As to working at a pizza shop, are you sure that you never considered any of the pizzas or pizza-making supplies some of the extra benefits of the job?

Furthermore, if everybody ate for $3/day, as you claim to have, you would not have had any pizza shop to employ you, so you ought to have been grateful for others' big spending.

As to the way that welfare is currently structured, I don't agree with a de facto marginal income tax of 100%. It should be structured as a negative income tax, not something that drops off 100% when one starts earning something.

I'm frankly disenchanted with the whole idea of welfare as it is because it's an inefficient way of giving people an advantage. I know firsthand of people who have held back from getting jobs because they would lose their welfare check if they did so!

The people who are getting these checks are largely in the situation they're in because they don't know how to use their resources properly. I'll give you a prime example. I worked for about 8 months as a pizza delivery driver and I witnessed some astoundingly bad examples of money management. Some of our regular customers were getting maybe $800 a month on welfare, and spent about $40 PER NIGHT on meals of pizza, wings, and ranch cups (they'd rake you over the coals if you forgot their precious ranch cups).

This was at a time when I was living off of $20 PER WEEK on food, and making about $800 a month in a hot, sweaty pizza kitchen.

The problem, it seems to me, is that parents aren't teaching their kids to manage money, and they grow up and raise kids who they teach the same bad habits. The only way to really break that cycle is in the schools.

Public education is the only worthwhile investment of tax dollars. Do you know why the welfare systems in Scandinavia aren't over-burdened? Just take a look at their standardized test scores compared to ours. Our schools are a joke and an embarassment and a social democracy can't survive without a solid education system.

While I'm on the subject, when talking about fiscal matters everyone seems to ignore the elephant in the room, namely the continued fiasco of the American military trying to be the world's police force. If we'd spend our defense budget trying to keep threats out of our borders rather than chasing monsters around the world, we'd have money for nice things like good schools and better health care. Of course, you won't hear about that on CNN or Fox Noise or any of the other "news" networks.

In terms of implications about how seriously those using it should be taken, "Statism" is on the same level as "poopyhead."

To the extent that human nature is based on natural selection at the individual level, your ethic seems to go against what I view as evolutionarily formed core human values. "We're all in this together" expresses a value system based more on group selection, which has been pretty much discredited.

Biologically speaking (which you are), this is nonsense. Human evolution hasn't been "based on natural selection at the individual level" since at least as far back as the great apes branching off from our monkey ancestors. You can say that group selection "has been pretty much discredited" all you like, but that won't make it true; altruistic behavior exists in amoral organisms as well as in humans, which at least demonstrates that such things are selected for somehow, and kin selection provides a plausible mechanism for its arising.

Just wanted to clear that up. Coupled with the fact that sexual selection is vastly more significant for us as a species nowadays than selection by simple survival, the simplified rules of evolution that apply more precisely to simpler organisms can't be legitimately used to make claims about "core human values," even before considering the appeal to nature fallacy. And in any case, any half-competent anthropologist could tell you that "we're all in this together" is, to a surprisingly broad degree, precisely one such core human value; Modern Western Philosophy should not be confused with core human values.

As to the OP, in short I agree, but I think an important missed point is that modern political Libertarianism doesn't even truly optimize total negative freedoms; economic power is just as dangerous a force for controlling others' behavior as is political or military power (if not more so, under modern conditions), and playing major power structures against each other (in this case, regulating the potentially tyrannical exercise of economic power by applying political power) is probably the best tactic available to us for guaranteeing personal freedoms for all, rather than just for the wealthy. Money is power, and keeping such power from being used to control people is an important (philosophically) Libertarian pillar that (political) Libertarians seem a bit too quick to gloss over in the case of economic power; this contrast makes it hard for me to take the philosophical arguments for political Libertarianism too seriously, since it all just starts to sound (fairly or unfairly) like Ayn Rand fanboyism.

[O]ne's taxes is the price one pays for these services, and I find it difficult to conjure a justification for additional obligations for these services [my emphasis].

Additional obligations beyond taxation? I think the question at issue was merely that of taxing people to provide these services.

Opportunity is not a cause; effort is.

Charitably, I assume that what you mean is that opportunity will not be worth anything unless those who have the opportunity put in the effort; opportunity is not a direct cause. Which is true, but I have a strong suspicion that the opportunity to attend university with no tuition fees which was available in New Zealand for a few brief decades probably was a cause behind the proliferation of doctors and dentists and the like among the various cousins of my decidedly working-class mother. Just saying.

Wealth is dynamically created by people, and taxation takes that away after it's created–the more that is created, the more is taken.

You make it sound like the wealth is disappearing as soon as it's been given as tax :-)

[T]here is no guarantee that the taxed will ever personally gain from that prosperity of others.

There is no guarantee, no. There might be considerable probability, given the potential to reduce crime and to increase the overall wealth by allowing capable people the opportunity to use their talents. But I confess it -- for me, the good of society as a whole is reason enough.

