Apparently this is too long to post as a comment, so....

[postmodernsmile]

Everyone needs to hear this anyway. It's really more important than most people make it out to be... at least, or especially, in principle. Here we go... An essay concerning the new "clean" air act:

It isn't really a case of allowing people to do things. People don't need to be allowed to do what they want - that's pretty much the definition of

Comments

[postmodernsmile]

Moving on... your attack on libertarianism is far more undefended than a libertarian state. Libertarianism is not anarchy. We libertarians just have a bit more faith in human beings being able to figure out what makes them money and what's a good idea to eat, wear, etc. than nanny-staters do today. If there really were a lot of complaints about smoking, power to the restaurant owners for making a good decision in "cleaning" the air up. The government just ends up spending a lot of money manging reaaaaally HUGE bureaucratic organizations (monopolies) that run charities, schools, businesses/utilities, and more. Making these public makes them have to appeal to America so they can make money. All the government has to do is increase taxes and get re-elected - which is easy to do with two-party pop politics. I could argue all day about the economic and social benefits or libertarianism, but this isn't relevant and isn't the best place; i'll just address what you did: a libertarian state isn't stupid, so they will have a military. This will be publicly funded and taxation will be imposed on the public because a military is indeed a necessary part of any state - libertarians believe only the necessary functions of government should be done by the government because the rest can be handled better by the private (real) sector. Crime would also not increase because police are another necessary function of the state. [sidenote: it would probably decrease actually, since many petty criminal acts (private, personal drug use) would be legalized and made into a taxable/regulated business - and to all you worryworts... this would happen over a long span, not just all of the sudden - and the black market (mafia, mob, gangs, etc.) would disappear because it would no longer be able to profit while in competition with sound businesses ]. The environmental regulation that you briefly mentioned is arguable within libertarian circles, but individuals and interest groups, through rallying the public and informing them, can easily keep the environment protected by using scientific studies and publicizing information. The government will still regulate the things that no-one else has the authority to regulate, qand in fact they'll be able to do it quicker and spend more time actually thinking and reading about it because they won't have way too much work cut out for them like they do now [anyone who's interested should see how much time congressmen get to read massive documents - if you want a hint, it's not nearly enough time to read a fraction of them].

Semantics can be fun, but a privately-owned (non-government) business should not be controlled by the government no matter what you want to call it.