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No. 332707
>>332615
Yeah, except...no. The government isn't your parent-parents don't let their kids vote them out of office or decide the rules of the house. The parent works to have money to provide for the child, while the citizens work and give up some of their earnings to the government to provide for it's function. You seem a bit angry, and are probably basing your opinion on some dbags who happened to be libertarian.
For me, and I can speak for no one else, it's simply the coherent alternative to today's liberal and conservative ideologies. If you believe in social liberty, why not economic, and vice versa. There's no reconciling the religiosity of the right and its embrace of laissez-faire capitalism and social darwinism (ok, you can, with Calvinism and it's American mutants, but those are explanations, not justifications); nor can you square the liberal concern with civil liberties and their support of an invasive and all-powerful state.
My philosophy can be summed up as such: If it harms no one-their body, their property, or their exercise of rights-without that person's consent, it should be legal. The maximum amount of freedom for all is the most desirable state, but it cannot be achieved except in anarchy. Anarchy is a vacuum swiftly filled with some form of government, and generally a bad one, so a placeholder state is necessary. It needs to be big enough to protect it's citizens from each other and other states, but no larger than necessary. It needs to be bigger than the biggest corporation and able to prevent it from doing harm and punish it when it does, but it all alone unless they violate the laws. A lightly-sleeping dragon would be a good metaphor.
It's not anarcho-capitalism: there still need to be regulations to prevent harm, and means of redress when harm occurs. In business, as in politics, a vacuum is always filled, and power tends to consolidate; an unregulated market leads to monopolies and the death of economic freedom the same way that anarchy leads to tyranny and the death of all liberty. It doesn't mean no environmental protections, because such is joint property administered to within the borders of the nation by the government, because with a resource of any sort, to avoid a tragedy of commons, needs to be privatized (impossible with something like air or water, and even if you could it'd be a bad idea) or overseen by something accountable to all the people with a claim to it on their behalf.
It doesn't even mean that there shouldn't be government welfare: people do fall into poverty for reasons other than their own fault, and it's beneficial to them and to society as a whole if they're realizing their full potential and are net producers of wealth rather than beggars, thieves, or perpetual dependents. The costs of poverty are felt by society one way or another. As long as the programs in place are designed to get people back to work and not create a dependent constituency (as they have), and as long as the money spent is less than the cost of doing nothing, I think it's not just justified but a moral and policy necessity!
But that's just me and I'm not really a typical libertarian, if there is such a thing.
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