Thanks for your response! It actually gives me a chance to clarify some stuff and respond to common objections, so here it is:

I think you missed the point of the rape, and robbery thing. Those two examples were mentioned only as a thought experiment to show why liberty is a moral necessity in human interactions. Your point that crime must be contained by government is 100% correct and not at all at odds with libertarianism. In fact, rule of law is an essential part of the libertarian ethic. Like I mentioned in the conclusion, "my right to use my fist stops at your face."

The claim that less gov't = less liberty is problematic for two reasons. One is that it's an unhelpful generalization, the second is that it's a bold claim to make without offering evidence for it, especially when there are so many examples to the contrary. When prohibition was repealed in the U.S. things got better not worse. Or the fact that places like China and India have been liberalizing their economies in recent decades and as a result poverty in the developing world has fallen dramatically, just to name a couple of examples

The Somalia comparison confuses limited government with weak, corrupt, unstable government. Those two are not the same. Limited government is one of the fundamental principles behind liberal democracy and we all benefit from it every day. The freedom of religion, for instance, exists because we have a Bill of Rights that limits government (i.e. congress) from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Any time the Supreme Court strikes down an unconstitutional law - Roe v. Wade for example - we are seeing limited government in action.

The argument about "economic use of force" confuses libertarianism with a dogmatic no-holds-bar capitalism which I didn't argue for in the post. I do think that we would benefit from a more free economy. For instance, according to the economic freedom index, the U.S. currently ranks 17th in economic freedom, behind other countries with healthier economies in many respects (Denmark, Finland, Switzerland etc.) But my position as a libertarian is not that government should never regulate any economic activity. It's that government should not micro-manage the economy: pick winners and losers, manipulate supply-demand, control prices etc.

As for unions, they are a perfect example of libertarian values in action! People acting through voluntary means to improve their lot is exactly what a free society is all about. In fact, in places like Denmark and Sweden where there are no minimum wage laws, unions have proved much more effective than government at improving working conditions. That along with good ol' fashion competition for labor which also helps to keep wages up. That's even true in the U.S. which is why if we abolished the federal minimum wage today it would only impact 1.9% of the workforce, most of whom are college kids and teenagers (Cong Budget Office)

As for the claim that "too much government is bad and so is too little…." I completely agree with this. One of the first things I made clear was that my libertarianism has to do with maximizing liberty to the greatest practical extent and that I don't have a "dogmatic list of things that government must never do." That's not a backpedal, nor is it unique to me. Milton Friedman (the Nobel Laurette in economics who championed libertarianism in the later half of the previous century) argued all the time that a true libertarianism boils down to leaving the burden of proof on government to show that its curtailments of freedom are effective and necessary. Yet too often, the approach has been the opposite.

I agree with your point about justice being equally important, but I don't agree that justice and liberty should be balanced. I see liberty as being foundational to justice. Justice, being defined as "giving each their due" requires the honoring of the inherent dignity of each individual. I argued that "liberty is a fundamental property of human dignity," and I proved that point with a thought experiment that removed liberty from several hypothetical human interactions. When I did that, I showed that with nothing more than the removal of liberty, the most beautiful human interactions become violations of human dignity.

In other words, the reason liberty doesn't need to "balanced with justice" is that justice is dependent upon it. But also, the right-to-liberty principle is naturally self-limiting such that there is no conflict between freedom and justice. The idea that people should be forced to not harm each other is not an exception to the libertarian ethic. It is a logically necessary result of it. ("my right to use my fist stops at your face") The only disagreement we should be having is on how to define harm. But that is the subject of a whole other post/debate.

Stay tuned for that one! haha

Thanks again for stopping by!