Reposted from here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/23ot6g/the_nap_is_a_silly_needless_distraction_i_dont/
The NAP is a silly, needless distraction. I don’t care about it and neither should you.
There are too many Ancaps who think they need to reconcile every single issue with the NAP. They think we need the NAP to base an ancap legal system on. They run through all the possible problems they can think of, and come up with ‘solutions’ based on the NAP. “Abortion? Well… it’s trespass, therefore violates the NAP, so you can kick the baby out.” etc
But whats the point? There is no need to think about every issue and it’s “solution”. The market will do that on its own. To me, the NAP is just the seed of the state. It’s just a remnant of the ancient hierarchical wetware that humans seem to be born with. A weird need for some measure of top-down central planning, even in a society based on bottom-up market solutions. In a true ancap society, there will be no single overriding rule that’s imposed on everyone. There would be, instead, a polycentric legal system like the one described in David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html).
Stop looking for easy, black and white answers… we just need to find a way to get around or remove the monopoly on violence, let people start choosing their legal system based on market mechanisms instead of “democratic” voting, and everything else will fall into place.
More: –http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html
–http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/six-reasons-libertarians-should-reject-non-aggression-principle
EDIT: Here is my point, in a more direct way. Talking about the NAP is about as useful as talking about a “Best Price Principle”. Lets say there is a principle that says “in a free market, people selling goods should offer them at a price mutually agreeable to both the buyer and seller”. You don’t need a principle for that… it just happens with competition. What I’m getting at is… there is no need for the NAP. There is no culture in the world where people think murder and theft are good things. So when you put human beings together in groups without any monopoly on violence, and the checks and balances of the free market operate without any influence of a monopoly on law or violence… then the will of the people, ie being generally nice to people and not murdering or stealing, will prevail. There is no need for it to be “a thing”. You don’t have to set up rules or principles. Human interaction is a complex adaptive system, it works from the bottom-up. Prices are set, bad behavior is punished. It just happens. This is why the NAP is useless. It’s like saying “for optimal health, human beings should have a beating heart.”
EDIT PART 2: so what I’m hearing from NAP advocates is that its not something that would be forced on anyone… it’s not a law… it’s just a ‘principle’ describing how one SHOULD live. Thought experiment. Imagine 2 ancap societies… one without any mention of anything called the NAP, one where the NAP is a widespread ‘principle’. Do you honestly think the non-NAP society would be rife with murders and theft simply because the people there didn’t know they shouldn’t do that?