Most of these seem legitimate to me, modulo that instead of banning the thing you should pay for the externality you’re imposing. Namely, climate change, harming wildlife, spreading contagious diseases, and risks to children’s lives.
Those are real externalities, either on private individuals or on whole communities (by damaging public goods). It seems completely legitimate to pay for those externalities.
The only ones that I don’t buy are the religious ones, which are importantly different because they entail not merely an external cost, but a disagreement about actual cause and effect.
“I agree that my trash hurts the wildlife, but I don’t want to stop littering or pay to have the litter picked up” is structurally different than “God doesn’t exist, and I deny the claim that my having gay sex increases risk of smiting” or “Anthropogenic climate change is fake, and I deny the claim that my pollution contributes to warming temperatures.”
Which is fine. Libertarianism depends on having some shared view of reality, or at least some shared social accounting about cause and effect and which actions have which externalities, in order to work.
If there are disagreements, you need courts to rule on them, and for the rulings of the courts to be well regarded (even when people disagree with the outcome of any particular case).
Most of these seem legitimate to me, modulo that instead of banning the thing you should pay for the externality you’re imposing. Namely, climate change, harming wildlife, spreading contagious diseases, and risks to children’s lives.
Those are real externalities, either on private individuals or on whole communities (by damaging public goods). It seems completely legitimate to pay for those externalities.
The only ones that I don’t buy are the religious ones, which are importantly different because they entail not merely an external cost, but a disagreement about actual cause and effect.
“I agree that my trash hurts the wildlife, but I don’t want to stop littering or pay to have the litter picked up” is structurally different than “God doesn’t exist, and I deny the claim that my having gay sex increases risk of smiting” or “Anthropogenic climate change is fake, and I deny the claim that my pollution contributes to warming temperatures.”
Which is fine. Libertarianism depends on having some shared view of reality, or at least some shared social accounting about cause and effect and which actions have which externalities, in order to work.
If there are disagreements, you need courts to rule on them, and for the rulings of the courts to be well regarded (even when people disagree with the outcome of any particular case).