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For some context, Rothbard is really hard on the volunteerism angle, he is a philosopher searching for non-violent ways of formulating society. He is one of the

For some context, Rothbard is really hard on the volunteerism angle, he is a philosopher searching for non-violent ways of formulating society. He is one of the stronger "proto-libertarians" in my view because he recognizes that undoing existing social programs is just as arbitrary as creating them: forcing a government to be small requires a powerful government. Hence the Ouroboros reference; you can't escape the violence! Rothbard isn't saying "do nothing", he's really saying "it's impossible to undo the mistake" - a statue can never be torn down without incurring more violence. Re: Putin and Ukraine - this is a perfect example really. It would be a small evil to assassinate Putin. So we must accept we can not have a government that cannot commit evil. This line of thinking is enough to turn most libertarians or pacifist/volunteerist into plain old republicans or democrats (which is one reason why there are not many moderate libertarians). I fully support Ukraine - and to support them - we must do a bit of evil. However: whoever actually pulls a trigger and kills another human being, even a mass murderer, is still a murderer themselves. If the solution to killing is killing, we will never solve the problem. So long as we accept that, we can have a chat about the conflict in Europe! Re: The capital: Yes! So we have to accept that no one committing violence (either defending or attacking the capital) is morally clean in the entire situation, and that everyones argument for committing violence needs to be understood and judged. This is, to my continued amazement, actually exactly what has happened. We do this for mass murderers and terrorists and people who rape other people. It's exceptional and I don't think we're proud enough as a species of what we've done. Throwing out our "gray area" and replacing it with moral certainty is the only real danger! Edit: I've enjoyed this chat! TY! I should get back to work now xD

majormajor 3y ago
> we have to accept that no one committing violence (either defending or attacking the capital) is morally clean in the entire situation, and that everyones argument for committing violence needs to be understood and judged There's a certain place here where we see this the same way and are just positioning our definition of sin/moral culpability on opposite sides of this judgement. Was the sin justified by the argument, or does the justness of the argument make it not a sin? > If the solution to killing is killing, we will never solve the problem. This bit, though, is still fuzzy to me. My lens is a bit different in terms of "responding to the situation" a bit narrower than "solving the problem"? Possibly some residual Christianity at play, believing that "solving the problem" is incompatible with human nature. But similarly I'm generally sympathetic to the "just following orders" claim especially when you extend it to the "I'm just a member of society, not in the chain of command at all", and so would find it hard to support a post-Civil-War action of "throw every white Southerner in jail for the rest of their lives"... even though I also think the ultimate retreat of the US federal government in the face of ongoing southern insurgency caused a LOT of future evils.

majormajor 3y ago

> we have to accept that no one committing violence (either defending or attacking the capital) is morally clean in the entire situation, and that everyones argument for committing violence needs to be understood and judged There's a certain place here where we see this the same way and are just positioning our definition of sin/moral culpability on opposite sides of this judgement. Was the sin justified by the argument, or does the justness of the argument make it not a sin? > If the solution to killing is killing, we will never solve the problem. This bit, though, is still fuzzy to me. My lens is a bit different in terms of "responding to the situation" a bit narrower than "solving the problem"? Possibly some residual Christianity at play, believing that "solving the problem" is incompatible with human nature. But similarly I'm generally sympathetic to the "just following orders" claim especially when you extend it to the "I'm just a member of society, not in the chain of command at all", and so would find it hard to support a post-Civil-War action of "throw every white Southerner in jail for the rest of their lives"... even though I also think the ultimate retreat of the US federal government in the face of ongoing southern insurgency caused a LOT of future evils.