Dad’s Nuke

Neither. I just enjoy the early-cyberpunk, Marc Laidlaw reference. Burnt chrome, anyone?

I’m an anarcho-cap, and my answer is: maybe. Vinge’s argument is a pretty good one. There is, however, a case to be made against private ownership of nukes and other area weapons on the grounds that they are inherently non-targetable and so their mere possession represents a threat of force against the innocent bystanders whom you will inevitably kill if you set off your nuke. This reasoning does not apply to, say, shoulder-fired antitank missiles, since it is entirely possible to use those in a way that does not kill innocent bystanders.

You might put this argument as follows: any an-cap recognizes a right of private citizens to own ordinary firearms, but most an-caps nevertheless would say that people do not have the right to brandish such weapons at random unoffending strangers. The nature of nuclear weapons is (so the argument goes) such that mere possession of one is really equivalent to brandishing it at all the strangers in the blast radius.

Note that this argument applies only to ownership on the surface of the Earth. I think most an-caps would agree that, if you have your own asteroid, you should be perfectly free to have nukes on it.

Note also that I’m really not sure whether I buy this argument or not, and I don’t think it’s worth spending a whole lot of time figuring it out since there are roughly 5,896,334,253 more important questions regarding the rights of individuals.

The logical intent of the 2nd amendment meant that individuals could and should own nuclear weapons. The founders understood if you worried about your citizens’ more than foreign powers, you might have a country and a world that would not have to worry about liberty.

This idea was lost, when Americans initiated the nanny state in the early1900’s. Until this time, a group of locals could be as well armed as the feds. Then we decided that we could not have any one drinking and then came prohibition. Prohibition brought out criminals and they increased the firepower. That’s when America decided to ruin the 2nd amendment by making laws to limit its effectiveness as a federal deterrent. In essence the 2nd amendment died along time ago, we are just arguing how to bury it.

Nicholas – I don’t think your distinction works here. Some categories of nukes are quite targetable – tactical weapons for one. And your argument against ‘brandishing’ could certainly be applied to anti-tank missiles or even pistols and BB-guns, unless you state a hard criterion to distinguish between them (they all have offensive as well as defensive uses).

Maybe it might be helpful to spell out Vinge’s argument in the short story at greater length (feel free to dispute my interpretation if you’ve read the piece). Vinge sees a problem for anarcho-libertarians in a world where the libertarian utopia co-exists with traditional states that potentially might invade and re-establish tyranny. In this situation (or even, one presumes in a situation where such states _might_ come into being), a necessary condition of liberty is that individuals be able to deter, and if necessary repel hostile states through the kinds of advanced weaponry that can counter the sorts of massive force that states can muster. In other words,if you’re an anarcho-libertarian, individually owned nukes are not only permissible, but may be a necessary defence against tyranny. Not an irrelevant argument at all …

Ding ding ding! Iron Lungfush wins the prize for stating the obvious. Of course, the purpose of Henry’s question wasn’t to get a serious answer, as Nicholas tried to give, but to provide an opportunity for a subsequent commenter (Kieran or D^2, if no other commenters fulfilled their duties) to ridicule libertarians for taking such questions seriously enough to answer them. Thanks for contributing, Iron Lungfish. You’ve done your job well.

Ok … one more time …

…and even more off-topic: why doesn’t “original intent” interpretation of the second amendment restrict limits only for eighteenth century armament? Our Founding Fathers only had flintlocks, and not nukes, in mind, after all.

The founders anticipated “letters of marque and reprisal” — that is, weapons of mass destruction (ships of the line and privateers) in private hands. Sir Francis Drake comes to mind as an example of how dangerous city busting ships were (he and the later period Brits actually took cities to the ground with what were essentially privateer sorties).

Now, am I all in favor of nerve gas in every attic and a nuke in every garage? I hope not (I haven’t lost my senses and believe in informal amendment as a process that keeps the constitution alive).

But while the NRA backs off from the essential core of the second amendment, the thing was promulgated by people who felt that the populace needed to be able to engage in violent revolution with full military force (and all the weaponry that implies).

