I do not believe there is a real difference between negative and positive freedom (as the terms are used by libertarians) and here is why:

Negative freedoms are a list of things that others must not do to a person - violate their life, property etc.

But who is to stop people doing such things?

In any society, the enforcement of these 'negative rights' is taken out of the commons, either by taxes to pay for a police force or by a citizen militia. Thus there is a duty (as with positive freedom) of all people in that society to expend their efforts protecting these negative freedoms.

Rich men pay as much tax towards the upkeep of the police as the poor do generally, but for that money they receive a greater area of protection.

a multitude of options are available...

please don't use 'commons' in this respect - it is not accurate. As far as 'the only' way to provide protection of negative rights being through taxation and government, that is also inaccurate. I can provide some degree of that protection myself (locks on doors, weapons, self-defense classes, etc) and I can join with others to provide protection on a larger scale and perhaps more efficiently (gated community, neighborhood watch, hire bodyguards, hire a 'police service', etc), and their is no limit to the amount of 'rights' protection I can purchase, even up to and including the scale of national defense.

welcome to the world of government and forced taxation!

In a Free Market, the rich would have to pay for the protection they desired for their property and pay more for the greater amount (and value) of property they owned. Poorer people would save money by not having to over-purchase protection from which they do not benefit much from.

Hey, if some massive corporation is dumping waste into my back yard, I'll resort to whatever thuggery necessary to put a stop to it. Why? It's an intrusion upon my private property. Throwing rocks at my windows is an intrusion upon my private property. Polluting the air that I have to breath when I step out to pick up the morning news is an intrusion on my private property. If any of this gets to be a big enough problem, I'm going to take whatever means necessary to put an end to it, whether it's the government or the planting of explosives. If that conflicts with your libertarian ideals, tough nuggets. I don't fancy bronchitis, weird cancers, or a pair of **** suddenly growing on my nephew's chest. I don't like trusting anything at all to the government, but, if you know of other viable options, please feel free to turn me onto them. I'll do them and lobby the government. Why? Because, if I have a problem, I do what I can to fix it, and I'm not going to exclude from consideration a perfectly viable option just to support some tard's vision of libertarian utopia.

Totally agree! Pollution boils doen to vandalism of private property

obviously

no, it isn't - at least not yet. We humans have exactly been able to define specific property rights for substances like air yet - so we are faced with dealing with the 'tragedy of the commons'... the more we let the market work on this problem, the better off we will be


I suggest using appropriate responses first - if someone smokes a cigarette while walking past my house and a particle of smoke gets in my lungs, I don't think that a head shot from my sniper rifle is a very good response and won't qualify as 'self-defense' in the courts (either government courts or free market courts)

no conflict, really. BTW, I like tough nuggets, thank you! (especially the extra-crunchy ones!)

Well, to be fair, you would need to prove that your ailments are the direct cause of another's specific pollution. These things existed far before the industrial age and pollution in general. BTW, sorry to hear about your nephew - is there a surgery or something that could be done to help?

If you want the most efficient production and distribution of goods and services, like protection of private property, then look no further than the Free Market!

The government you seem to think will protect you so much is more likely to oppress you and create even more and worse problems - to each their own, just don't make me pay for it.

Are retards really able to comprehend libertarianism? If so, then I wonder what everyone's excuse is?

My bloodshot eye. I have to deal with it. If nothing else, I consider my lungs a part of my private property. There's a certain amount of air pollution I'll put up with before I get out the dynamite.

I'm talking about cases in which the plants have already been pointed out as the source of the problem, not assuming them to be without data.

I don't care whether it's coming from a factory, a variety of algae, or bloody martians. If I have a serious enough problem with my environment, I'm going to attempt to solve it.

This isn't something that's actually happened in my own family, thankfully. We're in a relatively sparsely populated part of the state, and there's a strong, grassroots movement around here helping to keep the dumps out. However, men having such developmental oddities is a well-known result of there being an abundance of estrogen-mimicking chemicals in the water supply.

I'll look for whatever solution works, thank you.


A massive corporation, organized crime, a few influential families, or a militant religious sect can do this as easily as anyone else, though. That's what you don't seem to understand. As frightened as you may be of the elected government, it's the least of your problems.

We'll do things by whatever method works. If a law causes more trouble than it's worth, we revoke it. If a project is going to cost more wealth than it could possibly produce, it is scrapped. When you start working against practicality in the pursuit of some utopia, however, you just end up messing things up. This happened with the Bolsheviks, and this happened with the Maoists. My reading of history tells me to never trust people who start talking about a utopia. When I hear these "anti-drug" people talking about some wonderful, drug-free society, my instincts scream for me to put a bullet in their brains before we all end up being forced to stand on our heads in the name of it. I get the same sense when confronted with a libertarian: what are the libertarians going to try to do to force me to rely on the "free market"? The "free market" sounds to me like some ideologue's snake oil. If my community were to attempt to set up a homeowner's association and try to improve the look of the neighborhood, the libertarians would come goose-stepping in and say "you can't do that! We need limited government! If you want to improve your community, look no further than the free market!" and I would be forced to violently kill them. Never ever trust people who talk about a utopia.

obviously and understandable.

makes sense - you sound like a rational person

yuck! I would choose not to live hear then estrogen-thingies!

