Ask Doctor Libertarian!

Dear Doctor Libertarian,

While I agree that governments should not regulate shop opening and closing hours, I only feel mildly rueful about this and have no desire to buy guns and shoot federal police in the face. Is there something wrong with me?

Confused

Dear Confused,

Yes, there is something wrong with you. You are obviously a commie.




Dear Doctor Libertarian,

My friend and I are both libertarians, but sometimes when I am at his house and he gets annoyed with me he bans me from breathing his air. Can he do this? And if so is it all right for me to bring a bag of air over from my house to breath in these instances?

Breathless


Dear Breathless,

Of course he has the right to ban you from breathing his own air! How dare you question his supreme right within his property! How dare you even call yourself a libertarian at all, you filthy pinko, hippy, commie scum! Not only does he own the right to all the atmosphere in and above his property, he also owns a wedge of the earth’s substance going all the way to the core! Even better than this, he owns a slice of the universe above his property containing countless galaxies and untold billions of alien slave races! See how much better everything is under libertarianism? Wouldn’t you like untold billions of alien slave races? Of course, since the earth rotates and wobbles there may be some dispute over who owns exactly which segment of infinity, but that’s okay. You can just sue people whose claims disagree with yours. Endless legal bickering is the most efficient way to run society.

As for your second question, yes you can bring a bag of air from your own property to breath, provided your friend doesn’t prohibit you from bringing it onto his property, but you will have to ensure that none of your neighbour’s air enters the bag via osmosis because that’s stealing. And in the same way that your friend has the right to prohibit you from breathing his air, he has the right to prohibit you from moving your bag of air to your face through his air.




Dear Doctor Libertarian,

If I put a sign up on my property says, “DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE MOVEMENT OF PHOTONS,” and people on my property fail to turn invisible and continue to absorb and reflect light, can I sue them for the loss of photons, which are very valuable to me?

Suememasen


Dear Suememasen,

Of course you can sue them with interfering with your photons! What a stupid question! You had a sign right there saying don’t interfere with them, and your word on your property is law! You have the right to do whatever you want! And if pinko, liberal commies don’t like it they can go to hell! It’s their own fault anyway for insisting that God wasn’t created in our image, so we’ve had to compensate by becoming godlike ourselves in our own house, on our own land or in our own parent’s basement! Sue them! Yes, sue the apostate! Only by ignoring regulation and mediation and engaging in endless civil suits can we create libertarian heaven on earth.




Dear Libertarian Doctor,

My girlfriend says she is leaving me because I read her diary and urinated on her Barbie doll collection. But she agreed to be my girlfriend without negotiating a commitment from me to not read her diary or to not urinate on her Barbie doll collection. Does she have any right to leave me?

Lonely and asparagus smelling


Dear Lonely and asparagus smelling,

If she agreed to “never leave you,” or “to always be your girlfriend,” she has no right to leave you. However, if she merely agreed to, “always love you,” then this is open to dispute, as technically it may be possible for her to leave you but still love you. But still, you could always attempt to sue her for breach of contract on the grounds that leaving you is incompatible with always loving you and see how far you get.

If she didn’t make any commitments to you other than to be your girlfriend without any time period stipulated, then as an individual she has every right to leave you if she wishes and there is nothing you can do about it.

In that case you could always dig a big pit in your living room and cover it over so that when she comes to collect her CDs she will fall in it and you can contract with her to help her out of the hole in return for staying with you forever. After all, it’s your right to build booby traps on your own property and your right to negotiate contracts regulating the behaviour of the contracted parties. And the government’s only function is to enforce these contracts, no matter what they are.