I'm a libertarian in both philosophy and party membership.
People must be allowed to do anything they want so long as they do no DIRECT harm to others. Indirect harm is always debatable and is best resolved in civil court with injunction always a possible solution.
Government exists only to do those things which the people, individually or collectively, want done but cannot do for themselves. These days that's a shrinking list. Mail, transportation, health care, these days even justice--government is no better at these things than we are.
Welfare--Americans were the most charitable people on earth until confiscatory tax rates destroyed their discretionary income. Private charities such as the Salvation Army do a better job of supporting the poor and getting them back to work, while weeding out the cheats, than public assistance. If every dollar the government collects for welfare were actually given to the poor, the average poor family would suddenly have an income of $40K.
Education--Some children SHOULD be left behind. Let their parents deal with them. The Archdiocese of New York educates a student body 50% of the size of the NY public schools, with only 10% of the number of administrative staff.
The Nanny State--We learned from Prohibition that laws against drug use end up causing more violence, crime, grief, and damage to the fabric of society, than drugs themselves. Caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco cause more health, economic, and social problems than all illegal drugs combined. Prescription drugs kill more people than illicit drugs by two orders of magnitude.
Economy--Adam Smith's free market was supposed to be made up of producers and consumers of more or less equal stature. He'd turn over in his grave at the concept of corporations with the money and power of small nations doing business with individuals. The "holding company," which allows a 25-year-old MBA to direct the fate of a subsidiary in which he effectively owns less than one percent of the stock and doesn't even know what it does, would make Adam Smith throw up. Corporations are the new aristocracy, created by governments to deflect our attention away from their own misdeeds, and largely immune from anyone's control or punishment. The post-industrial era will ultimately not require the huge concentrations of capital that industrialization did, and with luck we'll see the corporation become an anachronism.
Taxes--institute a hiring freeze in all levels of government. When an employee leaves, retires, or dies, the position cannot be refilled except by transfer. When the government work force, budget, and abuse of power is reduced to its levels of merely twenty years ago, then we'll talk. Government has become the employer of last resort for people to make a living by "administering" each other. Government programs like the tax code, welfare rules, contracting, zoning, subsidies, asset forfeiture have become exercises for teaching people how to cheat their way through complicated systems.
The Constitution--A really good idea, it should be enforced. All three branches of government are guilty of criminal malpractice by the way they spit on it every day.
The environment--Increased prosperity is reducing the birth rate everywhere, which is the key to saving the planet. The other key is wrestling political power away from the energy companies, whose influence keeps us "going to work" every day even though we all have computers and telephones in our homes. Once telecommuting becomes commonplace energy consumption, pollution, and urban sprawl will dwindle. We'll also get to know our own children.
Defense--A good idea and probably one of the few legitimate duties of government. But meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation is not "defense," whether by providing it with arms or by sending troops to overthrow it. Such meddling invariably results in one of those countries shooting back at us or its citizens becoming suicide bombers. American citizens are free to meddle in other nations' affairs according to their conscience, even to the point of forming militias to assassinate their leaders, but not under our flag.
Capital punishment--The ultimate in frightening government power with an immense chance of error, I don't see how a libertarian can support it. Only for terrorists, because if you imprison one his friends will take ten of your friends hostage and demand a trade. And for rapists and child abusers, because unless a breakthrough in clinical psychology occurs they are not reformable and I want zero chance of them ever getting back out.
Abortion--As my wife says, "I'll give a flying **** what MEN think about it as soon as one of you *******s gets PREGNANT."
Religion--I'm not terribly impressed with its track record over the course of human history. But as long as you don't try to impose YOUR beliefs on ME, I'll try to respect the First Amendment. It's okay to form small communities of like-minded people, living by their own rules. That's healthy social experimentation. But once a community gets so big that failure to conform to its rules can result in inability to find housing or work, then it becomes a CITY and cities are by definition places of extreme diversity and tolerance. The threshold population is about 20K.
That's pretty much how I feel about everything. I don't like a lot of what's going on but the entire concept of civilization demands that we tolerate diversity, even things and people we hate.
Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about my computer. Sorry, it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about because after nearly forty years in IT it's just not that interesting or enjoyable any more. Therefore I own a Macintosh.
