[ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:
>     Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'?  On
> the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest.
> But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries
> with it the constant stress of death and despair.  So then we have
> carried ourselves more and more towards governance, the governance of
> LD, which supposes we may pool our ideological moxie into a
> centralized power source that guarantees us what actually seems to be
> MORE freedom--with MORE rules, but a liberation from death-stress.
> This second liberation should obviously be what we are tuned in to
> pursue.  Transhumanism is exactly a negation of death-stress, and
> supposes numerous controls placed on the "free" human body and mind in
> order to protect it (because natural freedom is the freedom to kill
> and be killed.)

I chafe at this characterization of what it means to be libertarian.
Your freedom to swing your fist ends exactly where my nose begins. The
purpose, and just about the only purpose, of government is to protect
us from people who would use their "freedom" to take away the freedom
of another. What you are describing as a state of nature sounds more
like anarchy. Libertarian thought is divorced from anarchy in that
libertarians want a government to protect us from the criminal element
that would take away our freedoms.

The problems come primarily when the government engages in activity
that were it performed by an individual would be a crime. While it
would not be legal for me to take money from you, the government can
take money from you and give it to me. There should be exactly enough
rules (from the libertarian standpoint) to keep us from hurting each
other without consequences, and not one more.

Libertarianism is definitely not "natural freedom", it is "just
freedom" (as in justice).

Today, too much of America is "free as in beer"... and too little
"free as in freedom"

-Kelly