> For example, Michael Jackson hired a Witch Doctor to cast a spell that > would harm an enemy. > It turned out that Witch Doctors cannot actually cast spells that harm > people, but Jackson was > too stupid to know that; he definitely INTENDED to do what he could to > harm his enemy by > Force. He committed, morally, the exact same attempted harm committed by > Squeaky Fromm > and the guy who wanted a hit man; yet he was never punished at all. >
Unless you count that he continued to be Michael Jackson as punishment. This is one area where the Libertopian, Free Market Anarchism deal falls down - punishment. The Libertopian system doesn't punish bad people worth a damn. However, if you wiegh the lack of punishment versus the lack of oppression... I find I am mostly okay with that. Curt pointed out and I have to agree - that we have to go by objective action and objective results. If we look at the Intent of the NY times Bomber, we have to get into everyone's intent. And then we wind up proactively arresting people when their actions show bad intent and we're back into the modern nation state, justifying tyrrany by saying it prevents unknown annd unseen bad people from doing hypothetical bad things. -*- Ward said Libertopians don't use bombs. I think this is too broad a statemment. Explosives are still useful for mining and remving tree stumps. Stupid people will still think it is a barrel of laughs to blow up things other thann stumps and hillsides. I think it's a mistake to assume that everyone in libertopia will have calm, rational, adult judgement. But I do think there's a lower floor of supid past which you're going to talk libertopians into killing you. But I think people of that calm, rational Adult judgement will ration out their force commesurate with the situation. At least I imagine that this is so - I have no direct experience of having calm, rational, adult judgement..... Jay ~Meow!~