On the other hand, there are certain elements to an educated and armed populace (the same people who felt arms were proper also felt it was ok to limit the vote to people who were educated and owned land) … certain elements that make sense.

Anyway, it is a much broader topic than this one and takes a lot more space than a blog allows, but the answer is:

(a) the NRA backs off of the intent of the second amendment.
(b) the second amendment anticipated species of WMDs in private hands — ones capable and used to destroy cities.
(c) I believe in limits to arms and that we need to work out a reconceptualization of the entire area of discourse and arms.

Anyway, my two bits …

I think that in an anarcho-libertarian society, I’d probably shell out a few quid a year to someone like Tony Blair for providing the service of randomly bombing the living crap out of people on the flimsiest suspicion of their having nukes!

Nope Micha, wrong – it’s a real question. You’ll notice that I treated Nicholas’ response seriously, even if I disagreed with it. I’m saying that anarcho-libertarians either have to recognize some limits on personal freedoms and the right to bear arms (and if so, to construct some reasonable sounding criteria for defining those limits), or else to embrace a position that is hard (though perhaps not impossible) to defend. If you think that this is a false dichotomy, or a bogus question, fair enough. But at least tell us why it’s a false dichotomy or bogus question, and we can argue over that. If it’s not a bogus question – but you think that the libertarian position on it is embarrassing or likely to be unpopular – well then tell readers like iron lungfish why there’s a serious, considered libertarian response, and they’re wrong to laugh at you. This is the first time I’ve seen you reluctant to articulate the libertarian position on something relevant … I’d half-expected you to be the first commenter telling me why I was wrong.

Micha, in the past I’ve caught Friedman fils making up stuff about medieval Iceland, so that reference immediately enters the circular file. And I’m sure those fellows from Hanover named George would be deeply surprised that the nation they ruled was a) anarchical and b) capitalistic. Britain was perhaps the most efficient state power of that era (see Brewer, _The Sinews of Power_, for instance). And the Anderon & Hill paper seems to be arguing against a strawman, or perhaps a Sam Peckinpah movie. Do they even know what the Vigilance Committee was used for in San Francisco? Lynching.

Anyway. Looks like you got “True Believer” stamped on your forehead, so I’ll let you get back to your echo chamber. HAND.

C.

I wonder exactly what practical effect a law banning private ownership of nuclear weapons achieves. Are people who would like to own nuclear weapons deterred by such laws? “Curses! Our plan to end America’s imperialist tyranny has failed – they’ve illegalized our bomb!”

I suppose in this case, the law serves less to prevent nuclear events than to enshrine in law society’s disapproval of the weapons.

I’ve read a lot of Friedman’s writing, as well as his exchanges with people who disagree with him. Friedman is a rare breed, an honest radical, and his even-temperedness and willingness to deal with irritating and stupid people with equanimity is frankly amazing.

So, FYI, carlos claiming that he has “caught” Friedman making stuff up about medieval Iceland inclines me to doubt carlos’ honesty rather than Friedman’s. I suppose that makes me a “true believer” too. It is kind of funny to see someone talking about “that reference going straight into the circular file” passing snide judgment on someone else being in an “echo chamber”, though. Good thing Carlos’ own echo chamber has no mirrors.

Well, I’ve caught him deliberately misrepresenting Jesse Byock on his population figures for Iceland, as well as Byock’s description of the Gragas law code. This is a pretty sleazy thing to do, and certainly fits under most definitions of ‘intellectually dishonest’.

So I wouldn’t take his word on anything Iceland-related that is a product of his interpretation.

Which is most of his case for historic anarcho-capitalism; but hey, if he was *serious* about it, he should be more rigorous about the facts, wouldn’t you agree?

Btw, this is my own judgement, and not an echo of someone else’s. So your attempted rhetorical jiu-jitsu doesn’t wash. Typical, though.

C.

I too would like to see a link to the Google usenet archive. If it’s legit then I’ll be very disappointed in Friedman.

