Truly free individuals are not required to do anything for the benefit of others.

"In other words, society requires nothing of truly free individuals. So it follows that you agree with my premise that truly free individuals are not required to do anything for the benefit of others. What now?" To be fair, your lifting a part of my argument from the portion of my argument that is replying to what I thought would make a better topic of debate for the purposes of your intent. A civil society does not have any "truly free individuals" within it. They are not in any way able to exist in the same area. A civil society violates the laws of nature, and a "truly free individual" is a criminal within the civil society. So, it is not that a society requires nothing of "truly free individuals," the society does not and cannot recognize "truly free individuals" as for a civil society to allow an individual to be their own magistrate and executioner is to violate the social contract of mutual protection of property, life, health and liberty. According to Locke, and others, consent to a civil society is not given by a conscious choice, or a contract. Consent is implied by action. To own property within, to use services provided, whether it be as primitive as a bucket and a well, or complicated an interstate highway system, these services are the creation of the civil society, even if they are privately owned and to use them is to consent to the laws that govern them, and their society. The difficulty that you are having with my argument is that when the civil society changes its law, it does not mean that your obligation to them is over. Even if the civil society has no method of representation, it is not a tyrannical obligation. You joined with the civil society, you have benefited in some way from the civil society, and now that the civil society has changed its rules, you, as a member of that society also much change. It is not a matter of free will, because it is not a matter of consent. You were born into this civil society before you were capable of consent, this civil society helped to facilitate your growth, your education, and from time to time, I bet you've found yourself in a publically funded medical facility. The only matter of consent is that you may leave, or you may decide to be truly free at the risk of becoming a criminal in that civil society. You were never in the state of nature. You have never been "truly free." To think that you one day woke up and consented to be in this civil society is obnoxious. This society has cared and provided for you from the moment of your birth. If it changes, you may change, leave, or become criminal. You do no justice to this society when you whine and complain about it asking too much of you, after it has already given you so much. Specifically, all that you have. You may have worked to get where you are, but your property, your wealth, your personal safety have all been aided by this society. I call this civil society a "free society" because seldom is your speech punished, your freedom to believe is protected, and we only restrict freedom of travel if you've been criminal in some fashion. You are allowed to own whatever you can legally purchase, and whatever you can afford to maintain taxes on as necessary. You are allowed to own your ideas with both patients and copyrights. These are some of the freedoms which your civil society maintains for you. Freedoms that you would have no guarantee to in the state of nature. A civil society is as compromise so that we all don't have to run around willy nilly, insuring that our right to own is maintained by constantly improving our land, or adding value to the things that we possess, while also having to form lynch mobs and posses to hunt down and destroy people that we have decided are violating the natural law. Note the natural law has no system of trial, or popular rule, so these mobs naturally are going to hunt down and destroy an innocent person every once and a while, which is such a contradiction of natural law, that it's usually better to have a civil society that tries to enforce a justice that involves trials and appeals. "Can one be truly free in nature without choosing to enter into agreements with others to help protect his freedom?" No, one cannot be truly free in the state of nature. The state of nature only works if everyone in the state of nature is doing their best to serve the natural law. The state of nature must be fiercely maintained, otherwise it will in almost every cause lead to despotism. Not all social contracts are good. In a state of nature, or a state of anarchy, (which ever you want to call it) some industrious person like me will kill people who are inconveniencing him. Eventually, I'll realize that I could kill people to gain things as well. After a while, I will become concerned about a mob of offended individuals coming to enforce the natural law upon me, so I will find likeminded individuals who don't mind killing people, and it becomes a despotism. The society that we build will have a social contract, it will be a civil society, but it will not be a free society like the one that you are enjoying now. So, if you don't work your butt of maintaining by reason the laws of nature, someone is going to create a social contract around you, so no. You're not free in the state of nature. You are obliged to maintain and enforce the laws of nature. You are only free in absolute isolation. To sum it up: "Dispense of responsibility, and in the moments when you know no fear, you may taste freedom." –John Day You and most other individuals who claim to be libertarians are selfish fools. You look at this society that protects you from things which are so far removed from it that you cannot accurately imagine them, and call it tyrannical because you pay a tax to support this society and you think it is unreasonable to have to give back a portion of your success that you only have only achieved because of the state of nature. It is your civil societies fault, because the philosophy behind our Constitutional Republic was well understood by everyone who created it, and seldom studied by anyone living today. As you attempt to weaken your society, and make it closer to "truly free," you are enabling the loss of all of your rights and freedoms that are currently maintained by the society. There is more to a society than justice, military might, and someone to enforce justice. Historically since the beginning of recorded history, there has always been more to every society than the bare bones that you suggest. The only form of government that is possible when the only tools of civics available are the sword or the lash is going to be a very brutal government. "You stole this persons property, and it cannot be recoved." "I stole bread because I was starving!" Open and shut case, but how long will a society function with strict enforcement of all property laws, without any other option to pursue to feed yourself when you are starving because of crime? This social contract won't last very long, as eventually individuals living within it are going to demand and eventually will receive a government that pays greater attention to the other tenants of the natural rights, the life and health parts specifically. The Natural Rights of Man were four things, life, health, liberty, property. If you want to ignore the first two, which may have been written in an order of importance, and build a civil society that ignores them as well, you are not going to have a long lived or successful society. That's the fundamental problem with libertarians. They're too selfish to understand that by serving the civil society, by paying taxes, by supporting expansive programs to house, feed, and cloth others, and to provide for the retirement and disability of all… They're actually serving themselves and their own interests.