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You are wrong about the medical spending -- in a libertarian society this would be a personal matter, and in the real world the medical savings from all the additional (mostly) young people who die in crashes rather than getting old and sick far outweighs the additional burden from those who might choose not to wear a seatbelt and incur somewhat more serious injuries than they otherwise would. Same goes for excessive tobacco and drinking.
The second claim is more interesting -- if you think that society has a right to maximize tax revenue from individual citizens, it sounds like government should be able to direct people's labour however it deems optimal, on utilitarian grounds? I'd probably argue against this on the basis of the track record of planned economies in general, but in any case it sounds diametrically opposed to any form of libertarianism (or even anarchism) that I'm familiar with?
I think he is wrong about net tax revenue as well. Something like 60% of Americans receive more in transfers than they pay in taxes over their lifetimes, i.e. they are a net drain on government revenue. Plus, I would wager that lower income people are more likely to not wear seatbelts (and drive less safe cars in general) which would skew this even further.
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Empirically, one does not maximize tax revenue by directing people’s labor. So doing that seems pretty dumb right there. (The great thing about consequentialism is that if something leads to bad consequences you always have the ability to stop doing that thing.)
“You don’t believe in absolute freedom so don’t you support centralized planning?” is not a reasonable understanding of a moderate libertarian position. Central banks can be good though. (I think that issue splits plenty of libertarians too.)
Moreover, the government should not be aiming to maximize tax revenue as a terminal goal. The US government ought to be adhering to its functions as outlined in the constitution; seat belts can fall under “promote the general welfare”.
Consider that most of the Founding Fathers qualify as quite libertarian in their philosophy and yet they certainly were not anarcho-capitalists in their policy.
In the real world, having people dead or crippled from causes where we can reduce the occurrence through low-cost government intervention is going to be bad for the budget, relative to the alternative.
In other words, having seat belts mandated leads to better consequences than the alternative. Making alcohol illegal does not. Clean air laws are generally good (though carbon taxes and such would be better) and occupational licensing is generally bad. Individual issues can be analyzed individually.
Which promotes the general welfare (as pertains to tax revenue; if you mean something else by those words I'll need you to say what exactly that is) more:
or
If you are not quantifying better consequences, I don't think you are making a utilitarian argument either -- 'conventional statist' is my impression, which is fine, popular even -- but I don't see what's libertarian about your philosophy? "You believe in liberty unless someone wants to make a law about it" seems about as good as "You don’t believe in absolute freedom so don’t you support centralized planning?".
My impression here is that you don’t distinguish between anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism and fail to understand how a constitutional system can allow tradeoffs between liberty and other values, using government intervention via a system of limited powers.
By your standards I may be a “conventional statist” when I’m more libertarian than at least 95% of the US population (and 99% globally).
Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism. People not dying as much from car crashes from some cheap webbing and government enforcement is good mathematically in terms of spending and taxes, as well as just “good” in the sense of easily avoidable death is pretty bad all around.
I believe in liberty as a default and a terminal good, but not an absolute one never to be traded off against other issues. Plenty of libertarians are not anarchic-capitalists; I’m not describing some special set of beliefs unique to me.
Everyone (virtually) thinks this though -- people just differ on which issues they think are valid to trade off against. (usually things that they don't like anyways are deemed insignificant infringements on the freedoms of others who disagree, but that's not central)
I think you may need to provide your definition of libertarianism if you think (for example) that current-day USA is a reasonable instantiation (or at least not incompatible) -- IOW, 'if your libertarianism has brought you here, what good is it?'
I assure you that everyone does not think this way, either for liberty or utilitarianism. Especially outside the US.
The US as originally created was very libertarian. Government growth in its reach over the last century or so has gotten us too much government, and so on average we would be a lot better off with less of it.
Libertarianism is not a very natural tendency for most humans and we have regressed to the mean. The MAGA turn in the GOP does not bode well for a libertarian future, sadly.
This specifically:
"I believe in liberty as a default and a terminal good, but not an absolute one never to be traded off against other issues."
I think you would struggle to find much opposition to in Western countries today -- but some people think that it should be traded off against the harms of guns, drugs, seatbelts, or whatever. It's the threshold for 'never' that's a bit definitional I think.
If a few quality studies determined to your satisfaction that the absolute harm to society (dollars, deaths, whatever you prefer) of guns or liquor (or some other thing that you don't currently want to ban) were greater than that of seatbelt non-compliance, would you reverse your position on that issue?
If X is a libertarian gun nut/prohibitionist, Y is a libertarian gun banner/drinker, and Z is a libertarian vaccine mandater/pothead due to their personal consequentialist calculations -- what does it mean that they all call themselves libertarians?
Your last paragraph there explains the continuing irrelevance of the libertarians as a political movement, yes.
I don’t favor banning alcohol. I think it is good to have restrictions on it. Many such cases.
I’ve been in Europe of late and explaining to my colleagues how many guns I own and the benefits of broad freedom of speech tells me you are quite wrong about “opposition in Western countries today.” Or zoning, or occupational licensing, or free trade, or education spending.
Several people here are severely wrong about how rare just bog standard neoliberalism is today, let alone anything approaching libertarianism, particularly the anarcho-capitalist puritan version.
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