is off to read True Civilization, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

The concern is not about the definition of "choosing to stay," for some possible valence of the term "choosing." The concern is about the attempt to read consent to "an implied contract" off of the choice. If your theory of implicit consent leads to the conclusion that African Americans consented to the authority of the U.S. government simply in virtue of not emigrating after the abolition of slavery (why should they have to? where should they go? nevermind the costs involved, the fact that those costs were imposed by centuries of inhuman violence and coercion, etc.)  -- well, then I take that as a decisive reductio of your theory of implicit consent. The standards you are using for inferring consent are not good standards, since they lead you to find "consent" in circumstances that have nothing to do with consent, and everything to do with a history of massive unrelenting coercion.

Jefferson Smith: "You have no objections to farms, right? Even big farms? . . . Well, who owns Farm USA?"

Nobody.

Rightful ownership is based on honest labor or consensual transfer from a prior rightful owner. Not on feudal privilege, arbitrary claim, violent conquest, or transfer from a prior conqueror. But the U.S. government's claims to authority over the territory within its borders are derived entirely from the latter, not from the former.

This should not be surprising: while libertarians usually accept no de jure restraints on the size of landholdings or the accumulation of resources, there are natural and social pressures which will tend to impose some de facto limits. It's pretty hard to amass an empire the size of a fricking continent if you can only amass what you've earned by your own labor and by the consensual cooperation of others. If on the other hand the liberal response to radical libertarianism is that you could model our political obligations by reconsidering us all as perpetual tenants of the biggest, nastiest landlord in the history of the earth -- a landlord with accumulated holdings spanning the globe, with trillions of dollars in resources, millions of hired enforcers and a nuclear arsenal -- with the consolation is that each of us tenants has a fraction of a fraction of a share in the ownership of the landlord's holding company, and every four years or so the tenant can always put this less-than-a-millionth vote towards an attempt to constrain the landlord's worst excesses over the next four years -- then I have to wonder who here is defending a doctrine of social and economic inequality.

Well. I'll argue otherwise. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if your theory of political legitimacy
leads you to the thought, "Well, if the blacks don't like it why don't
they go back to Africa?" then your theory of political legitimacy kind
of sucks. And certainly hasn't got much to do with what anyone would
recognize as meaningful consent  in any non-political relationship.

Anyone here have contacts with radical or independent community bookstores in Texas — especially in San Antonio, Houston, or the D/FW metroplex — which might be interested in hosting a book event for Markets Not Capitalism during the first couple weeks of February? Anyone interested in helping us get the book event set up?

If so, let me know! I am going to be driving out that way with a trunk full of anarchist agitprop and would be happy to stop off at as many places as possible along the way . . . .

is enjoying the Christmas gift of new solar charger for cell phones / Kindles / MP3 players / etc. Currently trying to figure out a good place to actually charge it during the day.

Joshua House: I am afraid that the type of individualistic non-labeling advocated
here, though useful in philosophical circles, will impede any kind of
political movement. . . .  Whatever the reasons for it, hipster libertarianism is detrimental to
any kind of political movement. Successful political movements will
require a big-tent approach. . . . Insofar as political movements go, this kind of hipster individualism
needs to be stopped if libertarians, like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, are
going to win any kind of election.

O.K. So then maybe we won't have a "political movement." And maybe Gary Johnson or Ron Paul might not win any elections, either. Maybe we will just have philosophical circles. Is this a big loss? If it seems like one, then that may have something to do with the theory you hold about how people ought to talk and interact with each other. I am pretty much fine with saying that if the cost of a movement or a party is oversimplifying, lumping, papering over real differences or swallowing our debates in the name of political expediency, then that movement or that party sucks, and necessarily has very little to do with the sort of society that I should like to live in -- because the sort of society I should like to live in is one which, inter alia, supremely values honest debate, serious inquiry, intellectual experimentation, individuality and principled and creative dissent over conformity, political palavering and partisan rhetoric. I am not sure that that really need be the cost of a movement, but if it isn't, then they can pretty well cope with some idiosyncrasies and philosophical debates about self-labeling or the lack thereof, even if it complicates the "messaging" or some similarly cheap bit of psychosocial manipulation.

