The libertarians want to build fences. The problem in their view is just the issue of “splash damage”; if a person wants to screw up his own life he should be allowed to do so, as long as he doesn’t screw up anyone else’s.
The libertarian’s propensity towards “building fences” is not just or even mostly about shielding society from “splash damage” though; there is an element of giving people good incentives and clearly defined ‘rules of the game’. After all, many libertarians acknowledge that society will be forced to bear some burden from bad individual choices, partly because we do want to step in and ease the suffering, as the liberal would say. There is thus an element of deep skepticism towards the social conservative view that we should “prevent social irresponsibility” by engineering the right sort of policies and social influences; the only intervention that has a chance of working is one that’s closely targeted to be about the misbehavior itself, and about the sorts of consequences that we choose to attach to it.
You can definitely see this in the sort of policies that libertarian promote in practice: the single mother seeking handouts for her kids? We should give her a handout—heck, let’s give everyone a handout, but make it conditional on her taking good care of the kids. The folks who took poor care of their health and ended up with diabetes or HIV? Make sure they can take care of themselves, by promoting HSA’s and HMO’s and even a Singaporean model for healthcare. Clearly this sort of thinking is not just about ‘everyone for themselves’, there’s a lot of societal support involved.
The libertarian’s propensity towards “building fences” is not just or even mostly about shielding society from “splash damage” though; there is an element of giving people good incentives and clearly defined ‘rules of the game’. After all, many libertarians acknowledge that society will be forced to bear some burden from bad individual choices, partly because we do want to step in and ease the suffering, as the liberal would say. There is thus an element of deep skepticism towards the social conservative view that we should “prevent social irresponsibility” by engineering the right sort of policies and social influences; the only intervention that has a chance of working is one that’s closely targeted to be about the misbehavior itself, and about the sorts of consequences that we choose to attach to it.
You can definitely see this in the sort of policies that libertarian promote in practice: the single mother seeking handouts for her kids? We should give her a handout—heck, let’s give everyone a handout, but make it conditional on her taking good care of the kids. The folks who took poor care of their health and ended up with diabetes or HIV? Make sure they can take care of themselves, by promoting HSA’s and HMO’s and even a Singaporean model for healthcare. Clearly this sort of thinking is not just about ‘everyone for themselves’, there’s a lot of societal support involved.