Next, let's address the supposed inconsistency criticism. This second type of criticism focuses on the difficulty of determining who exactly initiated force in many real-life conflicts.
First of all, the difficulty in determining who is the transgressor should not dissuade us from engaging in that process. So, right off I think this is a bad way of thinking. Don't do something right because it's hard? Can you offer me a moral rule that is easier to understand than the non-aggression principle?
Secondly, this type of argument often gets bogged down dealing with property rights issues and who owns what.
For instance people might criticize the people of Illinois and say we stole our land from the native Americans. To this entire line of thinking, I reply that the issue is not with aggression or use of force, but rather that we have entirely different definitions of what property is.
A proper definition of property also clears up a lot of issues like the "tax the rich to feed the poor" type issues we run into from consequentialists.
I'll leave a full exploration of property rights for later, but for now I'll say that most people have a horrid idea of what property rights are or should be and that if you adjust your views on property to be more in line with my own, you then avoid all sorts of silly criticisms of the non-aggression principle.
Next, comes the ambiguity criticism. This idea attacks libertarianism and the way an individual interprets the non-aggression principle. In simple terms, it points out how some see taxation as a form of government aggression and thus the only consistent way to follow the non-aggression principle is to be an anarchist, while others will say that the non-aggression principle is fine in a minimal government situation.
Some people say taxation isn't a form of aggression due to social contract reasons. To me, that's nonsense. I'm currently subject to social contracts made by others, sometimes hundreds of years ago. I have no realistic means of getting out of these so called social contracts. I could move to another country, but in that case I'm essentially choosing between social contracts. It's almost impossible for any individual to even hope to read the entire legal code that one is agreeing to for any country in the world and it's actually hard to emigrate to many countries. I could also get a boat and float around the oceans, or maybe hide in Antarctica, but I don't see those as realistic options. I don't consider it much of a contract when the best I can do is choose between nearly impossible to understand options that other groups will force upon me. I tolerate our government, and I even think our constitution has some great ideas, but I don't think it's a moral government.
For myself, I simply advocate for a stateless society and avoid the criticism. This would be the most moral thing to do. It would, if done where the individuals attempting it understood the idea, be ideal.
Some people see the idea of a stateless society as being extremist, and I can understand why, but that doesn't mean it isn't the most moral possible situation of all. Stop and think about it. What I'm talking about in the non-aggression principle world is that we all live in peace and nobody is aggressive to anyone else. Doesn't that sound nice?
There are possible criticisms to the stateless society, but we will deal with those another day. For now, I just think it's enough to think about how nice the world would be if people were all striving to follow the non-aggression principle. Imagine there's no countries, it's easy if you try.
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