Susan Hogarth wrote: SH> I think that a person is more or less libertarian according to the amount of aggression (including taxation) he advocates. <SH
A better metric is the net incidence of aggression that would occur if his policies were adopted. An even better metric might be to differentiate the latter metric over the time variable: the change in the net incidence of aggression that would occur because of the policy changes he advocates. Aggression does not end up minimized if liberty-lovers merely resolve to promote aggression-virginity through the example of their chastity. The just-say-no approach of aggression abstinence has the virtue of requiring less thinking (e.g. about counterfactuals), but it fails to minimize aggression in the real world, and even runs aground in basic thought experiments such as the Trolley Problem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem> . Again, the child and her doctor both oppose pain, but only one recognizes the necessity of needles.
