he poses to others, as well, by extension, of the nature of his project, peaceful or not.

Then the mere possession of WMDs, and the stated use of them as a defensive weapon, is not enough reason to take me to court. There is no present danger.

The probability of harm has to be weighed, together with the magnitude of the potential harm. WMDs, even when the probability of their use is low, by their nature are likely to cause severe damage to many people. Reasonable people take that, as well as many other factors into account.

Please note that you have yet to explain why someone can definitely hurt me with impunity by driving down my street every day, but I cannot own a WMD despite the fact that no one is being hurt.

Air pollution is a difficult issue, almost uniquely so. I could simply point out that it is modern government that authorises drivers to harm others with impunity. In a free society, victims of air pollution will have the right to sue polluters (not individual cars, but rather road owners). More likely, a regime of standardised compensation will develop whereby those living next to a new road (as opposed to an existing road which pre-dated their residence) will be paid in advance for the potential damage of air pollution.

[Pants-of-dog]

We routinely make legal distinctions based on intentions, as manifesting themselves in behaviour, and as their are indicative of probability for harming others.

In this case, it is the same behaviour.

As per Nunt's example, the difference between brandishing a knife in a threatening manner vs. in a theatrical performance is all about the intention of the knife holder, but that intention has concrete implications for the risk he poses to others, as well, by extension, of the nature of his project, peaceful or not.

I completely agree.

A person who has WMDs, maintains them safely, and has clarified that these weapons would only be used in retaliation is not actually threatening anyone.

The probability of harm has to be weighed, together with the magnitude of the potential harm. WMDs, even when the probability of their use is low, by their nature are likely to cause severe damage to many people. Reasonable people take that, as well as many other factors into account.

For black people who have had to live with burning crosses and people yelling about killing all the black people, the magnitude of harm (death for them and their entire family) is comparable to the magnitude of harm from WMDs (death for them and their entire family).

Air pollution is a difficult issue, almost uniquely so. I could simply point out that it is modern government that authorises drivers to harm others with impunity. In a free society, victims of air pollution will have the right to sue polluters (not individual cars, but rather road owners). More likely, a regime of standardised compensation will develop whereby those living next to a new road (as opposed to an existing road which pre-dated their residence) will be paid in advance for the potential damage of air pollution.

That deals with air pollution, but it does not deal with the seeming inconsistency wherein one person who does actual harm gets no punishment (i.e. a car driver) while someone who has not harmed or threatened any specific people (i.e. a hypothetical WMD owner) does get punished.

[SolarCross]

Air pollution is a difficult issue, almost uniquely so. I could simply point out that it is modern government that authorises drivers to harm others with impunity. In a free society, victims of air pollution will have the right to sue polluters (not individual cars, but rather road owners). More likely, a regime of standardised compensation will develop whereby those living next to a new road (as opposed to an existing road which pre-dated their residence) will be paid in advance for the potential damage of air pollution.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" - jeebus

I think a claim against harm from automobile exhaust is practically an unmakeable case, for the reason of mass culpability. Everyone that is plausibly harmed by it is also plausibly a perpetrator. Literally eveyone in any kind of developed society directly causes or causes by proxy through hailing a cab, riding on the bus, having a pizza delivered, automotive exhaust to occur. Really you'd have to be Amish or an Amazonian Indian to unhypocritically make a claim for damages, and that isn't very likely given they are not only plausibly non-perpetrators of automotive pollution but also they are not as matter of their lifestyle plausibly harmed by it either.

That alone ought to sink any attempt to claim damages.

POD has already heard this argument from me and had no answer to it, so I don't know how he thinks it will let him have weaponised anthrax.

[Phred]

A person who has WMDs, maintains them safely, and has clarified that these weapons would only be used in retaliation is not actually threatening anyone.

Incorrect. That person is threatening countless "anyones". Again, your refusal to acknowledge the self-evident truth everyone else in this thread recognizes -- that there is a fundamental difference between a weapon that can be narrowly targeted and one that by its very nature cannot -- shows you as a dishonest debater.

That deals with air pollution, but it does not deal with the seeming inconsistency wherein one person who does actual harm gets no punishment (i.e. a car driver)…

Drivers of modern cars do no actual harm qua car drivers, your unsourced disputed "study" to the contrary.

