Kirk Olson

Well, like I said in my first post I have mixed feelings about it. I stated my objections in my other posts, but it's just a plain fact that hardly anyone down here has ever heard of Stefan Molyneux, or Murray Rothbard, or Hans Herman Hoppe, or even people like Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand for that matter. But they have heard of Ron Paul, and most of them do want to know more about what he stands for. I suppose that would not have been the case if he hadn't "run for office". I'm off to bed, nice talkin to ya, I'll visit your blog any day soon!

Of course not, I never said that. It's not advocating the starving of children I'm worried about. It's the ultimate consequence of NAP that you may not use force against someone who starves its own child since they don't violate your property rights. I understand all that. I don't think a "who cares" approach on this matter will bring libertarianism much sympathy though..

You have more than that: your freedom of speech to proclaim the immorality of all the things you speak of. In the end I think only sound arguments can change peoples minds, not elections.

Actually, we sort of have a history like that in the Netherlands as well, although it's a couple of hundred years longer ago. We fought Spanish statist agression, and taxation, back in the sixteenth century, We won! and for a century we had a minarchist society that brought us unprecedented prosperity, it's still referred to as our "Golden Age". We seem to have forgotten these lessons though. People now tend to turn to the government for every single aspect of their lives, and, worse than that, the lives of others. But... nowadays more and more people actually start to realize the government is doing an extremely bad job on pretty much everything she does, and demands an extremely high price for it. You can feel this dissatisfaction not only here but all over Europe, what with the Euro crisis and all. Perhaps there's hope after all.

I actually live in such a society. Although I have to admit our government rarely agressively "squashes" resistance attempts. Mainly because there hardly ever is one, mostly sheeple down here. I guess you would be somewhat right if you voted for changing the gun laws or for taking away the right of the government to "squash" resistance, since in those cases you would not be voting for the initiation of violence (as you would by voting for killing blondes). I still feel however that by participating in a statist election on these matters you give the wrong signal because, as I said before, you then implicitly agree these matters may be settled by taking votes. What if your side loses? Then you also lose all credibility to denounce the very matters you want to change. "Hey we gave you a chance to change it, but you lost, now shut up will you!" You have a point, I agree in this day of age it's impossible not to use at least some government facilities since they're so omnipresent. I do feel however we should actively try to minimize it, and never stop advocating free market solutions. But I'm sure that's something we DO agree on :-)

I fundamentally disagree with you on this point. By taking part in a vote on whether to kill all blondes (or kill any blonde, or initiate any kind of agression for that matter) you implicitly agree with the fact that killing blondes can be a matter that is settled by taking votes. It can't, it's murder.

They usually call themselves "social-democrats", to obscure the fact they're downright socialists. And there are an awful lot of them I'm afraid, still much work to do.

Same here, my parents are fairly liberal (mind you: the word 'liberal' in Europe still means what it originally meant, it does not have the leftist connotation it has in the US, I guess you would call them "classical liberals") I still have a hard time though convincing them I only take there views to the next logical step.

I have mixed feelings about the matter. On the one hand I feel that "running for office" is maybe the worst example you could set if you truly believe in the libertarian (NAP) principles. On the other hand it's a fact that over here in Europe it's Ron Paul, and only Ron Paul, that actually got some people start thinking about the evils of big government in general, and the necessity of governments in particular. Surely Molyneux, Rothbard, Block, Hoppe or any other devout anarchist are right in condemning him as a hypocrite, or worse, but at least people know who he is and they want to know more about this theory called "libertarianism". Is that a bad thing? We even have a Libertarian Party here in the Netherlands now. I didn't vote for them because of the reason stated above. Some of my friends did however and I somehow felt that at least that was a step in the right direction. (A small step though, they got about 4000 votes, out of a total of nearly 9.5 million votes casted :-)

Great post. It's questions like these that turned me from minarchist to anarchist. Nice to have them neatly summed up though, comes in handy in discussions with those "Hey I want a small government too, but surely we need one for the courts/police/army/roads/dikes/whatever.... now do we?" people. And there are a lot of them out there.

Personally, reason nr. 6 (the one about children) is the only one that makes me feel uneasy. The others can be dealt with quite easily, as some of you (and others on the orginal blog) have demonstrated. The one about letting one's own children starve to death I still have difficulties coping with however. Because no matter how you twist and turn things, it IS the ultimate consequence of NAP, I honestly see now way around it. Whenever some friend of mine starts to grasp the idea of NAP (and luckily most of them do now) there's always one that brings up this very argument and I have a hard time refuting it. I usually start by stating the fact that people who will want to delibaretely starve their own children are extremely rare. So rare that making it explicitly illegal (and by doing so violate the NAP) probably won't save many children because people who do these kind things are so psychologically disturbed they will try to do it regardless of the legality of their behaviour. Sadly though, people like this exist and I feel quite uneasy advocating a theory that, in its ultimate consequence, can not punish them. I also state the fact that you can always feed these children by yourself. Perhaps even taking them away from their parents can be allowed by a libertarian justice system , although I'm not sure of that. Children are not anyone's property but can you take them away from their parents if they do a bad job raising them? Any thoughts on that are welcome.Finally I resort to stating that although libertarianism can be considered a philosophy, it is also an economic theory (a very good one I might add, most of my friends will at least give me that) As such it concerns acting, reasoning people. Since young children are no economic actors in that way they should not be subjected to the rigorous consequences libertarianism may have as philosophy anymore than to any other religious or philosophical theory. In other words, although you think libertarianism is the most ethical, civilized and humane life philosphy out there, and you think you have the arguments to prove it, it doesn't give you the right to starve your own child. Or does it?