[hellojesus]

The libertarian bent typically suggests that the government must be funded to the extent that it can protect private property. This means it must be able to recognize private property and litigate against its theft, including bodily harm. Therefore I shout from my safe stable, but my prerequisite is that the government exists to provide that safe stable.

It also exists to provide public goods, which are defined as nonrivalous and nonexcludable, such as national defense (where I would only suggest it be provided insofar as the workforce be entirely voluntary).

Redistributibe policies such as PFML or universal healthcare, are indeed theft. You take from Person A to give to Person B when Person A would otherwise not do so. Please help me understand how that is not theft?

[collingreen]

Thanks for the answer and that makes sense for your perspective - government is pretty much just there for you to be able to lay claim to things and all other benefits should be done by explicitly optted-in individuals.

I don't think it's helpful for me to try to take a position about what is and isn't theft by governments you were born into but wish you weren't. I don't even know how to start untangling that one and I think perspective overwhelms any reason there anyway.

I do appreciate your response about my question - very helpful!

[hellojesus]

Thanks, I appreciate that.

I want to be more progressive. I really do! It feels good because typically you get to provide for the less fortunate. But my atomic unit is the individual, and I can't seem to make my belief system reconcile individual liberty and government-enforced charity. That's why I come here sometimes. It helps me talk through things and try to find counterexamples to my ideology.

I appreciate everyone's time and discussions.

[CamperBob2]

Here's one way to think about health care in particular: the money being "stolen" from you has no intrinsic value. It's a number in a computer somewhere. If you were truly alone in the world it would have no value at all. So its value comes from an implied consensus of sorts, one that exists because the surrounding society provides infrastructure ranging from national defense to roads to law and contract enforcement to communications regulation to weather forecasting to basic scientific research to public health to ... whatever.

It happens that most advanced societies consider the widespread availability of medical care to be a similar force multiplier, something that enables every individual in the society to produce more and earn more and reach their full economic potential.

Free-market solutions to health care are problematic because there's nothing free about a market that everyone is forced to participate in by virtue of being alive. Likewise, private insurance models make little sense when every insured customer is virtually guaranteed to file expensive claims at one point or another.

Consequently health care is widely considered a valid area for governmental involvement and taxation. Yes, the money for public health care is "stolen" from you, but again, there is a widespread consensus that the economy that you participate in is healthier as a whole because of that. Just like public subsidies for many other things that many/most people agree are important but that fall outside what conventional markets do well at providing. In a society that didn't attend to such needs, you might have more money from a numeric standpoint, but it would be worth less.

Obviously there are weak points in this argument from a libertarian perspective, but it's very hard to convince people that it's without any merit at all.