...while someone who has not harmed or threatened any specific people (i.e. a hypothetical WMD owner) does get punished.

And that is the entire point, duh! "Specific person" is a non-concept in the context of the unleashing of a WMD. It's not just "Dago Red" the specific biker chieftain who is harmed by the release of weaponized smallpox, it is hundreds of thousands of unspecified humans who haven't the faintest idea who Dago Red is or how they could have prevented him from threatening you to the point you decided it was a good idea to sic virulent disease on them.

This has progressed far past the point of parody.


Phred

[Pants-of-dog]

Incorrect. That person is threatening countless "anyones". Again, your refusal to acknowledge the self-evident truth everyone else in this thread recognizes -- that there is a fundamental difference between a weapon that can be narrowly targeted and one that by its very nature cannot -- shows you as a dishonest debater.

I will quote myself:

I realise that there is a risk that I will hurt innocents. That risk applies to all weapons to varying degrees. I also have noted that WMDs, by definition, carry a significantly higher risk for doing just that.

This was in the post I just made to you and to which you are now replying. You are claiming that I am a dishonest debater because I supposedly ignored this, despite the fact that I explicitly discussed it.

So, I am not a dishonest debater. You need to read more carefully.

As to the point I was making: yes, I am threatening a huge number of hypothetical innocents. However, I am not actually threatening any real and specific people.

Drivers of modern cars do no actual harm qua car drivers, your unsourced disputed "study" to the contrary.

In other words, you will simply ignore the evidence and repeat your claim, despite acknowledging that the evidence says you are wrong.

Link to an actual study that confirms the previous article: http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toro ... ummary.pdf

.
And that is the entire point, duh! "Specific person" is a non-concept in the context of the unleashing of a WMD. It's not just "Dago Red" the specific biker chieftain who is harmed by the release of weaponized smallpox, it is hundreds of thousands of unspecified humans who haven't the faintest idea who Dago Red is or how they could have prevented him from threatening you to the point you decided it was a good idea to sic virulent disease on them.

This has progressed far past the point of parody.

Yes, these hundreds of thousands of unharmed and unspecified humans deserve to take my time and money, while the hundreds of thousands of actual and real and specific people who are actually harmed by automobiles should not be compensated. How is this logical?

[Voluntarism]

In other words, you will simply ignore the evidence and repeat your claim, despite acknowledging that the evidence says you are wrong.

Cars etc clearly save far more lives in the present than the cost of the road deaths and the potential future impact of increased morbidity/mortality in the future. To attempt to equate them with weapons of mass destruction is a bit silly.

Honestly though, I can't believe that this discussion has been going for over 6 pages. Repeating my first post:

the NAP means that no possession or holding of a weapon that is instigating a credible threat of violence against another person is allowed. Any thought on this means that possession is actually a context specific thing. There is no reason why you can't live in a remote uninhabited area and possess certain WMD's or walk around drunk with a gun firing indiscriminately at whatever took your fancy. In contrast, in a crowded elevator it is extremely difficult to openly hold a pistol in any fashion without the people around you feeling there is a credible threat to their safety. The same applies to things like toxic chemicals or explosives stored in your suburban garden shed versus on a large industrial site with a range of hazard protection measures.

All you need to do is provide a credible reason to your neighbours for them to not feel threatened and that your possession is peaceful. The specific circumstances under which someone wants to construct and possess a WMD for peaceful reasons are impossible to predict. This is the type of issue that Common Law excels at compared to Civil Law. It will make a determination case by case and there's no need to derive specifics in the absence of a very specific circumstance.

[Phred]

I will quote myself:

I realise that there is a risk that I will hurt innocents.

No Pants, there isn't a risk, there is a certainty.

You are claiming that I am a dishonest debater because I supposedly ignored this, despite the fact that I explicitly discussed it.

I am not "claiming" you are a dishonest debater, I am pointing out the self evident. Everyone else in this thread - regardless of their stance on anything else - is honest enough to acknowledge the vast and fundamental difference between a tactical nuke and a snub-nose revolver.

So, I am not a dishonest debater.

Yeah you are. A review of any three of the threads chosen at random longer than a half dozen pages in which you have participated demonstrates this.

