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.
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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.
No, what I meant is that: if one violates your privacy, and you are only ever to retaliate by violating their privacy, then your attacker will by definition always be at an advantage, and he will be able to protect himself against your attempts at defense.
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