Ooooh, a comment!

I don't know anything about libertarianism, so please forgive my ignorance if my question is old or silly.

If libertarianism is about being able to do what you want without hurting anyone, how do you define what hurt is? And who gets to decide?

For instance, you could say that shooting heroin isn't hurting anyone (except maybe the person shooting) but couldn't there also be an argument made that (if the person is on a downward spiral) are being hurt (or could be depending on the situation)? Or even in a larger context, the issues of the drug trade in general (largely because it is illegal and therefore part of an informal unregulated market, etc) -- violence, poverty, etc -- can the drug user be absolved of these kinds of 'hurts' if they are implicated in it?

I am certainly not against drug use and actually support decriminalizing drugs, but not because of libertarian views. In fact the same argument above could be used in cases of alcoholism, etc etc.

Any thoughts?

I guess my question comes down to, who decides what qualifies as hurt?

great writing by the way, very interesting.





Dear Anonymous,
You are very astute! I guess (on a personal level, I can’t speak for everyone who identifies themselves as a libertarian) I use this view more politically. As a simple definition:

A libertarian is someone who, in general, supports government policies that favor individual liberty in all matters and seek to minimize or even abolish the state.

'Libertarian' is an antonym of 'authoritarian', so I hope that better explains my position. On the subject of drugs (i.e. your heroin example) the political libertarian in me says that drugs should be legalized and taxed appropriately, the revenue would easily cover not only the health costs of addicts but also recovery programs that will be well funded enough to actually help (I feel this way about prostitution as well)

You make a good point when you bring up “the people who love that person”, however, I don’t really think that matters. Many people who love me disagree with my choices, that doesn’t mean what they think is what is best or fair. I smoke pot, I’m really sorry my mother disagrees with this (mostly because it is not “legal”) and thinks it is ruining my life but it comes down to being my choice and I am not forcing her to smoke pot so I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. On the other hand some addicts have dependants, I don’t think a mother of two should be shooting up everyday, I also don’t think she should drink everyday… These are just things that happen in life, people get addicted to things (legal or not) and again, if these drugs were legalized taxed and then the taxes were used for recovery programs I like to think it would be easier to get readily available and funded help. Right now the crack addicted mom can’t afford to get help, she can't take the time off the low paying job she has to really clean herself up, but if there were programs where she was removed from her familiar addictive lifestyle and was ensured that her children would be well taken care of and she wouldn’t lose her job upon return, quitting would likely be much easier. I am not living in a fantasy world where I think this is how all addictions will turn out, this is the ideal solution but so many things in life don’t fall into an ideal. There will always be addicts, there will always be homeless, all we can do is strive to find the best system that can help people who want to help themselves.

On a more basic level in my personal life I try to live by similar standards (do what I want, as long as I don’t hurt anyone) In these situations I’m the one who decides what qualifies “hurt”, this may be a slippery slope but so is any sort of moral ground. I try to keep things objective but inevitably I end up with a bit of a bias towards one side, but who else can I really trust to make those moral decisions for me? I won’t tell my mom I smoke pot everyday because I love her and I know it would make her worry (or “hurt” her) but that doesn’t mean I agree with her or will stop smoking pot. I guess to an extent I take it for granted that people have common sense, I forget that some people have no sense at all… At the end of the day it’s my common sense that helps me decide what is “good” or “bad”, in the looses use of those terms. I don’t know if that actually answers your question but hopefully it’s enough of a digression to understand my opinion.

Being a libertarian is fucking hard

So everyone is supposed to be able to do anything they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone when they do it. I have always tried to live my life with this philosophy, it’s the most surefire way to be a “good” person. What I skipped over in my young ideological mind was the part where someone you love is doing something that isn’t hurting anyone but you still don’t like it.

So here I am questioning all my morality simply because suddenly the “right” thing doesn’t feel “right”. I want the ideological existence I strived to be, I never want to feel anger, jealousy, isolation, or vengeance because I feel like they are a waste of my time. Anyone can be gone at any time and the years have left me a paranoid coward, not the unshakable girl I was as a teenager. I want to be the kind of person that can hear almost anything and be okay with it, or at least see it in a new point of view.

I’m working on the jealous part now, vengeance was never much of a problem, I’m still angry sometimes but it’s not out of hand at all, it’s just the closeness, which I suppose was a “problem” before if the past is any indicator. I always pull away, does everybody? It’s weird, no one likes pulling away or being distant, but it always happens to me. So is this what it’s like for everyone? Are you really always alone in the end like every person who wants to sound tough says? It’s so weird that we can be aware of our surroundings and fellow animals and yet be the only ones that really understand “alone”. Dogs try to die alone, most animals do if they can help it, why is that? Is that like trying to save their relatives from moving or moving the body from their living space? Maybe they are giving themselves back to the earth, like leaving behind everything they had in life and going off alone to offer their body’s to whatever passing animal really needs an easy meal that day.

Maybe all my problems do stem from this weird death complex, do the majority think about dying everyday. Everything I plan to do depends on how I feel about death that day. It’s weird, I feel like my old self, my apathetic 17 year old self that just thought about death and how hollow everyone and everything in life was. Someone I would laugh at now.

Back to the matter at hand I guess, how do you support all these things you so strongly believe in when they all seem hollow anyway? I feel like I don’t want or need anybody because they aren’t really there at the end anyway and no matter how special you think your connection is there are a million just like it and it could happen with any one of many people who share your obvious values and interests. It’s easy to make it work, all you do is say sorry when you give up, and if it works on the other levels, food, shelter, electronics, then eventually everyone says sorry and they pat themselves on the backs for being grown ups. Such a strange world we live in, people still believe in life after death, that love is an actual emotion, and the atomic family, we are one tenth of a billionth degree from reaching absolute zero when all atoms stop and we slowed down the speed of light and the majority of people still think they will shed their mortal coil and acend to paradise!