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RE: Voluntaryism – Don’t Tread On Anyone

in #anarchy8 years ago

If someone drinks too much and hurts someone else, they are responsible for that.

I don't see how that doesn't work?

If you hurt someone as a result of your actions, then your accountable for that. It's not complicated.

If you drink and then don't hurt anyone else, then your good.

It's not a good idea to drink and drive. Just as it's not a good idea to shoot herion in your arm or snort meth. However, criminalizing this behavior only makes it worse (war on drugs). I don't recommend either, but both are within an individuals right to decide if they want to do that.

Your example is using Statism as a standard and then your saying "voluntarism does not work on a large scale", but your example doesn't even disprove or make an arguement for the alternative (statism). You just pointed out how the government currently handles drunk driving but failed to address how a voluntary society would handle it. How are you proposing that voluntary societies would fail to address that problem?

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The concept of responsability does not work if somebody is mentally ill. Each individual can cause much more damage than he can pay, e.g. as a gunman. Especially guns have a terrible cost-to-damage ratio.
A voluntary solution could include to make the manufacturer liable for all damages caused by his product. Car manufacturers and car dealers world be asked to check their buyer's driving background. Gun manufacturers would be asked to check their buyer's mental background. This instrument of third-party responsability would impose uncalculable costs on manufacturers and dealers, so that manufacturers obviously prefer a government solution.
Car manufacturers could add a breathalyzer that prevents drunk driving. However, a mandatory breathalyzer would make a car more expensive. Some people would refuse to buy a car with breathalyzer, they would destroy the breathalyzer, which cannot be punished if the non-aggression principle is exercised in a strict way. In the long run, it would be cheaper for the society to send drunk driver into a state-operated prison than to pay for private devices which are more expensive.
In some rare cases, voluntary solutions may be cheaper, but in most cases, governments have proven to be the cheapest solution.

Thanks for the reply. However, in order to disprove voluntaryism, you need to prove that you can properly delegate a right that you don't have. Can you do this? You have to be a moral relativist to hold that position. Are you a moral relativist?

By arguing that it would be more expensive, your not disproving voluntaryism. Also, holding the manufacturer liable is something you said, not me. You created a strawman argument and then disproved it (sort of).

If you're saying voluntaryism wouldn't work, what your really saying is "I can delegate rights I don't have to others", which is flawed. You have to prove that you have that ability, then we would actually be having a debate about voluntaryism.