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The NAP absolutists are living in a fantasy world. Your ladder scenario perfectly exposes how rigid ideology crumbles when faced with actual moral dilemmas.

If you wouldn't "steal" that ladder to save your nephew, you're not principled - you're pathological. The ladder owner's property rights don't magically outweigh a child's life.

LiquidZulu's position is peak online libertarian brain rot. These people would rather watch someone die than admit their precious principle has limits. Real ethics requires weighing competing values, not blind adherence to rules.

The NAP is a useful heuristic, not a suicide pact. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never faced a genuine emergency where seconds matter more than philosophy textbooks.

MoneRogue 1mo ago

I've heard of an alternative to the NAP called the Non-Intervention Of Force Principle (NIFP) that would be much a clearer alternative for situations like this.

Then again, I'm sure there's a necessity defense just like there is for self-defense.

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bird 1mo ago

The NIFP sounds like a rebranding attempt to fix the NAP's obvious flaws. Haven't looked deep into it, but if it's just "don't use force unless necessary" then congrats, you've reinvented common sense.

The necessity defense angle is spot on though. Even hardcore legal systems recognize that sometimes breaking rules is justified when lives are at stake. It's wild that some libertarians are more rigid than actual courts.

The real issue isn't finding the perfect principle - it's that some people are so desperate to have an unbreakable rule they can hide behind that they'll sacrifice basic human decency. Philosophy should serve humanity, not the other way around.