I am not worried at all about large corporations, by nature - only the ones which violate property rights or infringe on human rights. Organized crime? Can't get any more organized than becoming a State...

not so much - government makes it easy to MAKE laws, not revoke them

what if the project costs the exact same amount of wealth as you produce? What if it is (in your mind) an idiotic project in the first place, yet 'the majority' somehow think different and are willing to force you to pay for it.

No one is talking about a 'utopia' (except socialists, I guess), nor is anyone talking about going against practicality.

a good idea - utopia is impossible.
I tend to not trust those who believe it is OK to steal from others to fund their pet projects.

never came across a 'drug-free society' type person - they sound slightly deranged... my advice would be to run... very fast!

nothing at all, thats the point - you don't mess with them and they don't mess with you... libertarians are rather easy to get along with, just don't use force against them and respect their property rights and peace will reign.

it's not - its a term used to describe what happens when people are free to interact with each other while respecting property rights.

the only thing they would have a problem with is forcing those people who did not want to participate in the association. Just like it would not be right for me and my friends to 'vote' and decide that we would all only wear pink outfits, and force you to do the same. Force isn't right, no matter what color it is wearing.

I happen to not agree with them on this point - I say we don't need a stinking government at all.

If a person advocates using force against you to do something, or pay for something, then they are not 'libertarians'... using defensive force against such folks is well within your natural rights, though I would advise to not shoot someone because they lttered on your lawn or somesuch minor violation.

Hope you impression of libertarians has been corrected. Libertarians are all for Home Owners Associations as long as they are 100% voluntary. Same with taxation, or just about anything else - if it is voluntary then no force is being used.

I'm not against corporations in principle, either, but those who think that we'd be completely free from the possibility of being oppressed, used, exploited, or bullied in the absence of government are delusional.

Wrong. Libertarians can be just as idiotically bolshevik as socialists. I don't want to live in Libertopia, and I don't want to live in a Dictatorship of the Proletariate. The world doesn't work in such idiotically simple terms.

Yes, you are! You're talking about abolishing the government, whether it is practical or feasible to do so or not. You can only think of government in terms of being more or less despicable or oppressive. You seem convinced that the magical free market will make the country a libertarian utopia. It won't. There is no cure-all. There is no final solution.

That's my point.

You're not being stolen from. The government isn't taking that money and pocketing it or flushing it down the toilet. If they are, don't vote for Republicans because they're all crooked scum. They're using that money to pay for such things as repairs to roads, the public school system, public transportation services, railroads, the management of our currency, the military, and border patrol. The public isn't willing to do without these things just because you don't like having responsibilities.

Sorry, dude, but you're living in a society. A natural part of that is having to do things that don't appeal to you from time to time.

Look, if you want to start improving the society that you live in, start by finding something that you could change that would make your life more the way you like it. Now, instead of starting with global things, you have to fix little things in your own city. You find things that your local government is spending money on unnecessarily, and you try to convince enough people to take your side on it to affect a change. If you think that a private school could teach the kids in your district better than the publicly funded one, you open up a school of your own; I don't think you would even need to get a license to teach in your state because all instruction would happen under the licenses of the people you hired to do it. Even if you could only afford enough space to teach twenty pupils, that would be twenty less pupils siphoning their education off of public funds. If you could make enough money on it, perhaps people would even follow your lead, eventually draining the public schools completely. Any realistic change in any direction would take this kind of grassroots organization.

You cannot eliminate crime, that is obvious - I am just saying that there is nothing special about businesses or corporation (large or small) which tend to make the people within them act more criminal than otherwise. Why not just say 'Fraud is wrong' and punish ANYONE (or group, like a business) who undertakes fraud as a course of action? No need to single out 'businesses'.

The world is actually very simple, and from its simplicity arises a great complexity. A pencil is a very simple item, yet it takes the cooperative effort of thousands of people, each one not knowing or necessarily caring about the other or the other labors involved, to produce pencils. Perhaps an easier to imagine process might be an assembly line for a car: each person might do a simple job of screwing in a panel, or tightening a nut, but the finished product is very complex, more so than any one of the workers involved could achieve on their own.

well, it is practical and feasible, and, I would settle for just abolishing government control over a relatively small area - call it a FreeZone where government regulation, taxation, protection, mail services, etc do not extend. Our government is fine and dandy to let folks in other places in the world be free from its clutches, why not give the people it is supposed to be servicing the same option?

