I propose that, to improve the non aggression principle, we should stipulate that all aggression against a person(s) be prohibited. While people may see some downsides to this as I'm sure they will discuss shortly I believe that, in the key aspect of the NAP, it is more effective.

Care to define coercion or aggression for us?

Aggression is always a bit nebulous but we can start with the most concrete, direct physical violence or unrequested restraint of a person.

The Non Aggression Principle is only ever advocated throughout history by weak small boned men (Jesus, Siddhartha, Gandhi.) They know their only defense against Alpha mastery is by appeal to a learned moral outrage. These spiritual icons lack the courage to recognize that moral outrage is only a thing because it is collectively advantageous and not an inherent "right" of God or the Universe. They take this principle to such an extreme that they would rather die then defend themselves in physical combat.


If everyone that lived before them took this approach they never would have been born to proselytize to the savages. It's simple, if enough of the weak become outraged by unprovoked slaughter they will mass together and become more powerful than the big muscled warlords. The big muscled warlords only halt their theft, rape, and murdering ways due to the implied threat of the weak organizing to match their strength.


In the past the weak could match the Alpha's strength by organizing, but today is a different story. It's no longer about small boned men vs Gorilla men, it's about tech equipped men vs non-tech equipped. We will never be able to match the elite's tech, so the elite no longer have an incentive to appease moral outrage. The 21st century will end up making the 20th century look peaceful. I swear by all that is human and savage that this shall be so. Jesus help us.

So if a person is beating a young child, how do you stop them?

Sure, the point of a prohibition is to point out what is justifiable and what isn't. If something isn't justifiable then it should be stopped. Of course that can always be abused but seems pretty obvious that direct physical violence isn't justified and in that case force can be used to prohibit direct physical attacks. Again a nebulous concept but pretty obvious in concrete cases.

Great. So we live in the real world. Who decides the nebulous cases?

Someone hitting a kid: I can use force against them.
Someone feeding their kid a deadly poison: I can use force against them?
Someone blowing smoke in their kids face: force?
Someone smoking in the same room as their kid: ?
Someone feeding their kid an ego waffle: ?

All theories of when to use force have a question of definitions and who gets to define what. Those questions aren't particularly relevant. That's why I said it's best to focus on the concrete examples to illustrate this theory vs other theories of when to use force.

What are other theories of when to use force? How does your theory differ?

I think the NAP has a self-defense exception because people who follow it do not want to be pacifists.

There are numerous fallacies involved when trying to enforce pacifism as a law. Notably a government that uses fear of violence and detainment to enforce pacifism is in a classic 'do as I say, not as I do' authority conundrum.

That people can initiate force on people who are not contravening the Improved Non Agression Principle i.e. doing anything but directly harming another person's body. For instance, many people believe you can initiate force on someone who's on your land. But since that person is not physically attacking another human being the initiation of force is invalid.

Ok, so how do you get rid of someone on your land?

If I plant a field, how do I keep someone else from harvesting it? What if I depend on that crop to survive?

This is a good improvement.

The equation of property and life is a weak spot in the NAP. There be praxeological thinking involved.

I mean, this is kind of a ****ty thread.

You don't want to talk about the non-completely-obvious cases of your proposal (You know - the places where every system has problems). You don't seem to want to get into how/why your proposal is better. You don't seem to want to explain the consequences of following your 'improved' NAP.

What do you want out of this thread?

It's a ******ed improvement because it doesn't work. Equating property and life is obviously a huge weak spot in the NAP. But its part of a fundamental weakness with the whole concept of the NAP and the larger idealogies that expose it.

Whenever you engage someone about the details of the NAP in non-obvious places it quickly becomes obvious that you have to define "initiating force" very broadly or you can never respond with force. And there are many ways for people to end your life (and destroy a society) without ever initiating direct force against another person's body (like stealing a planted crop).

You don't. So course you can threaten to do the same to others so you'll probably reach an equilibrium which, admittedly, will produce a less ideal outcome than if we were to put conditions on the INAP, but if one were to believe in the process of minimizing aggression were important they would follow the principle even at the expense of overall wellbeing.

No you won't. It's absurd to believe this. Unless you mean the equilibrium you reach will be a class of people that have no food because they can't plant/protect on 'their land' (not that property has any meaning in this context) and a class of people that will have abundant food because they've organized and control all food production. Great society!

Minimizing aggression is a pretty ******ed metric to optimize. But if that's the way you want to do it, that's your right. But you need to make a pretty strong case that this is the one metric (as opposed to something like standard of living) that should matter.

Right and implicit in the Improved Non Agression Principle is the absence of property. If ACists or libertarians bring up the NAP, the INAP invalidates property so ACists or libertarians are left arguing that property is necessary for a more utilitarian outcome, but these are the same arguments that are made for welfare, social safety nets, etc.

Ok, I'm back to wondering what you want out of this thread.

Edit: It seems completely obvious that it wouldn't end well in the real world. A few reasons have been covered already, but you don't want to talk about those.

In the real world, the NAP doesn't work politically for a few reasons. One is because it is too simple and doesn't have a complete understanding of violence- which it implies.

Accounting discriminately between physical and nonphysical violence, as well as, property violence is something that is left up to each individual to figure out. This seems to be this thread?

Another reason is that as a concept- it is more like a practice of ideas- an individual personal philosophy, than a social political position. Which, like pacifism, does not fit in the political paradigm.

The laws on the books do not matter if a person follows a practice of ideas personally. An individual's own behavior in adhering to the principle is much more important than making the principle codified into a law everybody must pay special heed. This is a problem when an individual thinks murdering a trespasser is praxeo-rational morally justified behavior and prepares to do so.

So in the NAP we have a personal philosophy with the potential of vast knowledge gaps between the individuals who practice it; which is also promoted politically. What could go wrong?

I'm not sure if you put 'politically' in there for a meaningful reason. But to be clear I've never heard an argument for how the NAP could work in the real world. Full stop. (Edit: Aside from small groups of very like-minded people with relatively abundant resources and protected/isolated in one way or another by outside forces)

What's there to say? OP stands quite firm on his position (Never use violence for anything but direct physical violence) and hasn't actually engaged in details of why/how he believes that or details of how he defines direct physical violence.

Sure. So I guess I concede that INAP is better than NAP for a personal philosophy that someone wants to follow. It still seems deeply flawed, but you're right its better.

Edit: Actually, it's not even clear the INAP is better as a personal philosophy. It clearly implies a lack of property rights. So someone following this philosophy would likely have no problem trespassing/stealing/etc. At least with the NAP followers killing someone have been 'provoked' in one way or another possibly making them less of a danger to society at large.

Well, duh. It's general moral guideline, not a code of laws.

It works fine for plenty of people? "Don't hurt other people unless they're hurting me or someone else" is pretty standard really, whether people call it NAP or not.

This is what I meant - the simplified version for simple situations is fine. As are most personal codes. However, it breaks down in many specific situations (Like justifying shooting a trespasser who isn't offering you direct harm).

That's not a question of the NAP breaking down though, it's a question of how a person interprets the NAP. You mostly see libertarian type NAP supporters because libertarians put that label to the concept, but there's no reason you couldn't see a more liberal anarchist type NAP supporter who finds the idea of shooting a trespasser entirely abhorrent for any reason.