I hold to libertarian beliefs; that is, I believe that people should be free to make their own way in life and to pursue their own happiness, within reason. But as much as I'd like positive anarchy, where people don't treat each other badly simply because it would not be beneficial to them to do so, the fact is that this system of "government" is not a viable one, and is not likely to become so. Neither an excessively big nor an excessively small government will produce good results; I'm in favor of the bare minimum size of government necessary to get the job done. Nowadays, that tends to be pretty big, but it's not a reason to proffer the government even more influence than they already have.
Your introduction there is almost self-defeating. First you profess that your motivation for wanting the government to be a certain size is due to your personal preference for "positive anarchy" rather than stewardship and defense of the people, which disqualifies your authority on civil grounds. (Sadly, your mistake was being too honest...a mistake you will learn with time not to make, which is a shame.)
Next, you further undermine you position by saying that you favor the smallest effective government. So does anybody who tackles government from a civil perspective rather than an ideological one, myself included. Such an assertion is meaningless, and in its meaninglessness even becomes a liability. The discussion hinges on what constitutes "effective."
Lastly, you fold your entire tent in the last line, admitting that the effective size of the government "nowadays" tends to be big. I certainly don't mean to be hard on you, but your argument is off to a very poor start.
The war on drugs should be ended, and drugs should be legalized. I don't believe they should be regulated or taxed, either. The government takes enough of our money as it is, and it has no right to tell me what I should put in my body by my own choice even if it is likely to kill me.
I don't have a very strong opinion on this--or, rather, I have two extremely strong, competing opinions that prevent me from having an overall opinion--but for the time being I would suggest the compromise that drugs remain illegal (except for medical marijuana), but that enforcement and punishment of nonviolent drug offenses be greatly reduced. I might also favor changes in the law that allow states and local governments to fund "clean drug" programs as a part of their healthcare systems, but I'm not certain of that.
In any case, drugs appear to be a classic example of a narrow, relatively well-defined issue that demonstrates a philosophy of larger government versus smaller government. But there are nothing of the sort. The issue is more complicated than anybody has given it credit for in this thread:
I support, like you Hadriel, the right of people to control their own bodies. But that's not the real issue here. The real issue is the acquisition, possession, or distribution of dangerous substances.
This, in contrast to bodily self-control, should be regulated--and heavily. Such control is vital to, variously, human health, public safety, ecological integrity, and sometimes even civil stability. Drug control is related to issues like toxic waste disposal and gun control, both of which concern the status of dangerous substances (or materials).
If you want to kill yourself, that's fine. You don't need illegal drugs for that. The reason drugs are illegal is that practically all of them are habit-forming, and the vast majority of them are clearly detrimental to human health. They're also expensive as all heck, and remain so even in places like the Netherlands where many drugs are legal to use. This triple combination is very harmful to society, because people get snagged into these spirals of chemical dependency that sap them both of their health and their money. This becomes not only a failure of society to care for its people, but a drain on society because of the inevitable expenses involved with policing and treating drug abusers and drug dealing operations.
The government ought to be empowered to control hazardous substances, and usually it is. Rightly so. With drugs, most of the opposition, ironically, comes from the leftist half of the spectrum--people who either have a personal stake in drug legalization, or support the drug-friendly lifestyle either in practice or in principle. I propose to you that these people have a bias in their judgment that renders them less fit to decide on the issue.
I don't know the exactitudes of the law, so there may be some room for a legal rebuttal here, but as I see it, the pro-legalization camp is begging the question by trying to make this a case of self-control when in fact the sticking point is substance control.
Further, I consider the very idea of an income tax an attempt to morally justify theft, but if there truly is no other way to ensure that society runs, then at least don't spend the money on worthless endeavors.
Income taxation is one of the most progressive taxes of all. Under a well-designed tax code, people who take more in income, pay proportionally more in taxes. This is how it ought to be. The income tax is the single, cleanest tax I can imagine. The ugly taxes are the ones that put disproportionate pressure on the least-enfranchised people. A good example of this is the sales tax. A billionaire and a pauper will pay the same tax on a given taxable sale, yet to the billionaire that tax will be negligible while to the pauper it may be insurmountable. (This is similar to one of the most ugly secrets of all those people who win prizes and stuff on television game shows.)
But in any case, the inherent concept of taxation is never "theft," and only the most anti-government radicals would say otherwise. I like the way Bill Gates' dad put it, in the Seattle Times a few years back:
The father of the world's richest man does not subscribe to the Great Man Theory, which lionizes individuals who pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Nobody makes it alone, he says. A person's physical comfort and opportunity have almost everything to do with the society into which he is born. Lucky if it's America; unlucky if it's Bangladesh or Botswana.
Imagine, he says.
"You'll never have a million dollars, never $100,000, never even $5,000, however smart or ambitious you are. The conditions of society don't allow for that. And you'll probably die of AIDS.
"That's the way it is. Those institutions and those phenomena of an orderly society don't exist in a vacuum. They exist because people pay taxes. If you stopped, all those things would die the next day. The police, the courts, securities markets."
He's right. And, in a beautiful nutshell, that is why economic conservatism doesn't work. Tax haters are either greedy, or ignorant--or both.
What ultimately makes people happy is personal freedom. In order to build a society where everyone can have lasting happiness, everyone needs to have as much control over their own destinies as possible.
This is not true. In fact, personal freedom when thrust upon people who are not prepared for it, results in crime and oppression externally and mental anguish internally. It is one of the (many) reasons that democracy has not flowered at the barrel of a gun in the heavily Islamic countries of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Humans are creatures of habit, routine, comfort, and familiarity. I suspect most animals are. "Personal freedom" is a repudiation of that mindset, and cannot be taken lightly. Despite America's endless rhetoric about freedom and liberty, these things are not the beginning of a happy existence. They require many prerequisites. Naked freedom is a menace, not a virtue. I like the way my British friend Stephen once put it to me:
Ask not, "Free from what?" but "Free for what?"
You anti-government types talk and talk about being free
from the government's controlling hand as a fundamental ideal, yet I have not heard in this lifetime a coherent, realistic description of what those freedoms would then achieve at that same, fundamental level.
