The machinery of freedom

You and I are Icelanders; the year is 1050 ad. You cut wood in my forest. I sue you. The court decides in my favor, and instructs you to pay ten ounces of silver as damages. You ignore the verdict. I go back to the court and present evidence that you have refused to abide by the verdict. The court declares you an outlaw. You have a few weeks to get out of Iceland. When that time is over, I can kill you with no legal consequences. If your friends try to defend you, they are violating the law and can in turn be sued.

No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner.

Government is an agency of legitimized coercion.

Any child above some very low age (say, nine years old) who is willing to arrange for his own support should be free from the authority of his parents. For the first year of his freedom, the child would retain the option of returning to his family; during this period he might be required to visit the family and reaffirm his decision several times. After he had supported himself for a year, his parents would no longer be obligated to take him back.

Certainly the doctor should warn the addict of the effect of overlarge doses. If, knowing this, the addict is willing to trade his health or his life for a few years, or months, or minutes of drug-induced ecstasy, that is his affair. Part of freedom is the right of each of us to go to hell in his own fashion.

Someone who becomes addicted by associating with other addicts has not been forcibly infected. He has seen a
behavior pattern and chosen to adopt it. He may do so, as Mr. Buckley says, because he is "psychologically weak or misinformed." Such possibilities exist for any decision—getting married or subscribing to National Review. The choice is up to him. His decision, like any act of free will, may be wrong.

Narcotics addiction is not, in this sense, infectious. The victim must choose to take the drug. Mr. Buckley, associating with a dozen addicts, would be in no danger of addiction.

He calls narcotics addiction a contagious disease because most addicts acquire the habit from other addicts. This analogy denies free will. Catching a disease requires no cooperation on the part of the victim; he associates with someone who has the disease and gets sick, whether he wants to or not.

The alternative was to use the state's taxing power to take an average of $500 from every family in the country, willing or unwilling—at the point of a metaphorical gun. Is that better than selling the commercial values of the program to willing customers? Greedy capitalists get money by trade. Good liberals steal it.

Most conservatives seem now to have accepted, and even embraced, the space program and with it the idea that the exploration of space can only be achieved by government. That idea is false. If we had not been in such a hurry, we not only could have landed a man on the moon, we could have done it at a profit.