*looks to the right sidebar of the site*

Well hell….file that one under “Things That Make Sense”.

As for the regulation question, you should have mentioned how it was primarily the companies that pushed for regulation in order to create monopolies that they were unable to enforce through private means. A perfect example of this is James J Hill, the ICC and the railroads. Rothbard and DiLorenzo have talked about this extensively.

1.   Is government the
antithesis of liberty?

Just and proper
government is not the antithesis of liberty. The de facto government operates in
its own interest where a de jour government operates in the people’s interest.

2.  One of the things
that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social
safety net enhances freedom.

Roads may or may not
enhance freedom depending on usury on the people that travel on them. If you
need registration, licensing, permits, insurance, expensive mechanical
contraptions to move about on roads but don’t have the resources to purchase
them did a road enhance your freedom or restrict it? If the road you paid to
build with taxes were leased to a foreign power and tolls were established did
you enhance your freedom?

Infrastructure
enhances convenience and gives you more time to spend the way you want. However
in today’s modern world infrastructure is used to tax you.  For example you get a tax bill from the state
on property tax. The bill is for sewer in CA but 90% of the bill is direct
taxation. If you don’t have the currency you can lose your home.

A social safety net
does more harm than good in my opinion. If there were no social safety net
people wouldn’t come to expect a hand out from government. It encourages malinvestment. Let’s take food stamps for example. If food stamps didn’t exist how
many people would be growing their own food? I would expect the answer to be a
lot more than do today. Farmers in the United States would probably be able to
make a comfortable living without government subsidies.

3.  What should we do
with the losers that are picked by the free market?

We don’t have a free
market. If you need a license or a permit to do business you are so far from a
free market there really is no comparison. 
People do well in free markets because there are few restrictions. That
is why free markets are not allowed to exist. If you were to loose in a free
market you have more options, get a job, start a business.

 4.  Do we live in a society or don’t we? Are we a
collective? Everybody’s success is predicated on the hard work of all of us;
nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are
hung out to dry? For a group that doesn’t believe in evolution, it’s awfully
Darwinian.

Yes there is always a
society, weather people cooperate or not is based on the rules in place. They
call it the rat race for a reason. The frog is boiling analogy is real. When
the free market slowly disappeared through regulation it slowly pitted everyone
against each other. Instead of creating opportunity we are now grasping for it.
You used to be able to get an apprenticeship and get paid to learn a trade.
Today you pay large amounts of currency to learn a trade, often times only
learning enough to pass a test.

People are really only
hung out to dry in the system we have today. In order to succeed you need
opportunity. If all opportunity is based on currency then only the people with
currency will get an opportunity.

5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We
have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise..
We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a
democratic system.

This comes down to a du jour
government versus a de facto government. We have a de facto government. A De facto
government looks out for government and not the people. If you want a du jour
government elect a peaceful leader. If a president doesn’t declare a war and we
return to peacetime the de facto government has to give up on its martial law
declaration. There is a martial law in the united states at this time.

6.  Is government
inherently evil?

No but you should
always try to elect people that stand on principle, morality, or suffer the
conscience of bad choices. If a person makes poor choices in their own lives
what makes you think they will make good leader?

7.  Sometimes to
protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather
a group together to build a wall or levy.
Armys were never intended to be standing armies. As far as builing this was the function
of corporations. They were to be formed for a purpose in the public interest
then dissolved after that function was finished. They were not people. They
didn’t live forever.

8.   As soon as you’ve
built an army, you’ve now said government isn’t always inherently evil because
we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it’s that old joke: Would you sleep
with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We
already decided who you are, now we’re just negotiating.

In a time the country
is in peril. It is just and right to defend it. This should not be a war
launched by a single person. It should have a clear objective. Above all it
should never be based on lies. It should never be offensive in nature. It is
always be a last resort.

 9. You say:
government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of
Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn’t work, and went to the
Constitution.

 The Constitution for the United States or The
Constitution of the UNITED STATES? I tend to think if we just stayed with the
Constitution for the United States we would have been fine.

  10. You give money
to the IRS because you think they’re gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your
house catches on fire, will come there with water.

These questions are
getting accusatory. The IRS isn’t a government agency. They have to pay for
postage just like anyone else. They are the collection wing of the federal
reserve system and create an artificial demand for paper dollars. I am not sure
what you mean houses on fire or water. If you mean the local fire department. Then I counter with Earthbag construction which is fire proof, but again is hard to get approved by building departments.

  11. Why is it that
libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust
representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up
my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems
insane.

I personally don’t
trust corporations. I expect them to make money in the highest priority. I also
don’t trust government representatives to do anything that doesn’t ultimately
help the de facto government. Isn’t most insurance a mandate by the government?

12.   Why is it that
with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and
there are choices within the educational system.

The health care system
is broken because there are not enough doctors. The small amount of doctors
turned out each year is never going to meet demand. The government is also
regulating the trade through the legal system, education for doctors is
outrageously  expensive. HMO’s are
another bureaucracy that  raise
costs.  The solution is the free market.

 13.  Would you go back to 1890?

No. I would repeal the act of 1871.

14.  If we didn’t have
government, we’d all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and
broccoli would be ice-cream?

Hovercrafts have been
invented and even though they fly the government will not allow them to fly
without a tether to a crane. Moller Skycar comes to mind.

THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol
has cancer fighting ability’s. The government is fighting to prevent THC from
becoming legal again.

Broccoli is good and
ice cream is also good.

15.   Unregulated
markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These
regulations didn’t come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they
did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a
system that they couldn’t fight back against.

Regulations are
restrictions. What good are regulations if they are not enforced for some but
they are enforced for others? Do you want to live under a two tiered system?Look at the mortgage meltdown and you can see a two tiered system in action. Some business is too big to fail.

  16.  Why do you think workers that worked in the
mines unionized?

Their bosses where
tyrannical? Generally I don’t believe in unions because you have to join a
group even if you disagree with their opinions. You also are forced to pay that
group. You may be working against you beliefs just to be employed.  

  17.  Without the government there are no labor
unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or
even sometimes the government.

Again I don’t agree
with unions for the most part.

   18.  Would the free market have desegregated
restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with
miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been
less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority
sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would
not have supported integrated lunch counters.

Personally I don’t
think in terms of race. I see it as a divide and conquer issue and you lose
just by bringing it up.

 19.  Government is necessary but must be held
accountable for its decisions.

Yes but who holds
government accountable? A de jour government is not a sovereign government as
the people are sovereign. A de facto government acts like it’s sovereign and
immune to the law.

The people are the
sovereigns not the government.