> I actually think we agree on an awful lot as the discussion elaborates. But I think there are some key distinctions in how we frame the same issues.

I think so too, and I'm grateful for your replies. Hard to find a good conversation these days.

> In the US at least, we already have checks and balances that avoid the tyranny of the majority.

Indeed, but my thesis is that these have been insufficient to protect liberty, as it was initially practiced and understood, from erosion so significant as to change its very meaning.

> Maybe this is where the slave/master analogy has its limits.

> Soldiers in today's army literally sign a contract...

> ...one is explicit ... while one is implicit

It does seem as though this is the key area where we disagree. To me there is no difference between a soldier who wants to leave combat (but can't because he'll be shot/imprisoned by his unit) and a slave who wants to leave his plantation. These people are both decidedly not free, and must take orders from others. Indeed the soldier may have signed a contract, but we've long established that you can't sign yourself into bondage, and that the penalty for breach of contract should be financial only, backed by bankruptcy protection. For a conscript, this is doubly true, as he didn't even have the opportunity sign his freedom over to begin with, making him indistinguishable from a slave. At least the volunteer soldier had the opportunity to consider the terms of his contract before signing, and has the opportunity to renew or reject those terms every contract period. Neither the slave, nor the conscript, nor any of the rest of us, have that opportunity.

Fundamentally, implicit, lifelong obligation to collaborate, with no opportunity to opt-out, is indistinguishable from slavery.

Say instead of emancipating slaves completely, they obligated them to work one day a week on their masters' plantations. They would be free to do what they wanted with the rest of their time. If they moved, they would be obligated to find new masters to serve, but still only one day per week. Would these people be free?

Returning to your point about defense, this is the strongest moral case for enslaving people: the imminent threat of total destruction. However under these circumstances almost no one objects to cooperating anyways due to overwhelming social pressure. Indeed, this case falls into the broader category where forced cooperation is justified: maintaining life and liberty themselves. Thus the draft to serve in WWII and the draft to serve in Vietnam are clearly in separate categories, with more than public support and opinion differentiating them.

> This general welfare is exactly the quality of life I'm talking about.

Regarding US policy, we've pretty much narrowed it down to Hamilton and Madison regarding the general welfare clause, ultimately decided in United States v. Butler. My objection to this decision is based in the overall vagueness of the interpretation of "general welfare". It's like saying the government is empowered to do "good". Much like religion, it can be used to justify _anything at all_ to suit any particular agenda. It also seems to be a backdoor to the otherwise carefully and narrowly limited powers set out for the government in the constitution. How do you think the founding fathers would react to the modern US? How do you think the United States would change if this decisions was reversed?

> But the complexity of the operation means they aren't knowledgeable regarding every operation

You don't need to know what's going in every corner to meaningfully consent. Much like you don't need to understand where the tea you are drinking was grown, and by whom it was harvested in order to consent to an offered cup (you can of course inquire); you only need to consent to direct interactions between yourself and others. If you don't like your manager's tie at Airbus, you can just get up and leave. If you have a contract, then its terms will be used to decide who owes what.

> So it sounds like we agree that liberty isn't absolute in a society where interactions between rights have to be balanced and that some rights are subjugate to others.

Yes! In my eyes liberty is a graph, where each possible action in a given moment represents a node. The more actions are permissible (note - not possible, permissible - nature has a say too), the larger the graph, the more free you are. Our society, whose stated goal is to optimize for liberty second only to life itself, ought to design policy that will keep every individual's graph as large as possible. There is no requirement to return to an agrarian economy to put this into practice. In this light, GoFundMe is a much more ethical platform to fund personal medical expenses than taxpayer-funded public health insurance.

If we keep optimizing for the collective good, we end up in China, who has unquestionably been overwhelmingly successful in lifting its (surviving) population out of poverty, and keeping a large and diverse population (relatively) peaceful and productive. The collective good has been served, but at what cost?

> My premise is that nation-states evolved as a social response to the risks of a increasingly complex society. I think the libertarian thought experiments are fun but not particularly useful.

I'm not disparaging the nation-state, just proposing limits to its power. I don't think these are thought experiments at all, but rather important boundaries, without which policy decisions are just tools politicians use to advance their careers.