albatross (#91): “Only in the same sense that you agreed to peaceably abide those things by paying taxes, or continuing to live in the country.“

That makes no logical sense.

Paying taxes is a ransom on your freedom and your property. Don’t pay, lose your things and go to jail.

Staying anywhere is just living. Why do you or anyone in Washington get to decide what living within lines on a map entails as implicit consent? There is nothing to substantiate such a claim, except popularity and force. Those things are not ethical justifications.

Besides, my ancestors were here before the American Revolution, a few before Columbus. If anyone should leave America, it should be people who fail to abide by the fundamental principles of respecting the rights of the individual: life, liberty, and property. You want to use force? Go find a country with a history of monarchies or military dictatorships.

“I mean, I am peaceably abiding those and many worse things, and presumably so are you.“

So what? If you were held by pirates, you’d probably avoid anything which would cause them to shoot you. That’s not consent. It’s giving in to immoral, aggressive force.

Voting, on the other hand, is a deliberate act which involves agreeing to the outcome.

I can’t easily avoid taxes. I’m not going to leave my country. But I can refrain from participating in the pointless exercise in picking which of the Coke or Pepsi party bosses will hold the reins. Your vote is meaningless, mathematically, particularly in most states. Neither side rolls back the awful infringements on our rights, anyway.

It’s the illusion of choice. Why be stupid and fall for that?

Only in the same sense that you agreed to peaceably abide those things by paying taxes, or continuing to live in the country. I mean, I am peaceably abiding those and many worse things, and presumably so are you. (Or maybe not. Are you planning a guerilla warfare campaign to shrink the money supply and cut government spending on stimulatory boondoggles? I’m visualizing something like helicopter ben in reverse–the helicopter flies overhead, vaccuuming up loose dollars and shredding them to undo quantatative easing.).

A libertarian might reason that a Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or the like would best protect individual rights. However, voting for such a candidate also means that when Obama, Romney, or any other anti-individual-rights candidate wins the contest, he or she will maintain the status quo on drug prohibition, war, surveillance state, etc., as well as heaping new costs and rights infringements popular with the voters in that party.

In short: If you voted for Bob Barr, John McCain, or Mickey Mouse in 2008 and you agreed to peacefully abide by Stimulus, ObamaCare, QE-1, QE-2, etc..

The question is what mechanisms are appropriate for society to use to protect itself from the unqualified and incompetent. You might have:

a. Some jobs or tasks or areas of work that are off-limits, unless you have some licensing recognized by the government. I think practicing law and practicing medicine are both examples of this–you can be (and people have been) sent to jail over practicing medicine without a license, even if you clearly state to your patients that you are not a licensed doctor. Another example might be commercial drivers’ licenses. And this is also where a lot of rather silly rent-seeking occupational licensing comes in–the local florists all get together and lobby to ban anyone selling flowers without a florists’ license as a way to keep out competition.

b. Places where government or private entities require a license (perhaps from a government, perhaps not) in order to do business with you. For example, a given business may decide that they want a health office on their site, and that they want a real, licensed nurse to staff it. There is no legal requirement imposed from above about this–you could have a health office where the secretary handed out band-aids and tylenol with no training. But the boss might decide he’d rather have a nurse around in case someone really got sick. Similarly, regardless of licensing requirements, I won’t go to a chiropractor, accupuncturist, herbalist, or practitioner of reiki for my own health, and would not send my kids to one. There are a bunch of places around here where chiropractors and accupuncturists do business, and I think they’re licensed in my state, but I’d rather see someone with a lot more medical training. For that matter, I much prefer getting normal medical care from MDs and DOs than from PAs or NPs, all else being equal.

c. Third parties might require some licensing. For example, I think if you have some kinds of insurance-covered work done on your house, you have to use some kind of licensed plumber or electrician or whatever. In that case, this is your insurance company not wanting to either write a check to your useless brother in law for miswiring your house, or to pay for the house after the wiring fails and the house burns down. Government need not be involved at all.

All three of those are ways that society protects itself from unqualified people. The libertarian position is that (a) is almost always a bad way to do things, and that (b) and (c) are better. Personally (as someone who’s not a libertarian but at least is a fellow-traveler), I think actually banning the practice of some field without the state-recognized license should only be used in really critical stuff like practicing medicine or criminal defense law or in building code related stuff (where the risk of burning your house down or having it fall over affects more than just you). The problem is that (a) is a great way for some field that really ought not to need licensing for any public health or welfare reason to exclude outsiders and make some extra money. And so we get licensing for hairdressers and florists and interior decorators.