Drat, the IDs didn’t come through. Let’s try this:

[20020712152258.01872.00000043@mb-mo.aol.com]

[20020712233214.08238.00000242@mb-fl.aol.com]

[20020712121605.01872.00000016@mb-mo.aol.com]

[20020705132043.01486.00001824@mb-fa.aol.com]

[20020708053653.16753.00003742@mb-fr.aol.com]

C.

Nicholas – I’m not an expert on the technology so feel free to correct me, but can’t battlefield tactical nukes be deployed without direct risk to civilians?

Micha – I think you’ve answered half the question, but only half. In addition to the rights-derived argument (everyone deserves their own nuke if they want one) that you disagree with, there’s a protection of liberty argument, which is the claim, in fact, that Vinge is making as I understand him. What he’s saying is that an anarcho-libertarian society needs nuclear weapons in order to maintain liberty – otherwise it’s too vulnerable to takeover from powermongering tyrannical states. I obviously don’t agree with Vinge – but then I’m pretty far away from being an anarcho-libertarian.

We had the same discussion about suitcase nukes and bioweapons in my IR class for the Ph.D. students this Wednesday. Scary stuff.

>under MAD, unilaterally defensive tactics — hardening, missile defense, or Ghu help us, even ‘bobbles’ — are destabilizing

Vernor Vinge, meet Tom Schelling. Tom Schelling, meet …

Lovely comment.

Greg Hunter is quite right to say that the 2nd Amendment relates to military weapons. It would seem to me to be consistent with the 2nd Amendment to allow private ownership of assault rifles, RPGs, tanks and so on (as part of a well-regulated militia on my reading, but that’s debatable), but to ban flickknives and handguns. The current situation is pretty much the reverse.

Nukes and WMDs are a special case – I’m sure the founders would have allowed a ban on poison weapons, the closest contemporary equivalent.

Even with a tight reading of the militia clause, though, I think the evidence is that the 2nd Amendment was a mistake. A militia is not much of a defence against military tyranny, since it will usually end up on the same side as the army.

Widespread disorganized ownership of weapons isn’t a defence against anything, except the other owners of weapons, which is a Pareto-dominated Nash equilibrium.

A militia is not much of a defence against military tyranny, since it will usually end up on the same side as the army.

Except that the militia is every able bodied male and female above the age of 16 and below the age of 45, including both those in the organized militia (National Guard) and those in the unorganized militia (everyone else).

Further, the militia clause is merely one, and not the only, rationale for preserving the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Widespread disorganized ownership of weapons isn’t a defence against anything, except the other owners of weapons,

And a defense for the physically weak against the physically strong.

Micha: “what makes a state a more responsible owner of nuclear weapons than a private security organization?”

At root, the fact that the state probably has to convince more people to allow the use of nuclear weapons, before they actually get used. Even if you stipulate a dictatorship, you at best create a situation similar to a security organization, in terms of how many people have to sign off on creating centralized decision-making on use of the nukes.

In any other governmental structure, more people will have knowledge – and approval rights – regarding the authorization to use nukes. In general I would expect this to make nukes less readily used, though maybe someone with more knowledge of group-think will say otherwise.

Mill was weighing legitimate (rat poison) uses against illegimate (murder) uses. He accepted tightly-drawn restrictions on poisons designed to prevent them being used to kill people.

But Mill is too sensible to be regarded as a representative of the libertarian position (at least at any time after his youthful crisis). What characterises libertarianism (more than even the most doctrinaire Marxism) is the willingness to push arguments to their logical conclusions, without questioning the premises. Mill wasn’t afraid of going against the conventional wisdom but he never accepted conclusions that were patently silly.

I enjoy Vinge, but I’m surprised that in forty comments nobody’s mentioned the time-sharing approach to nuclear deterrence in Ken MacLeod’s “Fall Revolution” novels. For a price, the tiny breakaway Central Asian “International Scientific and Technical Workers’ Soviet” will undertake to nuke anyone who attacks one of its clients. In the same way that banks don’t actually have to own money equal to all their commitments, this enables the world to get by with significantly fewer actual nuclear missiles.

