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“…we can agree to disagree.“

I never agreed to that!

Your statement is true only if we agree on the premise. My premise is that government involvement, in the present system, is always negative and always results in the world becoming a worse place. It’s the broken window fallacy. Your banning of a book containing lies, while appearing on the surface to be a positive thing, is completely counteracted by the banning of the book, which is always a negative thing.

Individuals must be free to fail, free to read whatever they can, and use their own mind and sense of morality to determine what is good and what is bad. The government stepping in to do that for them is, in my mind and the minds of other like-minded freedom-loving individuals, always and forever a negative.

It’s OK, albatross, we can agree to disagree.

There’s a pretty big difference between these two statements:

a. Government can never contribute something positive to the world in some area.

b. Government involvement in some area is likely to do more harm than good, on average.

For example, there are books in the world that are full of lies, some lies that will lead people to screw themselves over. It would be possible (and surely has happened) for a government to ban those destructive books, and thereby make the world a better place. And yet, most of us don’t want the government in the book banning business. It’s not that we don’t think they would ban some books that really were bad influences on the world. It’s that we don’t trust anyone with the power to decide which books may and may not be read by adults–we expect that giving someone that power will lead to them banning a lot of good and useful but controversial books, silencing their political and social opponents, etc.

A smaller fraction of people went to school back then. If your local public school, with all its flaws and organizational dysfunctions, can send 50% of its students home after the 8th grade, they, too, will be able to demand a lot more from the high school kids.

http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp

There are people who believe that it’s impossible for the government to ever contribute positively toward something.

There, fixed it for you. And guilty as charged, for all the perfectly valid and sound logical and moral arguments presented ad infinitum in these comments.

A libertarian doesn’t throw the fat man off the bridge because it’s wrong to kill for any reason, with very narrow exceptions for immediate self-defense. The respondent does not have to take action to solve problems not of his own making. Therefore, the five workers die, because as you noted, they understood there were risks in their choice of employment.

It’s that simple, from a libertarian perspective. Not sure what that other speculation was on your part.

Thanks for picking up the slack, Elliot. Banging my head against the wall makes me tired. The plundered money fact trumps every other argument for me. That others don’t agree with that premise merely indicates their violent statist tendencies and/or brainwashing.

Religious person: Either “God willed it to be, so I shall not interfere” or “I’ll pray for it to stop!”
Communist: “Lets all throw ourselves in front of the train together while simultaneously shooting the conductor and passengers. All must share the misery.”
Feminist: “Throw a fat man, yes. But not a fat woman. And women are never fat. They are simply plus-sized and should be loved the same.”
Libertarian: “Is it a public transporation train? Let the fucker crash into City Hall.”
Republican: “Those people chose to get on the train, so they deserve their fate. Then again, that fat guy got himself fat and perched himself above the rails, so he deserves to get pushed. Wait, are any of them donors?”
Democrat: “Oh, no, we musn’t let the passengers die! But we musn’t kill the fat man, either. How about, NO ONE dies? Wait, are any of them donors?”
PETA member: “Clear any animals, insects, microbes, or pieces of dust blowing in the wind out of the way!”

Any others?

Guy Administering Test: Would you throw the fat man off the bridge to save the lives of the five trolley passengers?:

“Libertarian”: Absolutely. It only makes sense to sacrifice the individual to save the many.

GAT: Well, it so happens that the fat man also has a very fat wallet. Would you be willing to take the wallet and throw it in front of the trolley to save the passengers?

L: Well…he gets the money back, right?

GAT: No, the money gets ground up in the trolley’s gears. He doesn’t get it back.

L: Well, then, no! That’d be like TAXATION! I’m a libertarian! I’ve got principles!

Kids, these days…

Les (#112): “But what tends to happen is that people make excuses for their team. It happens just as much on the right as on the left. People who think that Henry Kissinger deserves respect are no different from people who feel the same way about Che Guevara.“

I’ve never seen anyone sporting a Kissinger t-shirt or an nightclub called “Henry” with a neon icon of his likeness.

The Nazis had their Nuremberg and anyone who praises them is dismissed from decent society and relegated to the kook fringe.

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Castro, and the Kims died or will die old men, never being subjected to trial. (Ceauşescu was one exception, though his crimes never seemed to make an impact on people pushing socialist agendas.) The New York Times still has Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize (at least as recently as a few years ago), but no newspaper which published articles by a reporter who denied the Jewish Holocaust could get away with such a travesty.

No, the “right” doesn’t get away with it “just as much”. For that matter, the underlying premises of the “left-right” political model are loaded with bias. Hitler and Stalin were nearly identical in their abominations, but they are stupidly put as far apart on the “spectrum” as possible. Meanwhile, chumps like Mark Potok of the SPLC get away with classifying libertarians like Judge Andrew Napolitano as “right wing extremists”, as though he were closer to fascism than the Obama/Pelosi/Reid bunch who engaged in economic fascism by interfering in banks, insurance companies, and automakers.

There is no parity.

Aaron (#110): “Delta, there are people who refuse to believe that it’s possible for the government to ever contribute positively toward something.“

While some people may make such a claim, you’ll find that most laissez-faire advocates don’t make such absolute statements.

I could do all kinds of “positive” things if I get to use your money to pay for it, on top of giving myself special advantages to keep you from competing on an equal basis with me (or at all, in the case of a monopoly).

That only government could carry out the Apollo program in the 60s is testament to the power of using plundered money. But even with all of those advantages, there are copious examples of the suppression of free market choices resulting in economic disaster. Take the USSR and North Korea, for starters. Then look at Social Security, Medicare, ObamaPelosiCare, the “Green Jobs” in Spain, price controls for cities under siege, etc..

Yes, sometimes the unethical use of brute force accomplishes a goal easier than respecting the freedom of others. But so what? It’s unethical.

Using reason to convince others is the only ethical approach, aside from the use of force in defense.

“The Internet was created by the government, pure and simple. Private industry did nothing comparable.“

What the government did to kick off the internet was peanuts compared to how private enterprise has enhanced internet-related technology and used it to implement new market possibilities.

Private industry has done magnificent things, far beyond the scope of the original ARPANET. All sorts of inventions, commercially profitable innovations, skyscrapers, factories, etc. were made while the government only served as an obstacle.

“This is a pure and honest fact. Government 1, private industry 0.“

More like government 100, industry 10,000,000.

“Now, once you add on a whole bunch of other things, the situations gets far murkier, with plenty of negatives and positives get added on both columns.“

It’s ultimately pointless to try to guess what would happen if the government had been kept to a minimum and people allowed to engage in free market activity. If you think “Obama Saved Capitalism” or other fairy tales, then you’ve already made up your mind what result you want and you won’t do anything but imagine a bunch of Madoffs and Enrons wreaking havoc.

While I can only guess that things would be much better for most people, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s ethical. Spending other people’s money to do “positive” things isn’t ethical. End of story.