If there is no state, and my wife cheats on me, would it be lawful to throw her out the window if I live on the second floor of a building owned by a homeowners’ association that has opted out of insurance services, but has an oral contract for territory security with a private security company (PSC) registered in a territory where a state exists, of which our joint daughter is a citizen, and who, under their law, is obliged to look after disabled parents—a category that includes stateless persons, which my wife is, having applied for a residence permit that was formally accepted due to the difference in time zones?

Topotushka

This question, if I recall correctly, was cited by Alexei “Komendant” Tereshchuk as an example of how even non-trolls—but quite enthusiastic ancaps—can be intensely interested in the most minute details of a completely hypothetical stateless society of the future, falling into the deductive heresy of deriving any, no matter how subtle, specifics from a few general principles.

But no. In order to derive specific consequences from general principles, one must add additional information to the general principles regarding the conditions to which we are deriving those specific consequences. The more assumptions the initial data rely on, the more unstable the result of such reflections becomes.

Does this mean that the deductive method is useless? Of course not. It simply means that to obtain reliable results, you need to take the general principles and bring them as close as possible to the local environment to which you will be applying them.

Now, let us return to the joking question and provide a serious answer to it.

The question of the lawfulness of throwing a cheating wife out the window can only have a positive resolution under conditions where cheating is considered a legal offense. Can cheating be considered a legal offense in the absence of a state? It can. Let us note that in our hypothetical society, marriage is officially considered a property relationship—at least, Topotushka’s “ownership” over his wife.

Moving forward. The homeowners’ association’s refusal of insurance services means that causing harm to the health of one of the association’s residents does not constitute a tort against the association.

The fact that the PSC is fulfilling an oral contract for territory security means that oral contracts are recognized in our hypothetical stateless society.

If the PSC operating legally on the protected territory records damage to the adjacent territory caused by the fall of Topotushka’s wife, I find it difficult to imagine a legal construction within which the responsibility for the damage would be placed by the PSC on the wife rather than on the Topotushka who threw her. Thus, we can state that since throwing a large object out of a window entails a risk of damage to the adjacent territory, it is an unlawful act, and we have obtained an answer to the original question without even delving into the intricacies of time zones. Moreover, according to the oral contract, the PSC may be obliged to prevent even the throwing of cigarette butts on the lawn, which are viewed as litter; therefore, Topotushka’s arguments that his wife is quite compact and did not cause any significant damage are unlikely to hold weight. Littering under the windows is an unlawful act, period.