As to the point I was making: yes, I am threatening a huge number of hypothetical innocents. However, I am not actually threatening any real and specific people.

Apart from anyone living within the blast radius of your WMD, of course. These individuals aren't real people?

In other words, you will simply ignore the evidence and repeat your claim, despite acknowledging that the evidence says you are wrong.

First of all, that is not a peer-reviewed scientific study published in a reputable journal, it is a summary of some "study" done by who-knows-who following who-knows-what kind of methodology and available to fact checking by no one at all.

Drivers of modern cars do no harm to individuals. As for your studies, do you not bother to even read them before posting them? This latest one says --

"The current mortality estimate is based on the health risk associated with acute exposures to ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, as well as the health risk associated with chronic exposure to fine particles (PM2.5)"

Five factors listed. Yet they discuss just one of those five: oxides of nitrogen in toto. Nitrogen dioxide is not the same as nitrogen oxide which is not the same as nitrogen trioxide, but let's set that aside for now. Here's what they have to say about nitrogen oxides:

"The transportation sector, made up primarily of cars, buses and trucks, is the largest source of nitrogen oxides (NOx, which includes nitrogen dioxide) in Toronto, and accounts for 65% of all NOx emission sources in the city."

As you are well aware, the emission standards for trucks and buses are much less stringent than are those for modern cars. I have not been talking about drivers of buses, Pants. Nor am I talking about drivers of trucks. I am talking about drivers of cars. As well, there seems something odd about Toronto's NOx situation compared to, say, Montreal's or Berlin's or London's--

"For most air pollutants, levels in Toronto are comparable with those in other large cities around the world. However, when average nitrogen dioxide levels are compared over a 10-year period to 27 major cities worldwide, Toronto’s levels were fourth highest, exceeded only by Los Angeles, Hong Kong and New York."

There is no shortage of cars (or buses and trucks for that matter) in major cities worldwide, so it's pretty sketchy logic to blame Toronto's high NOx levels on car emissions. If cars are the culprits (rather than say local manufacturing) why aren't Montreals NOx levels as high as Toronto's?

Yes, these hundreds of thousands of unharmed and unspecified humans deserve to take my time and money…

What are you babbling about now? They aren't taking your time and money, they're telling you that if you choose to try and develop WMD you'll be opposed by those who correctly recognize your project as aggression.


Phred

[Drlee]

I want to thank you all for posting the last few pages of this thread. It is truly hilarious. Don't stop.

Discussing how much Botulinum toxin constitutes a WMD is priceless.

Could someone bring up flamethrowers? I always liked flamethrowers.

[Nunt]

My criticism boils down to the fact that no one has been able to show how a restriction on careful ownership of, and defensive intent concerning, WMDs defies or contradicts the NAP. Eran has tried to do so and I commend Eran for doing so.

I have explained this pages ago:

For anyone that owns a WMD, it can be shown that they would in some circumstances be willing to use the WMD. Why else would they own it? Even if they just want a WMD as a deterrent: a deterrent only works if there is credible intent to use the WMD. So people who own WMD for pure defensive circumstances are willing to use it.

The nature of a WMD is such that it cannot be used without killing innocents. Thus, ownership of a WMD is a credible threat of violence against innocents and is a violation of the NAP.

So I would say that governments who currently own WMDs are violating the NAP as there is a clear intent to retaliate against innocents.

This also leads to a definition of a WMD, namely: any weapon that cannot be used without harming innocents. And again, like all things this is no clear cut line between what is a WMD and what is not. People who feel threathened by a weapon must go to court and prove that the ownership of a weapon is a credible threat against innocents. In this case, the ownership of a flame thrower may also be found illegal. If someone owns a flame thrower in a residential neighbourhood, then neighbours may feel that their property and lives are threathened because the use of such a weapon in the neighbourhood would most likely lead to property damage or worse.

The way I interpret the NAP is that it will actually pose strict limitations on weapon ownership. In contrast to current society where the government gets a carte blanche about which weapons it wants to own, develop or use. In fact, I believe that in a libertarian society, there will be less dangerous weapons. Nobody will have the privileges or the resources to create the destructive power that governments have today.

About car pollution: against this has to be decided by courts who will have to decide of pollution is a violation of the NAP or just a part of the risk people will have to accept when living in a human society. I imagine some courts will place limits on car use: for example, in smoggy city centers while other courts will not.

