Perhaps this is true of some Platonic ideal of libertarianism/statism, but in the real world people who would usually be classified more on the statist side of the spectrum tend to also want the state to hurt people less in various ways.
I think we interpreted that claim differently; I saw “want government to hurt people less” as “oppose any government policy that hurts someone,” rather than “oppose at least one government policy that hurts someone.” I can’t think of a libertarian policy proposal that leads to the government actively hurting someone more (though, of course, many libertarian policy proposals would make people worse off as the government moves from action to inaction).
It seems cleaner to characterize that as “not helping.” Preventing anyone else from feeding their child seems like hurting.
As a general comment, libertarian policies work better for adults than they do for children, because they assume a level of individual responsibility that seems unreasonable to expect of, say, infants. It’s not clear to me how fatal a flaw that is for it as a policy-generating mechanism.
I think we interpreted that claim differently; I saw “want government to hurt people less” as “oppose any government policy that hurts someone,” rather than “oppose at least one government policy that hurts someone.” I can’t think of a libertarian policy proposal that leads to the government actively hurting someone more (though, of course, many libertarian policy proposals would make people worse off as the government moves from action to inaction).
Wouldn’t you characterize parents who refuse to feed their child as actively hurting the child?
It seems cleaner to characterize that as “not helping.” Preventing anyone else from feeding their child seems like hurting.
As a general comment, libertarian policies work better for adults than they do for children, because they assume a level of individual responsibility that seems unreasonable to expect of, say, infants. It’s not clear to me how fatal a flaw that is for it as a policy-generating mechanism.