Correction: An earlier version of this post misrepresented when violence can be used. This has now been corrected.
The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is often mentioned in Libertarian communities, but rarely defined in a way that makes sense to outsiders. Most of the important Libertarian websites, such as Mises Institutes, have no introductory articles with names like “What is NAP?” or “Introduction to NAP”. Instead, individual Libertarians either offer explanations that require a lot of previous knowledge, or recommend entire books*.
It’s a puzzling situation to have such a foundational topic so poorly covered when it’s such an essential part of the Libertarian ethical system — to the degree that rejecting it makes you no longer Libertarian.
For this reason, I decided to write this brief explanation, to the best of my current understanding.
What is NAP?
The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) states that you cannot initiate the use of violence against others in an attempt to control or damage their property.
What is Aggression?
In the name, it’s called the non-aggression principle, not the non-violence principle. So what did I define it as being unable to initiate the use violence against others in an attempt to control or damage their property?
That’s because in the libertarian context, aggression is the initiation of the use of violence to try to control or damage someone else’s property. Aggression has many different forms, some more obvious and direct than others.
A classic example of obvious and direct aggression would be if you walk down a street and a complete stranger threatens you with a knife in order to gain control of the money in your wallet (which is part of your property). However, since the stranger initiated the violence, you have the right to respond in kind to defend yourself.
An example of indirect, non-obvious force would be taxation. Taxation is when the government decides it would like some of your money (which is part of your property), and paying them is not optional. If you fail to give the amount they want whenever they ask for it, they can use physical force (police with guns) to harass, arrest, and imprison you.
NAP forbids all aggression: direct and indirect, obvious and non-obvious.
Does this mean Libertarians are pacifists?
Following and advocating for NAP doesn’t make a person a pacifist because NAP doesn’t forbid violence itself, only aggression — the initiation of violence used to control or damage someone else’s property. If someone else has initiated violence, you can always use violence to defend yourself and your property.
What is Property?
If you can’t initiate violence in an attempt to control other people’s property, then it’s essential to know what counts as property.
Property means total control. When you own property, any kind of property, you have complete control over how and when it is used. No one can tell you how or when to use it, except if that use is aggression.
We own our bodies. Our first and most important possession is our bodies. No matter our circumstances, we always retain final and total control over our own bodies.
When you mix labor with nature, it becomes your property. Suppose you go into nature, traveling on land owned by no one. You pick up some palm fronds and create a hat from them. That hat is now your property, and you have complete control over it.
When property exists, it can only be voluntarily transferred. After you have created your palm frond hat, the only way another person can own it is if you give it to them, or you participate in voluntary exchange.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) forbids aggression, which is the initiation of the use of violence to control or damage the property of another person. Your property includes your own body, things you create from nature with your own labor, or things which you purchase or are gifted. However, NAP doesn’t mean Libertarians are pacifists, since they can use violence to defend themselves and their property from acts of aggression.
Notes and Comments
It is a huge failing of the libertarian community that they are so quick to recommend entire books to beginners. It is a huge barrier to entry, especially since the books recommended are in a style unfamiliar to the majority of interested people.
This article initially omitted the concept of initiation of violence being forbidden, leading to a confusing discussion. The article has been updated to make things clearer.
For as long as man has existed, so too has crime: One of the first stories in the Bible is Cain slaying Abel. As all cultures have been forced to confront this issue, all have created systems to handle it, be they formal or informal.
And by crime, I mean true crimes, whose platonic ideal is well described by the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). These crimes, such as murder, theft, and assault have been an important part of legal codes since they began to be recorded.
I have identified roughly 3 prongs, or lenses, which can be used to address crime:
Personal Responsibility: Actions individuals can take independently.
Pursuit & Punishment: Actions taken by the criminal justice system.
Social Change: Actions taken by the community as a whole.
These prong are interdependent, building on and strengthening each other. Neglect one facet, and the entire structure crumbles with the mildest jolt from willful and unrepentant criminals.