Look, I understand that alot of government has been instituted and brought about with impecible motivations, very alturistic goals, and kind thoughts. And the 'problems' that government is being tried to use to fix are indeed actual 'problems' (like protection services, like roads, like food safety, etc). I am just trying to point out that government is a very BAD method of trying to address these problems - it is inefficient, it creates additional problems, and it never can solve the problems it sets out to! How long has the 'War on Poverty' been going on? 40 years? How about Social Security - are people all happliy retiring, not so much! How about the 'War on Drugs'? Is the government 'winning' all these 'wars' against its own people? I fear this latest 'war' might be the one which finally breaks the back of the citizens.

Government, by its very nature, IS oppressive - it is a crinimal (by any normal social standard) gang which forces 'legitimacy'.

Just because you don't understand the free market doesn't mean it is magical. There is nothing magical about it except that it is simply the term used to describe the natural interaction between free people, and the results of this are the MOST efficient production and distribution of goods and services the world has ever known... and thats what we (as humans) want! We want to eat better, to be sheltered better, to be transported better, to be entertained better.... I say, 'Don't we also want to be protected better?', 'Don't we also want to have justice served better?', 'Don't we also want to be more generally productive?.... This is why I advocate for less (or no) government... it's no utopia, just better!

really? Let's see, if any other person or group came to my house and demand me to pay them or they would either: (1) put me in a little cage for a period of time(prison), or, (2) shoot me for 'resisting'... wouldn't that be called theft? Does it matter that most of the people in this 'group' took a vote to decide how much and from whom to steal from?

Here is the short and curly of it all: I earn my wealth - it is MY property, not yours, not Fred's, not the poor person living down the street. If I do not want to give it to anyone, that is my choice and for anyone to forcibly make me give some is called coercion and theft... and as such it is IMMORAL.

yes it is - but that isn't the point... the point is that it is 'taking it' in the first place! I am STILL being stolen from EVEN if the theif intends on using the money he stole from me to pay for his Grandmother's operation, or to feed his baby.... the act of stealing is wrong, no matter what the intended use of the proceeds are!

um, republicans are just as bad as democrats - both are just different shades of the same color and they ALL think they know best what I should be spending my time/money/energy/love/and caring on.... it doesn't matter who I vote for, whoever wins will still feel they have some 'right' to take my money and use it in some manner THEY deem correct.

I can easily pay for these things myself, and if projects are too large or inefficient for me as an individual to tackle, then I will seek out others who desire the same thing and join with them to spread the cost and garner the benefits of economy-of-scale. The reason it is better for me to be responsible for these things myself is because each and every one of these has a cost, no matter WHO does them, and that means that whatever money is spent on one thing, that same money is not available to spend on others - it's called economics and the best way to determine the 'correct' distribution of money, labor, and production is through the free market. How does the government know if a hospital should be built in a certain place? Or a railroad? The market figures these things out along the lines of the relative scarcity of resources and the demand for the different uses of these same resources. If you build a car, you cannot use the same steel to also build a hospital bed - so, there needs to be a method for determining how many hospital beds and how many cars should be made... this is a natural function of the freemarket... optimal distribution of resources. When government attempts to determine these things, it has OTHER pressures, like: is a friend of the politican in the hospital bed business? which special interest group donated the most? where will I work AFTER being a politican? None of these things have anything to do with efficiency, or 'best interests of the people'. You can take your government and all of its inherent immorality and inefficiency and leave those folks, who do not wish to participate, alone. If you want to waste your money, give legitimacy to an institution which has/does/and will be used against you by others, then go ahead... but it is just plain wrong to force other people who do not wish to be part of this scheme to participate. Thought we got rid of slavery?

Hogwash! Sure, no one likes 'responsibilities' - but we like the benefits from these things MORE than the cost to do them. I will help pay for roads, no problem. Just as I gladly help pay for my groceries currently. Or I pay to get my house painted, or my lawn done, or my car repaired. If you really think 'the public' is too stupid to do for themselves, then why even give them the ability (and responsibility) to 'vote'?

living in a society doesn't necessarily mean having to do things that don't appeal to you - LIVING, period, means having to do things that do not appeal to you so that you can survive, or thrive. So called 'society' is a voluntary interaction between folks which is supposed to be beneficial to all involved... peaceful, social interaction IS the Free Market. Involuntary forced interactions are something altogether different from 'society'... its called crime, or, these days, government.

yes yes, very nice. This is a very fine blueprint for how to go about getting things done without government, And I will gladly figure out how to get my kids educated, or my roads fixed... but first, STOP taking the money I would choose to spend on these things! How can I adaquately spend the money I earn on my children's education when a portion of my money is being taken already to spend on the public school system which I am NOT going to make use of? Why should I spend money on roads that I am not going to make use of if I will be providing for my own roads? or postal services? or charities(welfare)? or retirement?

