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Notes -
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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