The One Rule was the philosophical cornerstone of Liberty Minecraft. While the server technically had four rules -- read the rules, respect property claims, resolve nonviolent disputes nonviolently, and no hacking -- it was the third that NullCase considered the heart of the entire experiment. Everything else flowed from it: property rights, free markets, capitalism, justice. The rule was deceptively simple in its phrasing but carried profound implications that NullCase spent years developing from first principles.

The Rule Itself

Resolve nonviolent disputes nonviolently.

Three common words, one used twice. NullCase considered this formulation superior to both Ayn Rand's "do not initiate the use of force" and the libertarian Non-Aggression Principle ("do not commit violent acts of aggression") because it avoided the definitional problems that plagued both. As he put it:

When the rule is "resolve nonviolent disputes nonviolently" the problem becomes simple. The nonviolent dispute about which rules to follow is resolved nonviolently when participants agree to the rules. If violent acts of aggression are part of the terms of agreement there is no problem because there is no dispute.

This meant boxers could box, football players could tackle, and PvP combatants could fight -- because all parties had agreed to those terms. The rule only applied where disputes were nonviolent and one party resorted to violence anyway.

Origins and Philosophical Justification

NullCase traced the intellectual lineage of the rule through a decade of his own philosophical work, beginning in 2005 with investigations into the nature of truth and practical knowledge. He developed what he called a "practical indifference test" -- if knowledge produces no change in behavior, it can be ignored as having no practical utility. He applied this same rigor to questions of free will and moral progress before arriving, around 2013, at the core insight.

The argument is self-referential in an elegant way. NullCase laid it out as follows:

Suppose that you and I are engaged in a non-violent dispute: I wish to use your lawn mower and you object. We both agree the lawn mower belongs to you. The issue at hand is whether I will use it.

From this scenario, he demonstrated three paths to resolution -- logic, evidence, and preference -- and showed that violence undermines all three:

Deciding how to resolve a non-violent dispute is an instance of a non-violent dispute. If violence is justified as a means to resolve non-violent disputes then it is also justified to violently resolve how non-violent disputes will be resolved. Using violence to resolve non-violent disputes opposes moral, logical, and empirical justification of its use.

The argument is, in NullCase's view, irrefutable because attempting to nonviolently justify violence against peaceful people produces a contradiction. If you argue with evidence that violence is the correct approach, you are already resolving the dispute nonviolently -- which refutes your conclusion.

It's impossible to justify the use of violence as a means to resolve nonviolent disputes because the act of justifying that conclusion refutes it.

NullCase later discovered that the philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe had proved a similar argument decades earlier through what Hoppe called "Argumentation Ethics." NullCase's account of that discovery is characteristically candid:

I was sick immediately: Cold sweats, and I was shaking. I threw myself in the bathtub. It was kind of horrible. I was humbled. I felt like a complete fraud because I thought I had done something new. I've come around since then because there's a silver lining. I think this rule: "Resolve nonviolent disputes nonviolently" is the rule to extract from Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics.

What the Rule Achieved

The rule provided a moral foundation for everything that happened on the server. Because players settled peaceful disputes peacefully, their actions within Liberty Minecraft were morally justifiable. NullCase put it plainly:

Instead of stealing from people we have negotiation and trade. Everything you have in Liberty Minecraft was earned either by you or by the person who gave it to you voluntarily. Every dollar in our economy was produced honestly. The only way players become rich in Liberty Minecraft is by making other people better off.

Property rights, free markets, and capitalism were not imposed from above -- they emerged as natural consequences of players committing to one principle. The rule created the conditions under which voluntary exchange could flourish.

What the Rule Did Not Do

NullCase was careful to distinguish between what the rule guaranteed and what it did not. The rule was necessary but not sufficient for happiness or community:

This rule is not sufficient to build a community where you are happy. Preferences are not objective, and so people will want different things. One purpose of Liberty Minecraft is to let small communities inside Liberty Minecraft develop customs and rules of their own where they can be happy.

The rule did not promise you good neighbors. Property owners could use their land in ways you disliked. NullCase encouraged players who wanted more specific community standards to form towns with their own additional rules -- as long as those rules did not violate the one rule.

Enforcement in Practice

NullCase was the sole enforcer, and he was transparent about how bans worked. Players were removed from the server for essentially four reasons:

1. Failing to recognize a violation. If a player broke the rule and could not acknowledge it, NullCase could not trust them to follow it in the future.
2. Rejecting the rule ideologically. Players who stated they wanted to use violence against peaceful people were banned on principle.
3. Threatening to violate the rule. NullCase took threats at face value, even when the player likely lacked the means to carry them out, because the threat revealed intent.
4. Breaking the rule directly. Using violence to settle a peaceful dispute resulted in a ban.

Real enforcement cases illustrate how this worked in practice. In 2017, a player threatened to push someone into lava unless given items -- banned. In 2018, a player advocating communism declared they would achieve it through violent conquest -- banned. In 2019, a bidding dispute at an auction turned physical when one player shoved another off a platform during the closing moments to secure a win. The player admitted it was a mistake but refused to call it a rule violation, insisting it was merely "rude." That refusal led to a ban.

NullCase was forthright about the subjectivity involved:

I don't expect to be consistent in all cases. Players who've been with Liberty Minecraft for years are far more likely to get an opportunity to explain themselves. I have invested many hours discussing this rule with our players, and this is a cost of operating Liberty Minecraft.

He also noted that Liberty Minecraft was his property, and the rule existed because he chose it:

If someone harms you and you say "it's OK, I don't want them banned" I'm of course happy that you're alright but I will make my decision about it.

The Rule's Broader Significance

The One Rule was more than a server policy. It was NullCase's attempt to distill an entire moral philosophy into a single enforceable standard -- one that could be communicated in seconds, justified rigorously, and applied without the sprawling bureaucracy of conventional governance. Its simplicity was the point. Where other Minecraft servers had pages of rules covering specific behaviors, Liberty Minecraft had one principle that covered everything.

The rule also served as a filter. Players who could not accept it self-selected out. Those who remained built a community around voluntary exchange, mutual respect, and earned trust -- the principles explored throughout the articles on Property, Sound Money, Free Markets, and The Private Commons.

A person who rejects this standard has no moral argument.

Whether the rule was sufficient to sustain a lasting community remained an open question that NullCase wrestled with throughout the server's history, as discussed in Lessons from Liberty.