The question in which cases violence can be justified as a legitimate tool to solve conflicts is probably one of the biggest questions in the history of mankind. And also in the present world violence is still everywhere, ranging from personal conflicts to large-scale military conflicts.

Game Theory

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Violence exists and will always be available as the ultimate tool to settle conflicts. However, humans (and in fact all animals) are surprisingly peaceful. The reason is that violence is a purely destructive force, while cooperation has the potential to create significantly more prosperity for everyone. From an global perspective it is clearly superior.

But individuals do not act based on a shared perspective and generally protect their own self interest. In a group of many productive individuals plus one violent person, that person will be able to steal more than able to produce individually by joining and working with the productive group.

It seems that non-violence is unstable and the system is set up to descent into violence and chaos. The reason we do not see this in the real world is the principle of self-defence. If the productive group accepts violence as a means of protection only, they can fend of the aggressors and realise their prosperity in peaceful cooperation.

Game theory shows that violence should be accepted only as a measured response in self-defence, since this will allow maximum prosperity.

Violence in the Personal Space

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Almost all people agree that violence cannot be accepted and are willing to defend each other against violence, even strangers. This is exactly what game theory favours for human cooperation.

Violence is forces out of the public into the dark where it sadly continues to exist and becomes very hard to fight.

Global Violence

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Wars are sadly one of the most common ways to settle conflicts between groups that do not personally know each other. All of the mechanisms that prevent violence between individuals do not work here.
What prevents most wars is just the large risk associated with war. Often a war is simply not beneficial to either party so an unstable peace exists. But as soon as interests change preparations for war will be made.

Quite interestingly almost everyone agrees that offensive war is never acceptable, using the same self-defence principle that people know from their private lives. For this reason a scapegoat for the war always needed. This ranges from defending ourselves abroad to humanitarian war.

Luckily many people see through these fakes and realise that violence and war never have a positive effect. A 'humanitarian war' cannot exist.

Local Organised Violence

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While most people reject violence in their individual life and on global scale, violence on the intermediate scale is usually accepted. This is the state level where rules and rulers are welcomed and there is little resistance against enforcing these using violence as the ultimate measure.

This is rooted in the idea that these laws are really there to defend the individual and therefore are a means of distributed self-defence. However this is only true for a small part of the law. The structures of power have been corrupted and allow few people to steal from the majority threatening violence and imprisonment otherwise.

In addition there are laws for 'victimless crimes' such as anti-drug legislation that does only controll us (or tries to protect us from ourselves ?!). If the state is really just there to protect us, then a non-violent person should never feel restrained by it and be able to live free. Clearly this is not the case. The state has turned into an abusive and oppressive system that backed by violence.

There is no good use of violence on any scale. Violence to help the poor is as faulty as a humanitarian war. The fact that there are even poor people given our technological advancements is a product of the state that needs a justification for its existence.

In additions, national states are responsible for all the wars on this planet, where they brutally push their own agenda.

Crypto as a Solution?

Violence is destructive and should always be rejected. A peaceful world is a world that respects private rights and allows individuals to band together to protect themselves from agression. Luckily we do not need states to do that anymore. Decentralised trust has been solved and global borderless trusted cooperation is now possible. In this framework violence has no place and we will find better ways to prevent violence than the failing current paradigm of splitting the world into many little nations. Nations that are hostile towards each other and that abuse their citizens. The time has come for borderless and peaceful human cooperation bringing unknown prosperity and freedom to the world.