The great insight of capitalism is that wealth, unlike matter and energy, is not a constant but can be created. Ironically, it is libertarians who have forgotten this, implicitly assuming that the amount of wealth in society is fixed and that taxation is a zero-sum game, that one person must lose for another to prosper.

Well, you're right that wealth is not a zero-sum game. It can certainly be created where none existed before. I usually see this misunderstanding applied by the Left, however, in their misguided effort to claim that rich people have too big a piece of the pie; that is, that the gap between the rich and poor is too big, and that the rich own a disproportionate amount of wealth.

However, how is taxation not a zero-sum game? Or is that even a valid question to ask? I understand that social and civil services have some effect of equalizing opportunity, but the taxation that funds those services is only an indirect cause of the wealth that is potentially created by those who prosper because of better opportunity. Opportunity is not a cause; effort is. And ultimately, you're reversing the issue. Taxation is a not a zero-sum game, but that's not even a valid question here. Wealth is dynamically created by people, and taxation takes that away after it's created--the more that is created, the more is taken. And while it probably does have a widespread impact in bettering the conditions by which others can prosper, there is no guarantee that the taxed will ever personally gain from that prosperity of others, and I fail to see how it's anyone's right to take one person's property for his own good or for anyone else's.

[Libertarianism's] central ethic is "every man for himself", while I believe the superior ethic is "we're all in this together".

"Every man for himself" is more like neo-conservative thinking, and it's a perversion of libertarianism. Libertarianism realizes that non-coercive self-interest benefits all parties involved. It's only when another party (like a corrupt or otherwise coercive industry) demands sacrifice of the other party does it go wrong, and that's not libertarianism.

As for this argument that rich people are rich because of society's aid, you are absolutely correct, but you are wrong about the reason. Capitalism, like it or not, is a system that enables producers and consumers to trade for no other reason than self-interest, without sacrificing or coercing either party. While a free society is certainly necessary for people to morally earn wealth, no one is sacrificed in the act of free trade. Your debt is paid, totally and completely, when the transaction is completed. No one agreed to additional compensation.

This is a separate argument from the issue of social and civil services, though, which the government provides through taxation to equalize opportunity. I am not a fan of utilitarian ethics, but these do actually help to equalize opportunity for the poor and disenfranchised; however, again, one's taxes is the price one pays for these services, and I find it difficult to conjure a justification for additional obligations for these services.

Do you think there should be cases where state aid is cut off to people who clearly, evidently have no intention of bettering them selves? For example, could unemployment benefit be suspended if a person declines say, three, perfectly good job offers?

Yes, absolutely. Those people are trying to free-ride at society's expense just like a wealthy individual who refuses to contribute to the common good. It's the duty of every member of society to participate. As I said in Part II:

Certainly we should not indefinitely support people who refuse to work, and the emphasis should be on helping recipients return to the workforce as soon as possible.

A typical example is the claim of right to appropriate property without compensation. Consider that if Curious has appropriated a piece of property, he has not contracted with or received agreement from me to appropriate the property. Very likely, he has not done so with any of you reading this post. We are no longer free to do with the property what we would have, had Curious not infringed on our rights, by appropriating the property without freely entered agreement on our part. Curious must therefore compensate for his rights infringement. A method to accomplish this is taxation - in this case property taxation. The tax can be distributed to fund entities such as schools, especially since kids will be born into rights infringement due to Curious's property appropriation. Curious can compensate the kids by helping to fund their education. We can build on the tax issue, making a case for tax rate based on scarcity, and even common (government trustee) of land that is significantly scarce, such as national parks.

How is it that some abuse the rights of other's by appropriating things without agreement, and then complain when required to provide compensation? It is interesting how some would decry the government and it's coercive power, but ironically would employ that coercive power if you set foot on "their" land. In this regard, the quote from Curious is telling:

"And I have already said that I have no problem with taxes that maintain a government that protects my rights."

I disagree. I want a government that protects all of our rights. A libertarian rights argument is actually a very powerful protection - if the rights of all parties are acknowledge. I think a lot of the abusive/immoral scenarios that are ascribed to libertarianism are actually the result of acknowledging the rights of certain parties at the expense of others.

But prison is nothing but cost, whereas as I showed earlier, people who have access to education and job training are actually a net bonus to society in the long run.

I agree with your post and all of your arguments, but strictly speaking, we should want prison to provide education and job training too. The primary goal of the prison system should be, as far as possible, to reform criminals into hard working, law abiding citizens.

We as a society should provide for the basic, fundamental needs of everyone, and whatever additional, non-essential luxuries a person desires, they should be left to earn by their own effort.

In most cases I agree, but it is undeniable that some people who live off benefits are quite simply lazy. They don't want to work, they just want to live off the state. They're ok with not having a life of luxury, as long as they don't have to work for they're bare essentials. I'm not stereotyping, I've met people like this, and they're pretty shameless. One person I spoke to found it actually amusing that I was funding the state while the state was funding him - he found the irony a lot more pleasing than I did!

Do you think there should be cases where state aid is cut off to people who clearly, evidently have no intention of bettering them selves? For example, could unemployment benefit be suspended if a person declines say, three, perfectly good job offers?