There is not enough space to cover all the research and all of the arguments to be made, so this article will instead provide a general introduction to the series of essays which will follow, where individual points will be discussed in greater depth, including support with statistics and other useful sources.
1. Personal Responsibility
While we can influence others, ultimately all we can only control our own actions. Because our own actions are fully within our own control, this prong is the primary framework on which the other two hang.
Make a Conscious Decision to Avoid Crime
While this may seem juvenile or even naïve, ultimately, committing crime is always a personal choice,* and that people from every background can make this decision.
If people can consciously choose not to commit crimes, that means that engaging in crime is also a choice. Once we acknowledge and internalize this, it is clear that criminals can be held responsible for any crimes they commit. Knowing that criminals are morally responsible for all crimes they commit is the most important concept for the reduction of crime. Without this belief, nothing serious or long-lasting can be accomplished.
Reduce the Chances that You will be Victimized
You cannot prevent others committing crimes, but you can take steps to decrease your chances of being victimized. There are reasonable, common sense measures which you can take to help manage your risk, such as locking your doors at night.
In the end though, regardless of how much you decrease your changes of being targeted, they will never be completely eliminated. You can never act in some mythically “prefect” way that prevents you from being victimized, and to suggest so is blaming the victim for the choices of the criminal.
Crimes in Progress
Each crime is different, in unique circumstances, and the dangers involved are not always clear. Those involved in these situations should use their own best judgment, but there are some general principles to consider:
Interruption. An attempted crime is always preferable to an accomplished one.
De-escalation. “And first do no harm.” Avoid actions likely to make situations worse.
Aid and Report. If you cannot interrupt a crime, then you should seek help from authorities. This includes making police statements.
Use force, if needed. Though legality of force varies between jurisdictions, the concept of Estoppel allows us to understand that you are morally justified in using as much force as the criminal.
A decision not to engage in any of the above ways of managing crime, or the inability to do so, is never a fault or defect of the victim.
2. Pursue & Punish
While we have the ability to completely control our own actions, it is naïve to think that this will prevent all crime. For this reason, all societies need system of justice, formal or informal. Though in reality Justice Systems function in diverse ways, their goals should revolve around restoration of victims, managing offenders, and deterring crime.
Making Victims Whole
Victims of crimes can become traumatized, with long term emotional, physical, and financial issues as a result of the crime they suffered. Justice systems should take serious steps to see that these damages are addressed.
Stolen property should be recovered, costs passed on to the criminal, the victim should remain physically separated from the criminal, and minimum sentences should probably be about 18 months*.
Assessing Criminals
There is a small number of people, which we will call “disproportionate offenders” (sometimes called super-predators*), that make a career out of victimizing others. The percentage of crime that can be committed by only 2-3 people can be shocking.
The intention of “Three Strike Rules” was to identify disproportionate offenders in a systematic and impartial way. In these cases, the only way to defend the public from them is physical separation.
However, other criminals have committed heinous acts, but are unlikely to commit another, and sentences should reflect these facts.
Deterrence
Laws do not prevent crime, only the surety of punishment can do that. Most who claim that a “law” prevents them from doing something, are actually referring to the fact that fear of punishment for breaking the law is causing them to reconsider.
Law, without punishment, has never been able to prevent crime. The purpose of laws is to justify the use of punishment. Written law prevents people from claiming they “did not know” something was inappropriate, while simultaneously establishing a reasonable punishment.
Threats of draconian punishment are similarly ineffective if criminals feel they will never be punished. Additionally, overly harsh sentences or poor conditions can lead to juries finding criminals “not guilty” because they believe the punishment is too harsh.
It is essential that criminals are hunted with the full force of the law, to show that crime will not be tolerated.
3. Social Conditions
It would be wrong to say that social conditions do not encourage or discourage criminality. It is wrong to say to say these forces create crime– they just encourage others to refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.
Systemic Issues. There is no strong support for the idea that sexism, racism, or poverty create crime, when you control for other variables properly. Instead, we see things like childhood victimization, lack of access to entertainment, and frustration in the job market play a much larger role.
