[angersock]

> involves taking money from people without their consent (taxes)

And yet you enjoy GPS, roads, running water, bridges, numerous standards, air quality and pollution reduction by regulators, defense of property, fire departments...

This particular line of argument is tiresome unless you're willing to forgo all of the amenities others have paid (and sometimes died) for.

If you're not willing to give them up, adding healthcare to the tab is hardly a step too far.

[brucephillips]

Most libertarians would give those up, in favor of private solutions.

Again, I don't believe this argument, but this is the argument.

[angersock]

I mean, that's the thing, right? You can't just give them up, short of moving away to the Libertarian paradise of Mogadishu or whatever.

Like, it's easy to say "well if somehow all of the public goods I enjoy were taken over by private companies then I'd be happy to pay them instead of taxes", but such a changeover doesn't really happen--you end up "freeloading" on the public dole until this future comes to pass.

And again, I know you aren't making this argument. It's just really annoying to have to hear it from otherwise intelligent friends when it comes up.

(Also, why the heck anybody would want to live in a world without a guarantee of basic services and rights is beyond me.)

[briandear]

Most libertarians aren’t opposed to government. For expample, most libertarians would agree that government is necessary as a means to enforce contracts. Somalia has no civil justice system of note, so Mogadishu is hardly a libertarian paradise.

Libertarianism is about the rights of an individual to engage in transactions they find beneficial. However, libertarianism is not about the right to infringe on others’ rights to do the same.

Libertarians support individual rights at a vastly greater level than anyone else. In collectivism, there are no individual rights or at least they are secondary to collective rights.

[tacomonstrous]

I really don't understand how libertarianism doesn't collapse at first contact with actual human beings.

>Libertarianism is about the rights of an individual to engage in transactions they find beneficial.

>Libertarians support individual rights at a vastly greater level than anyone else

And who protects these rights? Who defines them? Is it really possible for everybody's rights to be protected simultaneously (whatever those rights may be)? Who decides ownership? Who guarantees the avenues for beneficial trade?

The rule of law cannot be enforced without an element of coercion. The best we can hope to do is to make it as enlightened as we can.

[jahaja]

It's basically a modern version of the divine right of kings.

[vidarh]

Most right libertarians would. Left wing libertarianism (what libertarianism started out as in the 1850's) started from the socialist and anarchist premise that de jure rights without the access to resources to enjoy them are not real rights - for rights to have meaning, people need to be able to take advantage of them.

Specifically, Joseph Dejacques polemic against Proudhon [1] where the term libertarian was coined focused on the latter's willingness to talk loftily of liberty on one hand, but the next moment limiting to liberty related to capital rather than the emancipation of all, specifically throwing women under the bus because Proudhon did not see them as equals:

> Moderate anarchist, liberal, but not libertarian, you want free exchange of cotton and candles and you seek to protect man against woman in the exchange of affectional human passion. You cry against the great barons of capital, and you would rebuild a proud barony of man on vassal-woman.

Dejacques makes an impassioned (and poetic -- the letter is well worth a read even if you disagree with every word) argument both for anarchy, and against the monopoly on resources, and the turns Proudhon's own word against him in arguing that for men to monopolise power is the same thing - talk of liberty becomes meaningless when we allow there to be arbitrary limits on who are afforded said liberty based on ideas of who are worthy:

> Attribute not to him a stock of intelligence which belongs to him only by right of conquest, by the commerce of love, by usury on the capital that comes entirely from woman and is the product of the soul within her. Dare not to attribute to him that which he has derived from another or I will answer you in your own words: “Property is robbery!”

> Raise your voice, on the contrary, against the exploitation of woman by man.

Dejacques set the term "libertarian" up as a step beyond "moderate anarchists" (!) and "liberals" such as Mr "property is robbery" Proudhon:

The emancipation of human beings, according to Dejacques, comes from taking the ideas that Proudhon happily promoted in economy - to limit power, be it over persons or property - to the full conclusion with a focus on the emancipation of all humanity.

Mere de jure emancipation will not do, then, if people can not take advantage of it. Maximising liberty to Dejacques meant being uncompromisingly willing to take that which is being hoarded and share it, be it money or power, or authority.

As such, the idea of maximising liberty from a left libertarian viewpoint does not see property as the holy cow that right libertarianism does, but in fact has from the outset seen strict property-rights as a direct threat to liberty, rising to outright aggression (e.g. if you try to use force to prevent someone who is starving from eating to maintain life you are putting their life at risk).

Right-libertarianism makes a mockery of libertarianism by sacrificing the principle of maximising liberty in order to provide an ideological veneer for the protection of wealth and privilege.

[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-dejacque-on-t...

[willvarfar]

This is the "What have the Romans done for us?!" argument :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