[Pants-of-dog]

Cars etc clearly save far more lives in the present than the cost of the road deaths and the potential future impact of increased morbidity/mortality in the future. To attempt to equate them with weapons of mass destruction is a bit silly.

This claim is dubious. Even if it is true, how does this answer my question: why can car drivers get away with actually hurting people, while the WMD owner is punished for harming no-one and threatening no-one?

Honestly though, I can't believe that this discussion has been going for over 6 pages. Repeating my first post:

Perhaps people felt that your first post did not simply solve the debate for all time.

the NAP means that no possession or holding of a weapon that is instigating a credible threat of violence against another person is allowed. Any thought on this means that possession is actually a context specific thing. There is no reason why you can't live in a remote uninhabited area and possess certain WMD's or walk around drunk with a gun firing indiscriminately at whatever took your fancy. In contrast, in a crowded elevator it is extremely difficult to openly hold a pistol in any fashion without the people around you feeling there is a credible threat to their safety. The same applies to things like toxic chemicals or explosives stored in your suburban garden shed versus on a large industrial site with a range of hazard protection measures.

And we have been discussing this context.

A person who is safely storing WMDs and clearly says he will use them only in defense is not harming nor threatening anyone.

All you need to do is provide a credible reason to your neighbours for them to not feel threatened and that your possession is peaceful. The specific circumstances under which someone wants to construct and possess a WMD for peaceful reasons are impossible to predict. This is the type of issue that Common Law excels at compared to Civil Law. It will make a determination case by case and there's no need to derive specifics in the absence of a very specific circumstance.

Actually, I think the neighbours would have to find a credible reason for them to feel threatened and that your possession is not peaceful. The burden of proof should be on the ones bringing up the accusation.

-------------------

No Pants, there isn't a risk, there is a certainty.

I disagree.

I am not "claiming" you are a dishonest debater, I am pointing out the self evident. Everyone else in this thread - regardless of their stance on anything else - is honest enough to acknowledge the vast and fundamental difference between a tactical nuke and a snub-nose revolver.

Yeah you are. A review of any three of the threads chosen at random longer than a half dozen pages in which you have participated demonstrates this.

Stop calling people names and focus on reading carefully. Thanks.

Apart from anyone living within the blast radius of your WMD, of course. These individuals aren't real people?

Since I don't have a specific declared blast radius, which people are you talking about? I don't know where I am going to aim it, because no one has attacked me.

First of all, that is not a peer-reviewed scientific study published in a reputable journal, it is a summary of some "study" done by who-knows-who following who-knows-what kind of methodology and available to fact checking by no one at all.

Good thing I posted the corroborating study.

Drivers of modern cars do no harm to individuals. As for your studies, do you not bother to even read them before posting them? This latest one says --
...

If cars are the culprits (rather than say local manufacturing) why aren't Montreals NOx levels as high as Toronto's?

If it would make you feel better, use the term "vehicles that use internal combustion engines" instead of cars.

The point still stands: there is a glaring inconsistency if I am not allowed to own WMDs (despite the fact that no one is harmed or threatened) while operators of vehicles that use internal combustion engines are allowed to keep hurting others with pollution.

What are you babbling about now? They aren't taking your time and money, they're telling you that if you choose to try and develop WMD you'll be opposed by those who correctly recognize your project as aggression.

Going to court takes my time and money. If you want to take me to court because I have WMDs (i.e. force me to use up my time and money) then you have to have a good reason.

----------------

I have explained this pages ago:

For anyone that owns a WMD, it can be shown that they would in some circumstances be willing to use the WMD. Why else would they own it? Even if they just want a WMD as a deterrent: a deterrent only works if there is credible intent to use the WMD. So people who own WMD for pure defensive circumstances are willing to use it.

I completely agree with this.

The nature of a WMD is such that it cannot be used without killing innocents. Thus, ownership of a WMD is a credible threat of violence against innocents and is a violation of the NAP.

There are no real specific innocents being threatened. There are only hypothetical ones, because I am not actually aiming it at a specific target. I am not aiming it a target because no one has attacked me.

So I would say that governments who currently own WMDs are violating the NAP as there is a clear intent to retaliate against innocents.

