[Borodog]

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Consider not only my argument, but also the animal kingdom. It goes on even though it is rife with predation.

edit: every living thing consumes some other living thing (or something that was once living) to survive. Yet the system does not collapse but rather flourishes as a whole.

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Do you think a species would flourish if it only consumed those of its own species?

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Of course not. But are humans going to give up eating animals and vegetables and turn instead to cannibalism? I don't believe so.

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That's what "pradation" in the Hobbesian sense essentially means; predation upon the property of others is predation upon their person, since that's what "property" is; an extension of self ownership to produced goods. In the presence of such predation, who will bother to produce more than what they can carry and defend with their own hands? Nobody. If you think such a scenario can possibly lead to any kind of "flourishing" . . . I don't know what to say.