Legal Clarity & Appropriateness. Laws need to be clear, easy to understand, and limited in number. All laws which exist should be enforced consistently, or repealed, to avoid legal “broken windows“.
Public Trust. We trust those in positions of power to care for the most vulnerable among us. Because of their notoriety and influence, they should be held to the highest standards. When they seem “above the law”, they destroy public belief in justice, which emboldens criminals.
Glorification of Crime. While “heroic” tales of criminals have always existed, modern expressions generally lack the sense that the criminal is on borrowed time, on the run, and soon to be punished.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is no magic bullet to end crime, and many different factors intertwine with each other in significant ways. In future essays, I will explain give fuller explanations of different components, as well as actions that can reasonably be taken.
Notes and Comments
In no particular order.
My views on the purpose of law and prison are likely colored by my natural Conservatism. I welcome articles and papers from any political background, however.
For more information on the Non-Aggression Principle, my husband recommends Rothbard’s “Ethics of Liberty”, specifically the preface (pdf pages 43-45).
The figure that it take “18 months” for most people to recover from psychologically traumatic events is not something I could find support for in literature. It seems the figure may have originated from Jordan Peterson’s clinical experience.
A “super-predator” has been defined in many ways. Here I am referring to a small group of criminals who commit a disproportionate number of crimes. For example, 4 men were responsible for 90% of bike thefts in the City of London. Homicide suspects in DC had been arrested on average 11 times before committing homicide. I am interested in any related reports or articles, or alternative names for this fact.
I welcome any papers arguing for or against 3 strike rules, or studies of their effectiveness.
Child abuse, even spanking, can lead to lifelong increased aggression and criminality.
The “end of history” is the idea that humanity has finished developing, that society and morality cannot improve in any dramatic or meaningful way. This damnable lie stifles curiosity and innovation, hamstringing efforts to bring Western Civilization into a new era.
I view libertarianism as an essential step in moving beyond the current system, into something that is more compatible with the technologies we have today. For this reason, I often have discussions with my husband Stefano about what a libertarian future might look like, and how it might function.
Personally, I am conservative rather than a Libertarian, which means I find government extremely valuable. This drives me to hunt for governmental structures that might be compatible with libertarian ethics.
I have come to believe that the Mormon Church (hereafter “the Church”) is a valid model for a libertarian-compatible government organization. Stefano wasn’t convinced, because not only do they lack a monopoly on force, they lack force completely.
However, I counter that the Church is a voluntary structure with citizenship, bureaucracy, taxation, welfare, and a judicial system. In this article I will argue that the Mormon Church is sufficiently complex to warrant being called a government, and that the lack of monopoly is the very reason it can be considered voluntary.
Church Membership is Voluntary, Without Monopoly.
People choose freely if they will join the Church. There is not and never has been a government that has forced conversion to the Mormon Church. There is no infant baptism, and even children have a say in whether they become baptized or not.
The Church is competitive. The Church exists everywhere around the globe, and faces many competitors of all kinds: restorationists, protestants, Catholics, Muslims, and many other faiths both old and new. Additionally, it is also in competition with fraternal orders, unions, and similar organizations.
There is a formal process for leaving. Unlike many Churches, where you simply stop attending when you are no longer interested in membership, the Mormon Church has a well-defined process for ending your membership — severing both your obligations and benefits.
The Church has a Government
The Church has a defined head. The President of the Church acts as a head of state, meeting with representatives of various nations and religions. He is chosen by the unanimous vote of a council, somewhat analogous to the election of the Pope by the College of Cardinals.
The Church has a capitol. Since the early days of the Church, it has had a capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah. This seat of government houses most if not all major governmental apparatuses, as is common for capitol cities such as DC or Austin, Texas.
The Church has a well-developed federal system. Though the system could more accurately be described as a “devolutionary system”, in practice the Church has a federated government. Power flows down from the President of the Church into Areas, then Missions, then further smaller units as needed. Each of these levels has its own leadership which has real decision making power.
