The tense of the tag this will get is wrong

[james_davis_nicoll]

This is more of an "everything would be worse with libertarians":

[...] I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid, while within Congress’s powers, is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective. I think it’s O.K. to violate people’s rights (e.g. through taxation) if the result is that you protect people’s rights to some greater extent (e.g. through police, courts, the military). But it’s not obvious to me that the Earth being hit by an asteroid (or, say, someone being hit by lightning or a falling tree) violates anyone’s rights; if that’s so, then I’m not sure I can justify preventing it through taxation.

Nicked from pecunium

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

'Fanatical suffering minimization has been slipping out of fashion for some time now, in part because the few large scale attempts that were actually made seemed to increase overall suffering significantly.'

Can you give me some actual examples? Because Really Existing Communism never was big on minimizing suffering, except at some vague point in the future. (And currently the only people whose suffering must be minimized appear to be the rich: the argument re the poor seems to be about how much of an increase in suffering they'll have to put up with. Belts must be tightened, you know)

Bruce

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

Please re-read the last six words of the sentence you quoted.