No, my freedom ends where someone else’s begins, so I can’t murder, mutilate or steal.

I do indeed.

Discovery, perhaps?

It means that I am against the initiation of force including government force.

Oh, the usual: taxation, regulation, safety regulation, state ownership, contracting out. etc

Indeed, and a whole bunch of other things.

Er and there are a few other things I am unsure of such as immigration and intellectual property.

Contract.  If you freely enter into an agreement whereby you give up some of your freedom then you have to see it through.

Er.

The state, probably.  And yes, seeing as I am against just about every other state institution its seems inconsistent to be in favour of its existence here.  There are libertarians who argue for the ‘’complete’’ abolition of the state but I’ve never found their arguments particularly convincing.

Mainly, because on those rare occasions that the state has disappeared eg Somalia in the early 1990s, the outcome has not been a libertarian utopia.  Far from it in fact.  I think the problem is that no matter how you cut it you still end up with guys with guns - or spears or whatever - the point being that anyone who has the power to protect also has the power to enslave.  The key to liberty seems to me to convince your protectors that they are better off if you are free.

I’m not entirely sure.  I accept that most people aren’t libertarians.  But why is that? After all, as recently as the 1840s (in the UK at least) libertarian ideas dominated. Possibilities include: the mass media, the rise of socialism, the lack of libertarian writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the subtlety of the ideas, the universal adult franchise.

Hmm, I’ll have to think about this one.

But, this is to ignore the fact that we have made massive strides in the intervening period.  We are better off because of the invention and/or development of: trains, planes, automobiles, computers, medical science, water supply, food supply, telecommunications and a whole host of other things.  And which part of the economy supplied these things if not the freer part?  And anyway, if socialism really was the way to go it would have buried the West in the Cold War.  It didn’t.

It creates a class of voters who believe that they have nothing to lose from an increase in state spending.  When all voters are also taxpayers (as they pretty much were before 1867) they all know they ‘’do’’ have something to lose and so are a bit more careful.

In the long run they are worse off. Higher taxes lead to poorer people.

Oh golly, that’s a big question and may take some time to answer.

Ditto.

Once again, ditto.