Agreeing to legally prohibit individuals from violating the 3L Legal Principle but then allowing them to simply form groups, organizations, corporations, or governments to legally violate the 3L Legal Principle would defeat the entire project of advocating for a free and peaceful world. It would be the most explicit example of allowing the exception to swallow the rule entirely. Indeed, this closely resembles the legal situation we have today. While we legally prohibit individuals from violating the 3L Legal Principle, people whom the most prominent group employs, we refer to as “government,” are routinely legally permitted to disregard it for countless reasons. We can never achieve freedom and peace unless we oppose all violations of the 3L Legal Principle regardless of who is violating it, even if the government employs the person violating it.

What matters is not whether a person is also a member of some group, organization, corporation, or government, but whether the person or the collective group of people is aggressing against another. To the extent our institutions violate the 3L Legal Principle, they act illegitimately and contrary to the interests of promoting a free and peaceful world. Reasonable people are generally not confused about the 3L Legal Principle applied to individuals. In the vast majority of places around the world, individuals aggressing against other individuals are already legally prohibited. Indeed, all civilized countries have laws banning aggressions such as murder, assault, theft, and fraud. At least on the individual level, most people already intuitively agree aggression is wrong. In most places around the world, merely pushing a random stranger will usually be met with some level of justified anger due to unconsented aggression. Even most non-human animals will react negatively to aggression.

While this is unquestionably true on the individual level, many people get distracted into erroneously concluding differently when individuals band together to form groups, organizations, corporations, or governments. As previously argued, groups, organizations, corporations, and governments cannot have rights independent of their members. They do not magically or spontaneously appear out of thin air. They are each created solely by individuals. There is simply no other way for them to exist. There would be no government if there were no people. Governments do not spontaneously arise out of thin air. They only arise by the forming of groups by individual people.

As such, groups, organizations, corporations, and governments cannot possibly have any rights not delegated to them by their members. If you accept the 3L Legal Principle, you believe no individual has a right to aggress against another. Therefore, no individual can delegate such a right to any group, organization, corporation, or government. Even collectively, individuals cannot delegate rights they do not have. Because individuals, collectively or otherwise, cannot delegate a right to aggress, no group, organization, corporation, or government could legitimately have any right to aggress. We should hold all groups, organizations, corporations, and governments to the same standard as all individuals. Why would a peaceful person want one of these groups to ever threaten or initiate force, fraud, or coercion in any event?

Individuals can undoubtedly delegate the rights they have. For example, because individuals have a right to self-defense, individuals can properly delegate that right to groups, organizations, corporations, or governments to act as their agents in defending them appropriately. In contrast, because individuals do not have a right to take money from their neighbors without their consent, they cannot delegate any such “right” to any group, organization, corporation, or government. The same standard of conduct should apply to all individuals and groups of whatever type.

Is this such a scary conclusion? Why would we want any of these entities to aggress in any event? If you desire any of these entities to aggress against others, isn’t this the same as saying you want to aggress against others? If so, you are simply saying you want to use groups, organizations, corporations, or governments as a tool to aggress against others. The person who wants to use a group, organization, corporation, or government to aggress against others is someone who has not had their heart and mind won for the wisdom of adopting the 3LP. If the idea of non-aggression makes sense to you, we should apply it to everyone consistently, even when they band together to form groups, organizations, corporations, or governments. To treat them differently from how we treat individuals is to use them as tools to aggress against others.