If socialism is considered moral and capitalism immoral, then coercion becomes a virtue — and violence against the peaceful becomes justified.
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Discussion
Literally what our #electedfelon is doing now.
Who do you mean "our"? If you vote for the socialism, it's a bit of a moral trough to preach from.
Also, nobody is discussing intermediaries like wellfare capitalism. I don't think you'll find the answer in extremes. It's a balance thing.
You want to balance violence, saying a little bit is good? That’s not a spectrum for me; to me, freedom is the absence of violence and coercion. I am extreme on non active violence…
Okay, so how about a basic necessity. How will human rights be preserved?
Who defines basic necessity? Which human rights?
But short: By yourself or voluntary help
That doesn't seem even remotely maintainable. I see the point you're illustrating, but I don't see how this works in practice unless you don't care about outcomes in any extreme.
I understand your feelings. But the only alternative then is, to force somebody else to provide you with what you want, through violence.
If you can’t take care of yourself, that is not maintainable, as you need others. Free trade and cooperation is a win-win, even for “inferior” people. (Max talked about that in one podcast). Do you want to make it moral and rightful, to get what you want/need by force? This seems not maintainable to me
Doesn't this excuse the whole of the former Nazi empire and their atrocities? I would be curious how you can manage to defend your position and not have justified extreme cases to allow for extreme atrocities en masse.
Precisely because I reject the use of violence against peaceful individuals, I also reject and condemn regimes like the Nazis in the strongest terms.
It wasn’t the absence of coercion that led to those crimes, but the total loss of individual rights under an all-powerful state. That’s exactly what I oppose.
Oh, maybe, my statement needs more clarification. I am in no way challenging *your* intentions. I don't know you. I'm simply saying that I cannot figure out how this ideology, which otherwise seems ideal, can (simply put) protect the people who are civilized from the people who aren't.
And, under the assumption that everyone would stand up and do the right thing, you'd have an overwhelming majority to defend civility and reasonable treatment, but we cannot rely on that due to all kinds of choices like "not my problem", "not the opposing type", misguided ideas or religions, personal bias, etc.
That’s a fair concern — and I appreciate the clarification.
The question is valid: how do we protect peaceful people from those who are not?
But here’s the key difference: the presence of a coercive authority doesn’t eliminate the danger — it centralizes and legitimizes it. History shows us that the greatest threats to civilization have come through the mechanisms of state power, not in its absence.
Voluntary cooperation, community defense, and decentralized accountability are not perfect — but coercive systems aren’t either. In fact, they often make things far worse.
Relying on violence to prevent violence only entrenches the cycle. I believe the solution lies in responsibility, not force.
Also I think, you can only start by yourself. So i try to live accordingly, and clearly state my position to maybe inspire others.
I don’t claim to know exactly how it would work in practice. But I believe it’s true — because the conclusion follows logically from a single moral premise: that all forms of initiated violence are wrong.
Okay, you got my point, but I want to narrow it down and reduce it by a lot. Forget all the concerns related to states, authoritarianism, politics, etc.
IIRC, your statement was: "you should not solve anything with violence, or essentially pose any restrictions." So, I was curious about human rights. Because no restrictions means also no protections. Which you essentially don't believe in. So now I am curious: how then do you satisfy any reasonably (humane) expectations for humans?
I don’t reject protection — I reject imposed protection through coercion.
Rights don’t require force to exist. They require that others don’t initiate force. That’s the essence of negative rights: leave others in peace.
Humane expectations can only be fulfilled through voluntary action. As soon as you force someone to fulfill them, they stop being humane — and become control.
But those negative rights can and must be defended, in worst case through defense violence.
Short: the only restriction you need, is against violence
Although I understand what ypu mean to say, there are a lot of ways in which you can make someone's life miserable without resorting to violence.
I think the universal declaration of human rights gracefully captures the key points. Leaving aside what the proper way is to protect those rights, I do think those rights should be protected.
Can you be more precise and give an example? But I guess we will turn circles.
Please clarify which part(s) are unclear to you, to prevent circles or endless walls of text. If you want, you could response in several small messages, then we split it up into threads.
“there are a lot of ways in which you can make someone's life miserable without resorting to violence.”
- can you give one/two example(s)?
“I do think those rights should be protected.”
- I agree with all the negative rights. Do you have examples, which specific right comes to your mind, which you think is not protected in my viewpoint?
Examples to make someone's life miserable in other ways:
- stalking
- persistently sending messages
- registering all kinds of services using their personal information
- spreading lies
Etc.
Honestly, i don’t have a clear opinion on that yet. You raise good points — not all harm is physical. Things like stalking or identity fraud clearly violate negative rights.
Other cases, like lies or persistent annoyance, are more ambiguous.
In such cases, I think neutral judgment is needed to decide if someone’s rights were actually violated.
But overall, I believe restrictions should only apply when there’s clear force or fraud — that’s what best protects both freedom and fairness.
Yeah, so that's why I'm struggling with the idea.
If one chooses to deliberately violate the law, they already ignore the rules. Like I said before, I think your idea originates from the right thought process, just that I don't see how it can work in all cases.
I just remembered, there's also the slight problematic distinction:
one individual's rights should not be dependant on the willingness of the majority to defend it. Otherwise it would become a gift, rather than a prerogative.
