The most obvious limitation on the right to self-determination is one that prevents another from determining themselves, namely violence.
Two instances of self-ownership have clashed, and both cannot be fully manifested simultaneously. Such collisions can be resolved in many different ways, and the libertarian method is just one possible solution. What does it consist of?
Libertarians are guided by the so-called NAP (Non-Aggression Principle, which literally translates as the “principle of non-aggression,” although in Russian the meaning is more accurately conveyed by the expression “principle of non-initiation of violence”).
This principle is formulated as follows: no one has the right to initiate violence with impunity. In a situation where someone is the first to apply violence toward another (that is, acts as the aggressor), a libertarian denies the aggressor the right to avoid retaliatory violence (that is, to remain unpunished). It is on this principle that the institution of restitution, mentioned in the next chapter, is based.
The application of the non-aggression principle can be traced in various human societies since deep antiquity, however, with one important caveat: this principle applied only to members of a certain local community. Thus, a person divided the whole world into a certain inner circle of people whose rights they recognized and were ready to defend—and everyone else, whom they might not even consider fully human. Their language is incomprehensible, their motives mysterious; whether one can come to an agreement with them is unclear, and if so, why distinguish them from the rest of nature and grant them rights? Proponents of tribalism, nationalism, republicanism, and similar ideologies still recognize the NAP in this historically natural form. Libertarians usually extend this principle to all of humanity, but as mentioned above, there is no complete agreement among people as to who exactly should be considered human. Therefore, different people, even if they are all libertarians, are unlikely to have a completely identical opinion on whom to include among the legal entities to whom the NAP applies.