
[ These two paragraphs are from two different posts.  In splicing them 
  together it is not my intention to change Steve's meaning or misrepresent
  him in any way.  I don't *think* I've done so. ]


Part of what started this was my earlier example of Illinois, USA requiring
anyone doing more than X automobile transfers a year (X = 10, I think)
to become licensed as a used car dealer.  In addition, it requirs anyone
with a used car dealer's license to own at least 10 cars at a time, all the
time. 

Let me continue with this example and try to answer Steve's questions.

Steve, let's say you have the talent and inclination to fix up and resell
cars.  Either you've gotten good enough at it in your spare time to bump
up against these limits, or you would like to do it full-time but these
stupid, arbitrary laws prevent you from starting out small and pulling
yourself up.  So I'm protected from a hungry neighborhood competitor willing
to take a low profit while working extra hard to fulfill my needs, and you're
protected from doing what you want with your life.

Here's what I see libertarianism offering you:

Your money is truly yours; it belongs to you.  You can use it to buy a car.
If you use it to buy a car, it is truly your car; it belongs to you.  You
can use your money to fix up that car.  Since it is your car, you can sell
that car.

Your life is truly yours; it belongs to you.  It matters not if someone
thinks that it's "wrong" for you to buy and sell 10 cars within 12 months
rather than, say, 9 cars.  They may dissaprove, but it is not their life or
their money, it is your life and your money.

My money is truly mine; it belongs to me.  I can use it to buy a car.
Perhaps your car.  Perhaps that 10th car, the one that someone, somewhere
dissaproves of you selling and, presumably, of me buying.

That someone could go to the government and insist that the government make
us stop it.  But the government would be powerless to stop us from doing
what we like with our own property, in the abscence of fraud or agression.
And it would be powerless to stop us from associating with each other.

This does not seem to me to be a utopian dream, but basic human decency
and common sense.  A real grass-roots example of freedom and liberty.
And yes, not having a few people acting as our masters, approving or
rejecting each of our basic transactions with each other, does strike me
as a wonderful way to improve the human condition.