Freedomain Radio

Hi gang,

I got the idea for starting this new thread after reading this thread which has gone to shit and because i wanted to focus only on this particular issue without a million other arguments cluttering things up.

So, as someone who is quite familiar with Stefs theory of how an anarchist society would defend itself against foreign agressors, I am just curious whether anyone here (including Stef) would actually consider nuking innocent people as a viable option for self defence against an agressor under any circumstances. even if the an-cap society you were living in was going to be invaded and everyone might end up under the contol of a state again.

I am perfectly aware that no country has in the past aggressed against another which had nukes and im also perfectly aware that its the fear of being personally effected which keeps the leaders of the other side from starting anything. But what if one of them was crazy enough to call the bluff and go for it anyway. lets leave out the fact that it would be hard, not worth it, and the intentions behind them wanting to do so for now and just answer this.... would you actually consider nuking their country and vapourising millions of innocent people a reasonable price to pay to continue living in an anarcho capitalist society?

You see ive thought about this from the point of view of someone who would be debating against me when i propose this as an answer to "but who would provide defence and how and blah blah blah". On the surface it seems the response of "we will have nukes" is perfectly ok. but what if they decide to dig a little deeper. at some point someone might pull me up on this question and i want to be ready for it. what im getting at is that id prefer to not have to say yes to using nukes on citizens if there is anyway around that. hehe.

thanks

I'd choose to bomb the enemy's capital, focusing on their government buildings and what not.
A few thousand victims compared to a million... But yet again, they could use this against us, and the nuke attack could help other governments propagandize against anarchism and condemn it as evil.
"They say they support non-violence, but look what they did!"

 OK, this is an interesting question to answer. And a hard one. I don't think I have a good answer. I assumed nukes would be the LAST line of defense. I'm not entirely convinced that a good sized nuclear bomb won't damage the entire planet. Im kinda hoping that a device like some police departments(very few) have that will disable the computer brain in a car and stop it from running, will become available to take out key computer servers belonging to the aggressors gov't. Hopefully they won't have some Faraday Cage type protection. (Probably not considered cost effective.)If  disable all their gov't computers could be done, a countrys people could be freed of their state instantly (technically no longer on record). They might not like that, though they would be alive. Um it's late here so this may be a little far fetched.

 I'd like to see some other ideas on this, too.

Spratzaman:

I'd choose to bomb the enemy's capital, focusing on their government buildings and what not.
A few thousand victims compared to a million... But yet again, they could use this against us, and the nuke attack could help other governments propagandize against anarchism and condemn it as evil.
"They say they support non-violence, but look what they did!"

if you bombed a capital city of any country im pretty sure your death toll for innocents is going to be much more than in the thousands. unless they are ultra intelligent mini-nukes that only destroy govt buildings and produce no radioactive fallout. think about how many people live in moscow or washington. youd be killing in the millions for sure.

they most certainly would use it as an excuse to nuke back. then our anarchist society might ironically start to resemble mad max and other post apocalyptic anarchy scenarios a little more. :)

I think the threat of the nuke in itself would disuade any politician from igniting an invasion against an anarchist area.  But for a threat to be effective, it must be backed up with real intention.  It is a difficult question, and I hope by the time we get there we have an answer.... but since I'm not going to see a stateless society in my lifetime, I hope to start spreading the message as much as possible so that when it does come, there will be fewer states interested in attacking.

Well, that seemed to be some very strong arguments that war is a pathology that results from savage child abuse - by the time that human beings are healthy enough to embrace truly voluntary social relationships, it will be because they have been raised in a healthy, nonviolent and rational manner -- and thus war will be irrelevant and obsolete anyway...

The only reason an anarcho-capitalist society would consider using nukes to kill people would be if its inhabitants were threatened by military force outside of their region [by non-anarcho-capitalists]. Since war is mainly if not entirely funded through taxation/inflation, it should almost always be the case that this outside force threatening the free people would obtain its resources by mugging its own population. But regardless of who's at fault for the mugging going on in the non-free region, most if not all of its population are still mechanical gears in the machine of war. They still play their part, whether forced to or not. Their labor is the instrument which would be used against the free people. If the moral question asked is, would I rather give up my life than defend it by stopping those responsible for attacking me...

