xanas

Can you clarify what kinds of things you want to legalize to remove the stigma attached to them? Strictly speaking, I'm not for legalizing things to remove stigma, although that might result in some cases (I think there really shouldn't be more stigma for marijuana use than alcohol or tobacco, for example, even though I have no interest in smoking it myself.). In some cases though even if we legalize I'm not convinced it would result in less stigma. Laws can be produced due to stigma rather than the other way around. Laws against incest, for example, are not at all necessary for people to dislike it. In any case, I'm more about legalizing for it's own sake all activities that don't violate the persons or property of others, even if I think those activities are bad. But this doesn't mean that I can't do anything to try to prevent more of those activities. I can help heroin addicts to stop, or I can make people aware of dealers/users and to act in concert to try to persuade those people to change their ways. I can also disassociate with them by not trading with them or accepting services from them or develop a contractual community that would bind it's members to following rules that included prohibition on the use of heroin. Basically then, libertarianism is a perspective that at the core has to do with not using force to get your way. The "non-aggression principle" is what this concept is called. A decent starting article is here: http://mises.org/daily/3660 Mises.org is a good site in general for this.

Are there any libertarians around here? I'm a big fan of anime but another big interest of mine his libertarian political theory and Austrian economics. I was curious if anyone else out here considers themselves a libertarian. Of course libertarians are also the folk who are ok with legalizing well... everything but I tend to think of it more from the anti-state angle.