I would agree that this is true because we can pinpoint specific innocents who are currently threatened by WMDs.

However, the risk of these people actually being hurt by WMDs is vanishingly small. They have a higher chance of being killed by angry bees from local beekeepers.

This also leads to a definition of a WMD, namely: any weapon that cannot be used without harming innocents. And again, like all things this is no clear cut line between what is a WMD and what is not. People who feel threathened by a weapon must go to court and prove that the ownership of a weapon is a credible threat against innocents. In this case, the ownership of a flame thrower may also be found illegal. If someone owns a flame thrower in a residential neighbourhood, then neighbours may feel that their property and lives are threathened because the use of such a weapon in the neighbourhood would most likely lead to property damage or worse.

I agree with all of this, except I would say that a WMD is any weapon that cannot be used without running a very high risk of harming innocents.

The way I interpret the NAP is that it will actually pose strict limitations on weapon ownership. In contrast to current society where the government gets a carte blanche about which weapons it wants to own, develop or use. In fact, I believe that in a libertarian society, there will be less dangerous weapons. Nobody will have the privileges or the resources to create the destructive power that governments have today.

Creating a WMD using botilinum toxin requires nothing more than wine making equipment and a crop duster.

About car pollution: against this has to be decided by courts who will have to decide of pollution is a violation of the NAP or just a part of the risk people will have to accept when living in a human society. I imagine some courts will place limits on car use: for example, in smoggy city centers while other courts will not.

My point about the car pollution is that there is a logical inconsistency which I have described several times.

[Rich]

The pollution associated with cars only minimally impacts the health, rather than positively marking the doom, of innocent bystanders. The difference between car pollution and a nuclear bomb is too obvious to dwell into.

Car pollution is responsible for far, far more deaths and wrecked lives than nuclear weapons. Lead brain damages people. It damages their ability to make decisions. Lead in petrol and other sources may have caused in the order of a hundred thousand extra deaths a year just in in homicides. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The damage caused by lead poisoning is almost beyond comprehension.

[SolarCross]

Car pollution is responsible for far, far more deaths and wrecked lives than nuclear weapons. Lead brain damages people. It damages their ability to make decisions. Lead in petrol and other sources may have caused in the order of a hundred thousand extra deaths a year just in in homicides. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The damage caused by lead poisoning is almost beyond comprehension.

That may be true but extent of harm and risk of harm aren't the only aspects the other more important one is culpability. We are all causers of car pollution but we are not all causers of WMDs. Those that do not cause the existence of WMDs have a clear conscience to complain about them.

[Nunt]

There are no real specific innocents being threatened. There are only hypothetical ones, because I am not actually aiming it at a specific target. I am not aiming it a target because no one has attacked me.

This is debatable. I think someone can claim to feel threatened by a WMD and a court could agree with that person. There's no black and white here. Just interpretation by courts. Even if nobody is being targetted today, this does not mean there is no threat. You could target a WMD pretty fast. "The nuke currently is targetted at you, but if something happens, it'll take 2h28min to blast away your city".

I agree that there is no objective rule that will say "someone is threathened by a WMD". But it's not impossible that courts, filled with humans that live in a safe world, could follow my logic.

Creating a WMD using botilinum toxin requires nothing more than wine making equipment and a crop duster.

I know very little about this subject but lets hope the terrorists don't find out.

My point about the car pollution is that there is a logical inconsistency which I have described several times.

I don't think there is a logical inconsistency. Threats must be evaluated with the community. To elimininate all risk is impossible. Living in a society requires that people accept some risk. So threats doesn't only mean "the things that have the highest probability to get you killed". The community may evaluate threats based on different parameters than just the previous. How accepted the practices are within a society may also be a relevant parameter.

[Pants-of-dog]

This is debatable. I think someone can claim to feel threatened by a WMD and a court could agree with that person. There's no black and white here. Just interpretation by courts. Even if nobody is being targetted today, this does not mean there is no threat. You could target a WMD pretty fast. "The nuke currently is targetted at you, but if something happens, it'll take 2h28min to blast away your city".

I agree that there is no objective rule that will say "someone is threathened by a WMD". But it's not impossible that courts, filled with humans that live in a safe world, could follow my logic.