Aside from that, I still think the nation wouldn't be likely to have to choose the nuclear route. There are usually many other options available like ground invasions or aerial bombing with smaller bombs targeted on the tyrannical government structures only, etc. I suppose if the outside force launched its own nukes and the free people were about to be exterminated, morality may just go out the window in the time it takes for an ICBM to launch and detonate on its target. But assuming no incoming nukes and the existence of other viable means of defending your free society I see no reason to use it and risk the lives of potential innocents, and I don't think that kind of society would use it under those two assumed circumstances either.

Once freed by less destructive means, the formerly tyrannical region would be free to choose whether or not they want to labor for other people or steal the resources of another region, etc. and I doubt they would do those things unless forced to by the kind of agency that was just removed. Since you can remove a good deal of the labor if not all the labor used against you by freeing the enslaved people and giving them freedom of choice, it wouldn't be necessary to kill the enslaved people via nuke since the goal of both actions would be to stop the threat against your free people.

Of course, one might argue, what if the population chooses to rebuild an aggressive organization whose goal is total domination or at least domination of the free people? If the people of the other region would choose, when free, to reinstate the organization and continue what they were doing before, which would be threatening the lives of the free people, then the original question of nuclear morality would be spun around. Instead of trying to argue that the enemy population is being forced to go to war against the free people [to try and establish their innocence in the matter], there would be in its place a population willingly dead-set on your destruction.

blondie:

 OK, this is an interesting question to answer. And a hard one. I don't think I have a good answer. I assumed nukes would be the LAST line of defense. I'm not entirely convinced that a good sized nuclear bomb won't damage the entire planet. Im kinda hoping that a device like some police departments(very few) have that will disable the computer brain in a car and stop it from running, will become available to take out key computer servers belonging to the aggressors gov't. Hopefully they won't have some Faraday Cage type protection. (Probably not considered cost effective.)If  disable all their gov't computers could be done, a countrys people could be freed of their state instantly (technically no longer on record). They might not like that, though they would be alive. Um it's late here so this may be a little far fetched.

 I'd like to see some other ideas on this, too.

A Faraday cage is not that expensive. An elevator is considered a Faraday cage. I'd bet the bunkers where the computers that control nukes are located are made with a metal shell (which is a Faraday cage). So an EMP pulse is ineffective for disarming nukes. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be devastating against the other resources of that country.

I think graphite amd EMP WMD's are the next "nuke". Not only are they non-lethal, but they have little bad side effects (unlike nukes which can carry radiation for thousands of miles depending on the wind). So a DRO government could have some nukes (or 1) for MAD against governments and some graphite bombs and EMP's for an actual attack.

While building and then maintaining one nuke is far more cost-effective than raising, training, and maintaining an army; nukes have no defensive capabilities whatsoever.  This does not mean they are not deterrents but this quality derives from the fact that they can only be used in an offensive manner.  Rothbard discusses the use of nukes...basically, the only moral use of them is if the entire landmass and populace affected are the aggressors.  This excludes that civilian populace which is aggressed against by foreign powers much as taxpayers are today.  So, bombing a foreign capitol would be immoral unless each and every person there was part of the aggressing government and not simply "claimed" by that government.  

Rothbard illustrates a nuke being used as similar to a man, trying to capture a violent aggressor against him or his property, spraying automatic gunfire into a crowd to hit the violator.  The man initially injured and who had every right to use defensive violence against his aggressor, has become every bit and even more-so a criminal by killing or wounding innocent people who simply happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time since the vast majority of people are citizens of this or that country by happenstance not by choice.   

Citizens as a whole are not the government but only a small subset of them can be classified as the "government."  While a moral use of them (nukes) is theoretically possible it is practically impossible.  Besides, the only reason governments want nukes is because others have them, i.e. M.A.D.  A government with nukes would not use them on an anarcho-capitalist country since it would destroy the very resources it was seeking to expropriate (taxable persons, arable land, mineral resources, livestock, etc.). 

I'd have to disagree there. Even if the enslaved people are forced to labor for the aggressing government, they are still the ones who build the machines, who march and die on the field, whose labor is used in an attempt to end your life. The aggressing government merely speaks its orders and then the citizens, forced or not, choose to comply [choose it over death].

Assuming you've given up more than half your labor to the war machine, whether forced or not, assuming you've built them thousands of guns or hundreds of bombs, assuming you've marched on those fields wielding those weapons, whether forced or not, -you- would be the aggressor. Under these circumstances you would be the direct cause of sufferring.

