Statist claim: Govt force is a natural phenomena.

Fallacy:

Rick Medlin: If you break laws, you risk going to prison. If you cross the street, you risk getting hit by a car. Welcome to the grown-up world.

Response:

tiannamantankguy

The error here is the conflation of natural consequences with harm done by individuals by choice. If I cross the street, especially without looking for traffic, I may come to harm because someone is unable to avoid hitting me, or hits me accidentally due to his carelessness. This is not due to any conscious action on the part of the driver, it is a matter of physics. If I break an arbitrary law created by the government to punish a victimless "crime," enforcers for the state choose to do harm to me. This latter case is purely a matter of human choice and human action to initiate coercive force. (LT & DBR)

A related fallacy is that of blaming individuals for consequences that truly are natural, e.g., if someone starves to death, it is a natural consequence of not having enough to eat; and although unfortunate, most likely not a violation of the Non Aggression Principle. Nobody has acted to do harm to such a person; even though people might have been able to feed the person and did not (which might violate the Christian commandment, "Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.", James 4:17; but not everyone is a Christian), their inaction is not (1) an act at all, and (2) thus certainly not a harmful act.


Also see: You Know You'll Be Taxed