By contrast, I think (b) and (c) are pretty good ideas. I am totally on board with not going to someone whose medical degree came from Crackerjack Box University for my health problems, and using state medical licensing is a reasonable first cut for that even if there’s no coercion, and I’m allowed to go to Dr Crackerjack or to the guy who has a real MD, did a real residency, and is licensed to practice medicine in my state.

Delta (#85): “You may find that ‘libertarianism just un-happens’ once you know what some of its core tenets are.“

Libertarianism: the radical notion that other people are not your property.

Some people, inculcated with statist notions of morality before being shown the ethical failures of using aggressive force to rule others, lack the character to attend to principles of individual rights, once they realize that the reality of respecting those rights is, like, hard, and stuff.

Before WWII, local pharmacists did a lot of diagnosis and treatment of common ailments. This was especially true in poorer communities, who could not afford doctors. After WWII, they were forbidden from doing this because they were not licensed medical professionals, and this was upheld in the Supreme Court (I believe).

The idea was that we would regulate ourselves to better quality care. Clearly we didnt: because there was a lack of competition, and high barriers to entry, MDs can charge a lot more. The poor, who used to go to their pharmacist, didn’t now go to the doctor: they just got sick, or went to the ER in emergencies. Some of the problems were mitigated by health insurance but, of course, this was merely shifting the problem to employers and taxpayers. America now has the most expensive health care in the world and worse outcomes than any comparable nation.

Ironically, when you go to the doctor now, you are most likely to see a nurse.

1. Most Amoricons, be they “journalists” (one of which Patricia Williams is obviously NOT), other white-collar professionals, or ordinary blue-collar working stiffs, have no clue what “libertarianism” really is. Ask any person at random to describe the key tenet of libertarianism (to most of us it is the NAP), and you’ll probably get anything ranging from “someone who wants to legalize weed” to “someone who wants to deregulate all businesses.”

2. As a few other posters here have noted, most Amoricons, be they “journalists” (one of which Patricia Williams is obviously NOT), other white-collar professionals, or ordinary blue-collar working stiffs, lack the critical thinking skills to realize that there are any other ideological alternatives to the anachronistic, inaccurate, and irrelevant “left” and “right.”

3. Patricia (obviously NOT a journalist) Williams is as ignorant, lazy, unprofessional, and ill-informed as everyone else in her (dying and increasingly irrelevant) profession.

4. (Observation-combined-with-prediction): The Nation‘s readers will swallow Patricia Williams’s error-riddled nonsense at face value and hang on every word of it, as would readers of any other lie-and-error-spewing Establishment rag (see observation number 2 above as to why this is the case).

You’ve got a responsibility to your family, right?

How ’bout your closest friends?

What about your not-so-close friends?

Obviously, the responsibility to your 300 million closest friends is less than that, but do the lesser responsibilities overlap sufficiently to be scaled up for efficiency’s sake?

What’s the principle here? Does getting government off our backs trump the responsibility to the citizens?

I’m sorry; who has what responsibility to the citizens?

Wow, you are not even on the same planet as what I said.

I just meant retire away from all the noise and bullshit. It’s not worth it. There’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well be somewhere quiet.

I’m not a libertarian. I’m not any ideology. Rigid ideologies are for weak minds. There’s no point. It’s sound and fury signifying nothing while the sociopaths in charge laugh at you.

I see licensing as society protecting itself from unqualified individuals.

Milton Friedman: “A citizen of the United States who under the laws of various states is not free to follow the occupation of his own choosing unless he can get a license for it, is likewise being deprived of an essential part of his freedom.” – Capitalism and Freedom.

So anyone who wants to practice medicine should just go for it? I mean, college, med school, internship, residency – that takes time and money. I’d be deprived of my freedom to make money if I followed all the rules.

What’s the principle here? Does getting government off our backs trump the responsibility to the citizens?

So that’s batshit crazy. Maybe if she picked up a dictionary, or a freshman political science, sociology, or anthropology book she might just figure out that a Civil Society is that which is SEPARATE FROM GOVERNMENT, by definition. So really the policies she believes Ayn Rand, and then by extension Paul Ryan, would support of eliminating government programs actually is CLOSER TO empowering civil society the way she pretends to want.

If you’re going to talk about things like civil society, libertarianism, objectivism, or whatever, at least know a little about what the hell you’re talking about.

Sounding erudite might work for trolls ate The Nation, but it doesn’t work for the rest of us that know a few things about a few things.

Actually Dunmore, most engineers are not licensed PE’s. Certainly there is no requirement that your typical aeronautical engineer at Boeing have a PE and most do not. The vast majority of all the engineers who designed the electronics that actually control the plane your flying in were likewise unlicensed. Most the engineers who design the engines that power the planes are also not licensed PE’s. Now that you are aware of this, are you going to refrain from flying in those planes designed by people only “calling themselves” engineers without government approval?