The Church creates laws. The Church has a series of laws which members are expected to follow, called by various names such as: commandments, doctrines, covenants, and official declarations. In addition, each level of government can issue its own binding declarations to those within its borders. These are announced and become binding during yearly conferences.
The Church has national service. All military aged men are expected to serve 2 years, and similarly aged women have the option to serve for 18 months. While they do not engage in physical warfare, they undergo basic training before being stationed in various locations worldwide, and make efforts to increase membership.
Membership is Analogous to Citizenship
Members have ID numbers. In order to identify them for the purposes of taxation, justice, and access to various services, citizens are issued identification numbers.
Membership confers benefits. When members are in good standing, having paid all of their taxes, participating in civic meetings, and without pending judicial proceedings, they have access to a large variety of services not available to non-members. This includes access to the welfare system, and the ability to participate in Church government.
Dual citizenship is forbidden. While the Mormon Church does have competition in the form of other religions, and members are free to leave, they only allow membership in one church at a time, and some other types of organizations are also forbidden. Gaining membership at another church is considered to be relinquishment your current membership.
Taxation is Voluntary.
The Church has a flat tax system. All members of the Church are expected to pay a flat tax of 10% per year, which is called a tithe. Like all taxes, these fund the programs of the Church.
The Church tax system is voluntary. There are no auditors which check to determine if you have paid your full tax (at least for rank-and-file membership), and no use of force if you have not. Instead, you give a statement at the end of the year stating if you paid in full or not, based on the honor system.
The Church Has a Bureaucracy
The Church is split into various departments. These departments, such as licensure, taxation, welfare, and so on, operate on a federated system as well, each level with its own leadership.
The Church has a system of vital records. The Church maintains voluntary records of membership, birth, marriage, and death, among many other things.
Social Security Number. All members of the Church are given an identification number used when registering your address, recording a marriage, or accessing Church welfare.
Identification Cards. Members in good standing with the Church are issued identification cards called “temple recommends” which allow their bearers access to the full range of government services and nearly all government buildings.
Licenses. The Church issues various licenses and qualifications to members, based on a number of factors. These can include the ability to perform marriages, care for the sick, or participate in national service.
The Church performs marriages. The Church provides licenses to marry either in a private religious ceremony at a temple, or a public ceremony. These marriages are binding, and polygamy is forbidden. The Church also provides annulments and divorces.
The Church Creates Infrastructure
The Church builds general infrastructure. Using money from taxes, the Church builds various buildings and roads for the use of their citizens.
The Church has communication infrastructure. Until quite recently, the Church had a well developed internal postal system which reached all of its territories. It has also created a satellite system that extends into much of the world to broadcast news.
The Church creates and distributes news. The Church sponsors the creation of various talks, broadcasts, magazines and so on. These publications inform members of the latest updates on members worldwide as well as legal and governmental changes.
The Church provides free, public education. The Church operates degree granting institutions that operate at the secondary and post-secondary level worldwide. These qualifications are recognized internationally and suitable for getting certain types of work visas (missionary visas). Additionally, it provides continuing education for adults at each of its civic centers.
The Church has a Welfare System
The Church has a needs-based welfare system. Members in good standing can receive temporary needs-based assistance paid for by the voluntary taxation system.
The Church provides job training. As part of the welfare system, the Church provides job training to help members stay off of welfare, and if they find themselves on it, to get off as quickly as possible without damaging their quality of life.
The Church provides humanitarian relief. The Church has a long history of disaster preparedness. It used its stockpiles to provide humanitarian relief during the Great Depression and the Second World War. It continues to provide aid to areas effected by flooding, storms, and famine.
The Church has a Limited Judicial System
The Church has a system of courts. Within the church, there is a mechanism for creating a binding court, which adjudicates matters related to Church licensure and citizenship.