I agree with almost none of the stances that Will takes in the above post (aside from being at least as hesitant as he is to see my views conflated with Ron Paul's). But if the argument against those stances is supposed to be that he ought to get over his qualms and take one for the party if "we" are ever going to win elections, then slap me silly and call me "liberaltarian." I sure didn't sign on to this gig in order to make it easier for Republican politicians to win elections.

As long as we're getting a libertarian club together here's my laundry list of things I want fixed...

I don't know where "clubs" come into this; nothing in Matt's article or in mine has anything in particular to do with things like movement strategy.  It has to do with the logical relationship between a philosophical commitment to libertarianism and a philosophical commitment to other social or philosophical beliefs. The best way to pursue these beliefs -- if you want to pursue them at all -- is a separate question.

That said, the "laundry list" approach that you criticize here is specifically discussed and rejected (or put over to the margin) in the discussion of "entailment thickness" and "conjunction thickness." (The "laundry list" approach being an instance of "conjunction thickness," which is not really a thick conception of libertarianism in any particularly interesting sense.)

But the point of the article is specifically that there are ways in which a "social preference" might be meaningfully connected with a commitment to libertarianism, even though it is neither identical with the libertarian commitment, nor something which is just tacked on alongside libertarianism. There are at least four other broad ways in which the commitment and the preference might be logically connected with each other (I discuss them as thickness for application, thickness from grounds, strategic thickness, and thickness from consequences; Matt's discussion in this post is mainly drawing on what I called "thickness from grounds"). Maybe you think that these sorts of reasons are illegitimate, inadequate, irrelevant, or just a bit silly; but if you, you haven't yet given an argument for that view.

The Confederate flag has different meanings to different people however.

Sure. But I'd have to hear what the "meaning" is supposed to be and why it is so closely attached to the military colors of a long-dead slave empire. Certainly the historical reasons why the flag is a live and potent symbol for some of my fellow Southern whites (I was raised in eastern Alabama and live there now) seem to me to have a lot more to do with the legacy of white supremacy than not. When white people tell me that they are flying that flag because they want to invoke some kind of "Southern heritage" or "Southern identity," it seems to me that they have a pretty curiously selective picture of just what they are inheriting and identifying with. (It doesn't seem to have much to do with the legacies of Southerners like Harriet Tubman, or Ida Wells, or Rosa Parks. Which I guess is not surprising, since none of them would be much interested in having the Battle Flag as the symbol of their legacy....)

Meaning in any case is not just a purely private affair -- whatever the "intent" behind the flag, it does also matter how other people will take what you do.

The semiotic intent of painting the stars and bars on the Gen. Lee--
that famous car from the 70's hit tv show The Dukes of Hazard-- surely
was not to celebrate a slave empire?

I dunno; I expect that the idea was to celebrate "the South." But the idea of "the South" that is defined by the Battle Flag and by the hero-worship of a statist slaving warrior like Robert E. Lee is not an entirely separate thing from the celebration of the Lost Cause. Certainly whatever meaning was intended, it doesn't seem to be a meaning that leaves very much room for the lives or heritage of many Southerners, most notably those who happen to be a bit blacker than the Dukes are.

I don't think Sergio said anything about how awful America is as a country, compared to other countries. Why do you keep trying to make this into some kind of race to see who is the "best" or the "worst"?

His point was that the standards you endorse with regard to killing Koreans for the crimes of "their" government abroad would also seem to justify killing Americans for the crimes of "their" government abroad.  This has nothing to do with comparative judgments of better or worse; it has to do with applying the same standards for guilt and punishment across the board. Sergio's point is that regardless of how comparatively awesome or awful a
government may be, when you line it up next to the other governments, the question is whether the people of the various countries that have to endure any of those governments are, or are not, the people who ought to be punished or killed for the evil or aggression of the governments that dominate them. And if you don't like what your stated standards for answering that question would recommend with regard to American civilians, then perhaps you also ought to reconsider applying them to Korean civilians, too.