# Law in the absence of law

published: 2020-02-19

In case you think you've wandered into a manifesto, or some kind of universally-applicable theory, close this tab now. It's not. It never will be.

Let's say that your god has thrown me into some kind of hellscape where I have to relive the year I spent at a residential college, and one night I decide to go to the dining hall. I sit at a table. On the other side of a table is another person who I hold no particular ill will towards, but who I don't know well, and he the same towards me. Ambivalent strangers, if you will. And let's also say that I'm going through the hellscape this time around with my current possessions in their current states, which means my headphones are broken. (And let's assume I was thrust into this hellscape before today, where I got a replacement of sorts to tide me over until I can repair the older ones. And, while we're in the business of assuming things, let's assume that we're in some parallel universe where people universally use "headphones" to mean "the ones you put over your ears" and "earbuds" to mean "the ones you put inside your ears", which they are, and people should really learn that words have meanings.)

Around his neck is a pair of rather high-quality headphones. Not the kind you'd see hypebeasts wear, but high-quality nonetheless. They seem to be wireless, but have a port for an aux cord to plug in, implying they also have a wired mode. He takes them off to eat- but, out of forgetfulness, forgets to take them with him when he gets up to leave.

What do I do?

Should I steal them?

In the presence of law, the State-enforced law backed by violence, I wouldn't steal the headphones, because to do so would be theft, and I'd likely get thrown into a cage and fined more money than I could ever hope to afford, not to mention having my reputation tarnished beyond belief.

In the absence of State-enforced law, but in a parallel universe where we lived in an Ancapistan-like region where people followed the non-aggression principle and those who didn't were physically removed from said region, I still wouldn't steal the headphones, because that would be a violation of the NAP. Maybe the State wouldn't come after me, but either someone would, or I'd be ostracized beyond belief to the point where nobody would do business with me and I'd be unable to function in the society until I returned them. And since most (peaceful) people place trustworthiness so highly when doing business, State or without, who would want to do business with a known thief?

But I am an egoist at heart. And what about when I can't trust the people around me to follow the NAP? What if I set aside all notion of law and virtue and acted only with thought for myself and my own desires?

Well, I still wouldn't steal the headphones. The trust economy still comes into play. And I value my reputation more than some silly stolen headphones anyway, especially so when being well-loved by the potentially hostile surrounding community might be the difference between life and death. (Being at the mercy of a hostile community who could gang up and kill you at any moment leaves the door wide open for the pressure of coercion, which is its own can of worms and deserves its own future post.)

But even without the hypothetical community, and without any notion of the law or Kant's categorical imperative insisting that I don't because what if someone stole from you, and how would that make you feel, and even assuming that I'd never face consequences for the act of theft: I still wouldn't. Because it would make me feel bad. I'd be burdened with guilt every time I used them.

So I leave them on the table. Maybe I pick them up and run up to the fellow student who left them there. And he smiles at me and thanks me, and he thinks kindly of me for a few moments.

And it makes me feel good inside for those same moments, knowing I stuck to my morals.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 © Vane Vander