If one cannot disconnect the one from the other, it is not a "guaranteed" right.
Okay, I think I’d like to wrap up our discussion, but I really enjoyed it!
To answer your point:
I believe the principle I’m advocating (which is just classic libertarian thought) still stands and remains correct: Don’t initiate violence. Even though there may be some cases where the answer isn’t immediately clear, the issue lies in our lack of understanding or consideration, not in the principle itself. I’m confident that more experienced and thoughtful people have already addressed these complexities.
This contains a hidden assumption, namely that for whatever reason the use of violence is worse than any other possible (human rights) violations.
Without any form of retaliation, how can stop violators, i.e. how can you stop people who already decided that they don't have to respect (human) rights?
I don't expect you to answer, just that I think throwing around words like libertarian without having proper context might not be that meaningful/illustrative.
There is no hidden assumption. Any use of violence (except in defense against an aggressor) is a violation of human rights.
When confronted with aggressors, it is necessary to defend yourself. This can be done by defending yourself directly or voluntarily agreeing to a defensive service.
I believe you misunderstood my position, as I’m not claiming that violence is “worse” than any other human rights violation. Rather, the key point is that violence is always a violation of negative rights, which makes it inherently illegitimate, except in self-defense. This is where I see the contradiction in your stance: if you use violence to achieve another human right, you are violating another person’s right in the process. This creates an inherent contradiction in the approach.
Lastly, I want to clarify that I am not casually throwing around terms like ‘libertarian.’ I have carefully defended my position and believe I understand the underlying principles. I’m not attempting to impose my views on you, just sharing what I believe is a sound moral stance.
"If you use violence to achieve another human right." Sure, but against the violator who already decided to violate your rights first.
You claim the only legitimate use is in self-defense. If you are defending yourself against a violator of your rights, it is self-defense. If you claim you're only allowed to fight back in kind, sure, maybe that is a valid argument. I am not sure whether that is defensible for all rights. In some cases, your attacker might be at an inherent advantage. That would be a good reason to fight back in whichever way is to your benefit.
You’re absolutely right that in some cases the aggressor has the advantage and may successfully violate someone’s rights. But that’s also exactly what happens now—in our current system, or even under the welfare capitalism you originally brought up.
In a libertarian framework, a person could voluntarily contract with a defense or insurance service, which would then act on their behalf. The burden would be on that service to prove in front of a neutral arbitrator that a rights violation occurred and to hold the aggressor accountable.
Functionally, this is not so different from how justice works today—but the key difference is: in this system, there’s no central institution (like the state) that continuously and systematically violates negative rights. That’s the fundamental point: both systems deal with violations, but only one claims the right to violate by default.
I hadn't quite thought as far ahead as contracted external parties, but sure, that makes sense.
To clarify, someone with bad intentions may, for example, spend a decade or more gathering information, spreading lies and what more, in preparation. If you would then be obliged to respond strictly in kind, you have a 10+ year disadvantage.
If you choose to proactively defend your rights and use force, you must be extremely careful. Because by doing so, you’re almost always risking becoming the aggressor yourself—violating someone else’s negative rights.
So you’d have to be absolutely certain that you can later prove, beyond doubt, that it was a legitimate act of self-defense. And that’s objectively very hard to do.
If you can’t prove it, then you’re not the victim—you are the aggressor, and you’d be fully responsible for the harm caused.
But I guess this is no difference to today. Except for the government for example, who is allowed and breaks negative rights daily
Your statement is fair in that, if unjustified, you're no longer defending. I was not speaking of pro-active defense. I assume you know and wanted to make a separate point?
No I’m not. But if you are interested in those kind auf thoughts, look at Mises.org and people like Rothbard and Hoppe
Okay, but where did you read/interpret the 'pro-active' conponent from?
“If you claim you're only allowed to fight back in kind, sure, maybe that is a valid argument. I am not sure whether that is defensible for all rights. In some cases, your attacker might be at an inherent advantage. That would be a good reason to fight back in whichever way is to your benefit.”
Maybe I did misinterpret, but it sounded to me, that only self defense ist not sufficient for you.
Let's take the right to privacy: if you take measures to protect yourself, and subsequently are attacked for it. You must be able to trust that you are working from a rightful position, even if half the country wouldn't (unrightfully) want you taking measures to protect your privacy.
Not sure if I get you right but:
the right to privacy is a negative right, and you have the freedom to protect it without needing to justify yourself. If you don’t want to share something or keep it private, that’s your right, and nobody should force you to reveal it. If someone tries to force you to give up your privacy, they’re the aggressor and are committing an act of coercion or violence. The principle is simple: ‘Leave me alone.’ Governments often violate this right, but if your privacy is attacked, you’re the one in the right, and the aggressor is the one at fault.
Socialism vs capitalism is a divide and conquer psyop.
All the socialist are high class elite Brahmins here
Money is dumb so capitalism is dumb
Socialism is just capitalism with more taxes and stuff which can't get around the fact that money is dumb
The ideal human race would probably be some kind of communists
I disagree.
But as long as you don’t force communism on people who don’t want it, and accept that others want live under capitalism, everybody is happy!
Actually, I'm pretty sure if we don't force communism on people who don't want it, then everybody dies and people like me aren't happy because we would rather survive and protect our loved ones while the people trying to kill us die failures.