I agree. I still think my position is more consistent with the NAP.

I know very little about this subject but lets hope the terrorists don't find out.

I am re-reading my Neal Stephenson books and finished Cobweb. You should read it.

Anyways, all that to say that WMDs are not cost prohibitive with a little expertise. A rich family could easily afford a WMD.

I don't think there is a logical inconsistency. Threats must be evaluated with the community. To elimininate all risk is impossible. Living in a society requires that people accept some risk. So threats doesn't only mean "the things that have the highest probability to get you killed". The community may evaluate threats based on different parameters than just the previous. How accepted the practices are within a society may also be a relevant parameter.

And I am saying that carefully constructing a set of parameters that allows actual harm while punishing hypothetical harm is an exercise in creating inconsistent parameters.

[Voluntarism]

Car pollution is responsible for far, far more deaths and wrecked lives than nuclear weapons. Lead brain damages people. It damages their ability to make decisions. Lead in petrol and other sources may have caused in the order of a hundred thousand extra deaths a year just in in homicides. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The damage caused by lead poisoning is almost beyond comprehension.

CARS SAVE LIVES. Efficient transport allows people to get to hospitals, to be rescued, to obtain food and medicines from the other side of the planet, they allow the construction of mass sanitation etc etc. The mortality and morbidity are a tiny fraction of the beneficial impact on people's lives.

[quetzalcoatl]

Is slave owning compatible with Libertarianism? If it isn't why has Libertarianism been so associated with slave owners or slave investors like John Locke?

Indeed it is. The conception that rights are possessions, and that these rights can be traded or sold (just as can other forms of property) lie at the heart of this contradiction.

The modern concept of liberty has become inextricably linked to its historical origins as a justification of slavery.

When Medieval political theorists spoke of "liberty," they were normally referring to a lord's right to do whatever he wanted within his own domains - his dominium. This was, again, usually assumed to be not something originally established by agreement, but a mere fact of conquest...

By the time Roman law began to be recovered and modernized in the twelfth century, the term dominium posed a particular problem, since, in ordinary church Latin of the time, it had come to be used equally for "lordship" and "private property." Medieval jurists spent a great deal of time and argument establishing whether there was indeed a difference between the two...

This is a tradition that assumes that liberty is essentially the right to do what one likes with one's own property. In fact, not only does it make property a right, it treats rights themselves as a form of property. In a way, this is the greatest paradox of all. We are so used to the idea of "having" rights—that rights are something one can possess—that we rarely think about what this might actually mean...

Historically, there is a simple—if somewhat disturbing—answer to this. Those who have argued that we are the natural owners of our rights and liberties have been mainly interested in asserting that we should be free to give them away, or even to sell them...

Modern ideas of rights and liberties are derived from what came to be known as "natural rights theory"—from the time when Jean Gerson, Rector of the University of Paris, began to lay them out around 1400, building on Roman law concepts. As Richard Tuck, the premier historian of such ideas, has long noted, it is one of the great ironies of history that this was always a body of theory embraced not by the progressives of that time, but by conservatives. "For a Gersonian, liberty was property and could be exchanged in the same Way and in the same terms as any other property"—sold, swapped, loaned, or otherwise voluntarily surrendered.'" It followed that there could be nothing intrinsically wrong with, say, debt peonage, or even slavery. And this is exactly what natural-rights theorists came to assert. In fact, over the next centuries, these ideas came to be developed above all in Antwerp and Lisbon, cities at the very center of the emerging slave trade. After all, they argued, we don't really know what's going on in the lands behind places like Calabar, from which so many men and women were being enslaved and shipped to the Americas, but there is no intrinsic reason to assume that the vast majority of the human cargo conveyed to European ships had not sold themselves, or been disposed of by their legal guardians, or lost their liberty in some other perfectly legitimate fashion.

Thus slavery is embedded deep within modern liberalism. There is no intrinsic difference between modern wage slavery and chattel slavery. It is simply a matter of degree: wage labor, which is, effectively, the renting of our freedom in the same way that slavery can be conceived as its sale. Once rights are seen as property, they are by definition alienable.

This is the fundamental meaning of liberalism. It also explains why the uber-liberals of today (libertarians) have such trouble coming to terms with the American Civil War.