Fundamentals of Libertarianism

Too much von Mises on the brain:

Everything around you, everything you wear, all of your material goods were produced by society. They were produced by individuals specializing in certain trades to make goods that you decided to purchase to make your life better or more enjoyable. That is the benefit bestowed upon individuals by their decision to participate in society. Society is not the same as government. Government did not create anything you use.

This country's foundation lay in the fundamental philosophy of Locke that government's sole purpose should be to protect life, liberty, and property. When government goes beyond that role, its function then becomes not the creation of wealth, but merely its reallocation. Government does not produce anything. Government can only take from those who produce and give to another group whether in the form of individual welfare to those who do not produce or corporate recipients who are either failed producers or who merely add the extra income to their positive bottom line.

Once you see the benefit of society and that society is not a zero sum game, but something mutually beneficial to all participants, then you begin to see the advantage of free markets. Once you see that any extension of government power beyond protecting life, liberty, and property is contrary to the goals of society, you will start to embrace the basic tenants of libertarianism.

Rome was not built in a day. The Roman Republic did not fall in a day either. It was gradually altered by politicians with the consent of the governed who were willing to exchange freedom for security in steps of various sizes until the momentum became to great for anyone to resist the anti-republican forces. Julius Caesar was assassinated because he was the culmination of anti-republican forces personified in the role of permanent dictator. A label that even those who clung the fiction that the Republic still existed could not tolerate. The problem is that after the killed the general, they failed to see that the republic was already dead, not because of Caesar, but because of the previous generations of Roman citizens who let their freedom go rather than take responsibility for their own lives.

That is what we are awaiting in this country every time we expect a new tax code revision or tax giveaway will somehow improve our situation.