Then work on getting your city or county to give it a whirl. Good luck, man! It's not something that's going to be handed down to you, though.

I don't see you getting up off your **** to do it. Besides, the government doesn't always screw up. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. There's good government, and there's bad government, just as there can be good business and bad business. Bad business is retail companies allowing producers (MICROSOFT) to form monopolies instead of working together to cut off companies that seem to be bent on taking over their industry and viciously killing off competition. Bad business is consumers running off to Walmart for those low, low prices instead of thinking critically about the ultimate cost of a low price. Bad business is labor unions working AGAINST employers instead of working WITH employers. The market system isn't perfect. Neither is the government. What do you want to do, though? Make the government worse and hope that the market system starts looking more attractive? Look, dude, private highways go up all the time, and, if they proved themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt to be the most logical way to go about doing things for the long term, they'd stop being handed over to the government. It would just take a strong innovator. For the time being, the government is doing a better job.

You and your wars. The Marxists had plenty of discussions about class wars, and everyone lost. Stuff your wars up your arse. The government isn't your enemy. The government is the one that you and your fellow citizens vote for.

It is not.

You're the one who doesn't seem to understand it.

This is what the Maoists said. They made it worse. They were tards, and the libertarians are tards. I'm not against the market taking care of things, but I'm not against the government doing so, either. Whichever way works best. The Finnish economy is highly leftist with 85% of their labor unionized, but the Finnish I've known seem to be perfectly satisfied with their lifestyle. The labor union scheme works fine for the Finnish because the Finnish naturally have a good work ethic, which is the same reason they haven't had any trouble with a strong welfare state. The same goes for Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

No, you don't entirely earn your wealth. The government built the road you drive on to get to work. The government enforces the emmisions standards that make it possible for you to work at a faster pace for a longer period of time than if they didn't. The government polices the streets in your neighborhood, keeping your wealth from being taken by a theif. The government probably paid for at least part of your education. Theres a possibility that the business you work for receives subsidies from the government. The government defends you from being taken over by a foreign dictatorship. The government protects your borders and keeps your job from being taken by an illegal immigrant. If you run a business, the government makes sure that legal, seasonal workers from other countries and regions are available to you when you need them. If you think that you can do any of these better, good luck to you in making a business of it. Until then, these things have to be done by the government, and the government needs money to pay for them. It's not being offered voluntarily, so they take it out of your income.

It isn't wrong for him. It would be highly immoral for him to allow his grandmother to die. It would be highly immoral for him to allow his child to starve. If it's to feed his own face, it would be highly unintelligent for him to starve when there was wealth available to be acquired illegally. It isn't pleasant for you, but I'd like to see you convince the fellow that your personal feelings are more important than the health of himself and his kin. Moralize over the issue all you like, but, if there is no other structual way for the guy to fulfill his needs, he'll take it from somewhere.

Actually researching the issue and responding to people's demands. There are private hospitals, also; if they don't want the government to build hospitals, I advise them to do a better job of providing for people's needs.

That's what the Bolsheviks said about the Bourgeois.

They aren't, though. They just choose for the government to take care of it instead of trying to DIY it. If they wanted to do it in some other way, they would.


It isn't voluntary, though. You don't have a choice in the matter. You have to deal with other people. It isn't voluntary.

Nope. You will have to bring about the infrastructure for it first. Then the government can just close down the public schools, give road maintenance over to private companies, etcetera. If a bunch of businesses in a city and homeowner's associations in outlying suburbs were to get together and make an arrangement to pay for the road systems in cooperation, on a contractual basis, and petition the government to allow them to implement it, the government would no longer have to take roadwork out of your taxation. If a company were to train a professional security force to work on contract for the businesses in a city, they could gradually replace the police in the areas they patrol. The thing is, this has to happen before the government will cease to pay for it with public funds.

Too bad. Some people can't afford private education and don't have time for homeschooling. They prefer to rely on the government for it. If you want to convince people that you have a better solution, that is up to you, not them. Besides, if you are so poor that you can't afford to pay for your own kids' education after taxation, you're probably benefitting from public education. If you're highly affluent, you would save a great deal of money by taking one more head out of the classroom.

Because other people need them.

The thing is, I don't think you have the balls to play a real role in making the free market work. You don't have the entrepreneurial ability. You don't have the vision. You're not willing to take the risks. You're too busy moralizing over property rights. You're too busy fretting over the government taking your money from you to really do anything about it. If you would just exercise some initiative, actually go out and get something done, you could make a profit off of the government's areas of incompetence. For everything that you don't think that the government is doing right, you have an opportunity to become a millionaire. All you need is the rocks to do it.

Freedom is freedom, there is no good or bad freedom, just good and bad people.