Without such a system that allowed for the state to initiate force against individuals driving faster than the speed limit, road fatalities would increase precipitously. The practice of detaining and ticketing for speeding clearly violates the NAP. Is it a bad idea?

Yes, I think taxes are a necessary evil. Is that the critical difference? Minarchism is wired but anarcho-capitalism is tired?

But once taxes are accepted as a necessary evil the NAP is already abandoned as a principle. My point is only once that line is crossed, one’s libertarianism needs to be justified and guided by something other than the NAP.

For one thing, the NAP is an axiom for state policy and laws, not personal moral behavior.

Er, since when? The NAP restricting individual behavior is how libertarians justify laws against murder, rape, assault, and larceny.

I think the principle specifically applies to civilized society, and “lifeboat situations” are not civilized society.

The threat of force is considered (I think correctly) as equivalent to force in itself, and taxation is nothing if not takings backed by the threat of force. Hence the arguments about highways and the internet, goods whose very existence is owed to money taxed for those purposes.

Yes, I think taxes are a necessary evil. Is that the critical difference? Minarchism is wired but anarcho-capitalism is tired?

Er, since when? The NAP restricting individual behavior is how libertarians justify laws against murder, rape, assault, and larceny.

For another, it is a rare case where the initiation of force would give the best consequences.

The threat of force is considered (I think correctly) as equivalent to force in itself, and taxation is nothing if not takings backed by the threat of force. Hence the arguments about highways and the internet, goods whose very existence is owed to money taxed for those purposes.

Perhaps initiation of aggression is not always evil regardless of the consequences, but I still think it’s a good rule of thumb.

I think in dyadic relations it’s a great rule-of-thumb. In anything more complicated it ceases to function very effectively.

Is it morally permissible to take the buoy by force in order to save the drowning man?

Yes and no. No, it would not be morally permissible for a state agency to take the buoy by force. Yes, it would be permissible for an individual. For one thing, the NAP is an axiom for state policy and laws, not personal moral behavior. For another, it is a rare case where the initiation of force would give the best consequences.

I think consequentialism and minarchism are compatible. However: yes, I see how the NAP is pretty deontological, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Perhaps initiation of aggression is not always evil regardless of the consequences, but I still think it’s a good rule of thumb.

No dogma.

A guy is drowning in the sea. The only guy around who has a life-buoy owns it, does not wish to share it, and does not wish to use it to save the drowning man.

Is it morally permissible to take the buoy by force in order to save the drowning man?

Hm.

Free trade practices put folks in other countries out of work, and guess where they come to find work? Guess how little many of those folks would be willing to be paid for their labor?

And let’s talk about things that folks wouldn’t have the option of avoiding, such as certain roads/bridges and schools. It’s bad enough that health care is a for-profit industry. Let’s destroy the commons. Yeah, let’s allow private companies to charge ridiculous sums for the use of a bridge, for instance. As opposed to paying for that bridge via progressive taxation.

The ratcheting goes both ways. My father’s generation went to work with the absolute expectation that they would work for the same company all their lives, receive a very livable pension at retirement, and have fully funded healthcare for the entire family. And this wasn’t just executives, this was any blue or white collar job.

I don’t know anyone that expects that sort of stability now. Companies learned that turnover kept costs down, people would work for companies with no benefits, and that raiding the retirement fund could be gotten away with.

If the only jobs left for a minimum wage level worker paid $1 an hour, there would still be people working those jobs.

Well, I would also point out that cultural and personal expectations are vulnerable to a ratcheting effect. What was acceptable to people (conditions they would tolerate) are not the same as those they would tolerate today. If the regulations suddenly disappeared tomorrow, a factory owner would still not be able to pay pennies a day, because nobody would work for him.

I deliberately didn’t mention the violence used by those companies because I actually know how the free market is defined.

I mentioned wages, working conditions and pollution. Three things the free market crowd thinks should not be regulated. And I don’t see how removal of import export restrictions during the industrial revolution would have made any of those things better.

My point is that we have seen how factories were run when the government didn’t interfere. They were dangerous filthy places where the poorest people made pennies a day. And nothing in the ‘market’ put any pressure on the owners to change that.

Yeah, anyone who believes that’s realistic is just as delusional as the folks who think a man who may have existed ~2000 years ago is coming back to life.

And it is not a violation of the free market to exclude child labor; children are not usually considered capable of entering into many mutual arrangements, and so it is easy to regulate their entrance into the marketplace. That Britain didn’t says more about their cultural values than anything about free market economics.

But I agree it would be unfeasible to implement because of the high third-party costs of pollution and other externalities. I am not a free-market zealot; just pointing out we have scant data on what it would be like to live with one.