Church courts use a panel of judges. Within the Church, there are no jury trials. Instead, a panel of judges is selected, and their decisions are considered binding, though there is a court of appeals.
The Church Lacks Some Typical Services
The Church lacks the production of security. The Church does not have the ability to use force to enforce its decisions. As such, the most serious penalty it can pass is revocation of citizenship.
The Church does not have a health care system. Unlike many modern governments, the Church does not have a universal healthcare system. It does not, to my knowledge, fully run any hospitals or any total coverage healthcare insurance, free-at-use.
The Church lacks a pension system. To my knowledge, there are no retirement funds or pension systems for general membership of the Church.
The Church lacks a unified currency or banking system. Unlike most countries, the Church lacks any form of banking, including a central bank, and does not issue or universally accept any currency.
The Church is not democratic. The interior structure of the Church is hierarchical, without any “true” democratic systems. Members do not vote for new leaders, but instead give a vote of confidence every year for their current leaders. Votes of no confidence are rare and require validation, but taken very seriously.
In Conclusion
While the Mormon Church lacks some typical features of modern governments, it has a system of integrated systems typically associated with government. Its lack of monopoly is one of the largest differences from modern governments, but this lack of monopoly is the exact feature required to make it a truly voluntary government.
As a conservative, one of its most important features is that it currently exists, and has existed for well over 100 years and still functions well. This kind of concrete example is essential for showing that it is a plausible system of government.
The ability to show functioning systems that replace a great portion of the functions of a government, while remaining compatible with libertarian ethics is essential. It allows average citizens to take the movement more seriously, and is a foundation for building a larger understanding that there is no “end to history”, stagnation is not inevitable, and that Western Civilization can still improve with effort and experimentation.
I welcome any critiques or extensions of this concept.
I recently read an article which showed that LLMs prefer their own output above that of humans, which immediately struck me as an expression of ingroup preference.
If you’re not familiar with the idea, ingroup preference is when you favor individuals from your own group. For example, being kinder, more likely to share resources, and less likely to judge them harshly.
If you’re more willing to hire your friend, marry someone from your own church, or more willing to forgive your own sister, that means you have ingroup preference. If instead you’re more willing to hire a stranger, more willing to marry a foreigner, and more willing to forgive people of another religion, you have outgroup preference.
Some people have argued that ingroup preference is a “social pathology”, though research indicates that has an important biological basis, and is required for healthy people and social systems. This recent research of LLMs also lends support to the idea that it is an emergent feature of culture: anything that has ideals, symbols, or archetypes will develop ingroup preference.
Ingroup Preference is Biologically Adaptive
Hamilton’s Rule
Cooperation and self-sacrifice among animals has been observed for centuries, and often perplexed observers. A narrow understanding of natural selection would say that animals should only sacrifice their lives in protection of their own children — but that’s not the only case we see it in.
We sometimes see cases where individual animals who have no offspring will sacrifice themselves so that other members of their families will be able to survive. This mechanism is called “kin selection”, and is the biological foundation of what we would label as ingroup preference and altruism.
Mammals Require a Lot of Care
Different animals have different reproductive strategies. Some release sperm and eggs into the water, never to be seen again. Some lay eggs but abandon hatchlings, and others feed their young for a few weeks. But among large, complex mammals such as whales, elephant, great apes, and humans it is very different.
Pregnancy among large mammals is very “expensive” in evolutionary terms. Pregnancies are many months long, even over a year in some cases. Children are juveniles for many years and require close supervision.
Human Children are Especially Costly
Compared to other animals, pregnant women are more incapacitated by their pregnancy. Human brains are so large that they cannot reach full development in the womb — their heads would be too large to fit through the birth canal! When we compare the abilities of a newborn human to, for example, a giraffe, we can quickly see that compared to other animals, humans are born “premature” and require about 2 years of intense attention before they reach the level other animals have when they are born or within the first 6-8 weeks of life: speaking, running, and eating normal food.
