I think that making the case from first principles for something like socialism is often easier because it is obviously “for” things rather than against them. In contrast as libertarians we often argue that we aren’t interested in what society-the-group tells us to do. I think tribalism is fundamentally appealing to people and that is our problem. We need to argue for the individual rather than against the collective because arguing against that isn’t something we are likely to win.

I may say that it is a practical first principle, because of mutual protection; if I uphold your right to life, you will uphold mine. But that doesn’t necesssarily hold either. We could adopt the alternate principle that “only Englishmen have a right to life”; Englishmen will then offer each other mutual protection, but we can invade Wales and kill the Welsh and steal their land and stuff and derive great benefit. This principle is actually more beneficial to me than the universalist one.

Libertarians spend a lot of time in pointless circular and furious argument; I think that there’s a Godwin type law that all libertarian discussions if suffiiciently long, will eventually devolved to an argument either about Anarcho-Capitalism or Land Value Tax, regardless of what they started off being about. Our marginalised status means we spend much of our time seeking ideological purity, like a bunch of Trots huddled round a table in a pub clutching copies of Socialist Worker and arguing furiously about what they will do when the revolution comes, regardless of the fact that it never will and endlessly ejecting each other from their various societies for ideological incorrectness.

In reality, most “libertarians” are just sick to death of the state interfering with us and just wish it would fuck off and leave us alone, and would be quite content, in truth, with just a smaller government and fewer stupid laws and the right to sit in the pub and smoke a ciggie again. We really just need to foster more of that general feeling in the population at large, to emphasise that they are individuals (“I’m not!”) and thus should have some kind of rights not to be strip searched and anally probed in the high street for photographing a post box. If we can stir some sufficiency of that general feeling among our fellows that leads them to demand freedom instead of restraint from the political parties, we’ll have started to win the battle. What we’re fighting for is a change of political direction. Where that ultimately leads, at this stage, isn’t really that important.

It does bother me that somebody on the verge of losing their faith in socialism/conservatism, wandering into the blogosphere, and finding libertarianism as this extreme thing full of arguments about ideological purity may be rather put off. A person just wanting lower taxes and the freedom to smoke may not want to leap into bed with radical anarchists, kind of thing.

Adam Smith thought government should prevent its worst effects (including waste of talent), but it’s not very difficult to see how such arrangements could be made in line with libertarian principles.

“In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently only one or two. …The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. …His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. …this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.”

http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/ClubStead_Master_Lease