I think it's important that we do not try and pull ourselves out of the equation here - we are not innocent. We are responsible for our own actions, our actions of choosing to give up our labor, our actions of choosing to save our small pittances in fiat notes to be plundered by inflation and used against us and other people. Whether forced or not we still have a choice - there is no force that can muster free will, only force which can change consequences of the excercise of that free will. Martyrs and heroes could see the bigger picture here and they may have been a contributing force towards the little bit of freedom we currently enjoy today.

Arguing that you must help bully other people's lunch money from them in school in order to give that money to another bully who's threatening to beat you up, that just doesn't work, and the goal on this site I think is universal applicability of morality. If in order to avoid getting beat up by Billy the Bully, you start beating up other people to appease Billy, can you honestly say that you were forced to do so by Billy? It may feel more comfortable to pull yourself out of the equation and not accept your responsibility in the matter, but it's just plain wrong.

Responsibility comes from actions, and government by itself can perform no real actions - it needs the resources, the economic blood of servants, in order to make actions occur. If a taxpaying populace is not held responsible for their actions, then that must also mean they have no part in genocide. But they do.

I am a proud nontaxpayer, and I hope I can convince others to pull themselves away from government interaction as I have. I figured out a long time ago, I can either give up my labor and by doing so help to destroy the lives of countless others, or I could be free for as long as possible. The long-term consequences of joining the machine are incalculable. If Stef's right and we can't even predict what will happen when we send troops into Europe, then how could we predict how bad it could potentially get if we allow the cancer of the state to exist with our own blood, labor, and approval-by-actions?

Well, Tenko I see your point and actually agree whole-heatedly with it.  But I look at the world pragmatically...I pay taxes not because it is moral but the alternative is to not paying them is worse; violence, rape by sodomy, incarceration.  So, I do have a choice in the same sense as foreigners have to not follow their government.  This choice is an illusion, much like a man with a gun asking me if I would rather hand over my wallet or would I prefer to get shot.

Also, remember that morality should not be a burden...is it immoral for a slave to take food from his master even though he knows this benefactor is much more of a tormentor? 

I live with the consequences of being a nontaxpayer every day. I guess my position is made more comfortable by the fact that I've already accepted I'm going to be murdered because I can't possibly obey every law and still live sanely at the same time. But I'm still glad to know that I am not benefiting the state.

I don't mean to bring 'chaos theory' in as an argument because I don't particularly like most of what chaos theory has to say, but some of it I do like and I should explain why I hold my position with it rather than use it as an argument; I've read that the tiniest fluctuation in the past can produce larger and larger ripples as time moves forward. That a moth killed in 10,000 BC may not flap its wings one day later and won't cause wind to push a half degree east instead of west, that a change in atmosphere subjected to wild and seemingly random weather patterns can produce indrecibly different storms, that a hurricane could later be redirected to another part of land, that a species will not go extinct because the hurricane has hit somewhere else, etc. Since there are two possibilities, me paying taxes and me not paying taxes, the difference made in my lifetime may be invisible and insignificant. But the changes between the two choices would factor out into greater and greater differences as time moved forward. After I'm gone, the difference would be an entire life of labor either in the state's pockets or not in the state's pockets. That's a big enough difference to make big things happen in the future.

You cannot steal that which was already stolen, so since the master used the slave's labor to buy the food it really belongs to the slave.

Alright, all of that last post is just relative to me (except for the slave/master part). Wasn't really trying to argue, just explain why I seem a bit nihilistic.

"I'd choose to bomb the enemy's capital, focusing on their government buildings and what not.
A few thousand victims compared to a million... But yet again, they could use this against us, and the nuke attack could help other governments propagandize against anarchism and condemn it as evil.
"They say they support non-violence, but look what they did!""

And "they" would be right. This is a very bad and evil way of thinking. To refer to a "nation" as the enemy, to suggest to bomb anyone is terrible. This is the same ends justify the means thinking that causes so much evil in the world.

As Cooper put it, the possible morality of using a nuke is nearly zero, especially when you consider the not insignificant problem of fallout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_fallout_exposure.png

 The above ground use of an atomic or nuclear weapon of any type will inject a large amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
This can be captured by jetstreams and moved thousands of miles from the initial blast zone, causing lethal cancer in humans and animals a very, very long way from the target.

Also, Tenko,

If someone from Iraq managed to lay thier hands on an ICBM and bomb a U.S. city at random, and that city happened to be your place of residence, the bomb would not care that you don't pay your taxes, just as nuking a the capital city of a foreign attacking government would not care about anyone there who wasn't paying their taxes, or children for that matter.