This huge amount of investment of time, energy, and resources calls for especially strong bonding between mother and child. Certain adaptations, such as initially favoring the father’s facial features, keep paternal investment high until the child is at least 5 years old. Children raised together form bonds through shared experience. Kinship links are pressed (siblings, parents, parent’s siblings, cousins) to care for offspring, which creates a large kinship network.
Ingroup Preference Is Automatic and Healthy
This kinship preference is so strong that when people seek friends and spouses outside of their kinship group, they still unknowingly choose people who are as closely related as 4th or 5th cousins.
Since ingroup preference is natural and adaptive, we would expect to see those who lack it to be suffering in some way. And that’s exactly what the data shows: those with low or non-existent ingroup preference are less satisfied with their lives and more likely to suffer from mental illness.
7 Pillars of Friendship
The 7 Pillars Are Proxies
Robin Dunbar (of Dunbar’s Number) has continued his research into how humans create their social groups. His research has shown that, as we would expect from Hamilton’s Rule, that family connections are privileged. Further, he has uncovered dimensions that control how deeply we are likely to connect with other people. He calls these the 7 Pillars of Friendship.
One of the interesting observations you can make about these pillars, is that historically they would have been good proxies for determining if you were related to someone. I’ve written a short piece exploring this before. However, due to the advent of travel and information technology, these pillars have become disconnected from genetic relatedness and now function as measures of cultural relatedness.
The Pillars Help Us Identify Ingroups
The more pillars you share with others, the more likely you are to form deep, fulfilling friendships and speak to each other on a very regular basis. You are more likely to rate them as having good traits, even if you don’t know them. To put it another way, the more pillars you share with someone, the more you consider them part of your ingroup.
When you struggle to find other people that you share pillars with, you become unable to fill in your social circles. This leads to isolation, feelings of loneliness and abandonment, and even depression.
Ideals, Norms, and Archetypes
Now we reach the point of the entire article, what made me feel compelled to write it in the first place: Weights in LLMs function like Platonic Ideals.
For example, each culture has various virtues, norms of behavior, and story archetypes. These shape how people within a culture act and how they expect others to act. Not every member of the group has to agree with these virtues, norms, or archetypes — but those that don’t should reasonably be able to predict that most members do.
For example, within a culture, there is some shared understanding of what a “hero” is: how he looks, how he speaks, why he acts, what he does, what he doesn’t do, and how his story ends. Someone from within that culture is most likely to create a story of a hero that checks all of these boxes.
These little boxes are directly analogous to the weights that LLMs use both to create and to judge. If an LLM has within it’s weights some platonic ideal of an essay, it will attempt to create that perfect essay. When it reads essays that it has produced, it is more likely to consider those essays as approaching the platonic ideal.
Interestingly though, the more sure an LLM is that it created something, the more likely it is to rate it favorably. The same can be seen in human works as well. For example, the LDS church did extremely well in the United States because it had a uniquely American origin story. People could clearly see the Church as a part of their own cultural story.
This isn’t some offhanded observation either. Preference for things produced by your own group in an important part of social cooperation. It helps to keep money and effort within a local community, leading to increased wealth and prosperity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s clear that ingroup preference is needed for healthy people and societies. It’s not just biological, but an emergent property for any system, human or mechanical, that uses symbols and ideals.
Due to the negative feelings many have around ingroup preferences, this realization seems huge in relation to the research for my book. A strong defense of ingroup preference is essential to explaining the continuity and importance of Western Civilization.
Notes and Comments
This article has been somewhat rushed, in an attempt to publish content more frequently. Consider it a rough draft rather than a final product.
The article on LLMs is difficult and somewhat confusing: Panickssery, Arjun. “LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generations”, 2024.
For more information on the 7 Pillars of Friendship, Dunbar recently published a book geared towards a general audience explaining his research: Dunbar, Robin. “Friends”, 2021.
When I refer to Platonic Ideals, I am not using it in the sense of a physical object which resides on another plane, but instead a shared archetype within a cultural setting.
A Last Call to Arms 