This seems as plausible as any other model for the privatization of nuclear weapons. Of course, it does eventually result in the vaporization of Berlin, but that’s market forces for you.

I think what I will dub Bostrom’s Theorem is apposite here:

“If everyone is able to access nuclear weapons, the end result will likely be human extinction.”

Justification: Suppose there are 10,000 homicidal maniacs in the world at present. Suppose each nuke kills on average 1,000,000 people. Then the world population would be almost or totally eliminated by those homicidal maniacs setting off their nukes.

Even if the number of maniacs who are homicidal in the relevant way is only like 2 people – it would still be a calamity.

(Kudos to PNH for getting in a mention of Ken’s Fractional Reserve nuclear deterrence before I read to the bottom of this thread …)

But that just leaves me to make my main point: has anyone actually read “The Ungoverned”?

Vinge’s story is explicitly science fictional, and it’s set in a future where in addition to libertarian communities with privately-owned nukes there exist devices for generating “bobbles” — cheap, impermeable force fields within which time stops for a period of seconds to megayears.

To the extent that any SF story is a thought-experiment, I can’t help thinking that this whole thread is inapposite because the bobbling technology is nuke-proof; it provides a functional defense against weapons of mass destruction (and indeed in the prequel novel “The Peace War” red-blooded free-range libertarians armed with bobbling machines tackle the rather inept planetary Peace Authority).

Vinge indeed makes the point about a basement nuke being a gun pointed at the head of all your neighbours — they exist in the world of his story, but the general response to their use (without a suitable justification, like an invasion by degenerate second-handers — oops, liberal democrats wih tanks) tends to be a lynch mob. And furthermore, he posits that a society that tolerates personal nukes is not going to be a dense urban community.

Bluntly, as a starting point for analysing the theoretical role of WMDs in libertarian society “The Ungoverned” is rather deficient. Maybe Vinge knows something I don’t, and his bobble technology really exists, but in their absence all we’re left with is an interesting SF story that says, “what if nukes — the ultimate personal offensive weapon — could be countered by bobbles — the ultimate personal defensive weapon?” Which is a whole ‘nother kettle of eels.

At long last, robin green cuts to the heart of the problem. All speculation about stable MAD scenarios rests on the assumption that the individuals involved are rational, deterrable actors. The libertarian promise of general security can be realized only to the extent that those who control devastating force place supreme value on their own survival, within a time horizon sufficient to encompass the prospect of retaliation.

In the case of nation states, we hope this holds true (with an uneasy glance toward Kim Jong Il). In the case of private individuals, it is not even approximately true: human beings, for a whole host of reasons including but not limited to criminal psychosis, exhibit disregard for the proportionality and consequences of their actions, routinely and in large numbers. If mass casualty weapons were easily obtainable, such irrational actors would destroy human civilization before the libertarian intelligentsia finished calculating their pareto-optimal strategies.

Carlos: quite right.My pet objection, I guess, which I didn’t articulate as a general one, is that in addition to the scope for discussions to degenerate into fine story points, authors almost invariably posit too many developments to make it a useful medium for enquiry. I mean, we’re in the business of telling a story, not writing a political manifesto (with one or two dubious exceptions — L. Neil Smith springs to mind). Not only do SF authors tend to shovel in several plot McGuffins in order to keep things bubbling unpredictably, they tend to make things happen for reasons of plot, pacing, character development, and climax — which is anathema to any sane political discourse.

(I’m kind of glad I don’t live in a world with a literary plot. For several years Hitler managed to fool a lot of Germans into thinking that they did, and look what happened to them …)

As it happens, I had a back and forth on this very issue of the Second Amendment and private nuclear weapons with libertarian Eric Raymond, recently enough that it’s still the most recent post on his blog. You can read his explanation of why, without bobbles, a ban on private nukes is less sensible than banning handguns. Private nukes? No worries! Don’t neglect the comments. I had a brief sputter here.