Views on liberty: Responsibility, personal or otherwise

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” - Sigmund Freud

Liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin (trite, I know), and you can’t have one without the other, and so it is quite obviously a hallmark of libertarianism. As you are the one who acts, you bear, first and foremost, the responsibility for the results of your actions.

Liberty without responsibility is a form of entitlement. You get drunk, someone else gets the hangover. It is easy to claim freedom when someone else covers your expenses. This is a child's version of freedom, and it works good enough for children. But, as the saying goes, at a certain age you must renounce childish things.

The problem is, this only works when a good number of people are responsible. If everyone were all about sex, drugs and rock n roll, society would collapse. I am not a wage slave, you'll see then claim proudly, but someone who is would should pay for my healthcare. Serves them right for being stupid, unlike me. I am free, as long as mom and dad pay my rent. If they won't I'll agitate for government to do so. The problem is, if no one becomes a doctor, an engineer, a builder, there will be no hospitals, no matter how much government wants to pay for healthcare.

On the other side there is free cake

I saw left-wingers make the frankly ridiculous claim that libertarians want freedom without responsibility (projection much?). On further reading you see the responsibility which libertarians deny is responsibility to others - which is defined not by helping your fellow man, but by giving taxes to government. Right-wingers on the other hand claim lack of libertarian responsibility on grounds of not wanting government laws to impose public morality or some such.

The notion of responsibility is linked to ones actions as, one can hardly be considered to be responsible for the actions of someone else, actions they have no control over. And despite how much authoritarians want government to control others, in the end only individuals can act. Responsibility has nothing to do with government.

Sadly most people want to replace personal responsibility with government, personal charity with government, so to speak they want to outsource caring and responsibility. This is dangerous and creates the illusion of a perfect world were nothing bad ever happens. Why do I need to be responsible when others do it for me just as well or better?

“Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government does not give a fuck about them! The government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply does not give a fuck about you! It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.” – George Carlin

That's the point. They won't do it just as well, let alone better. No bureaucrat will care about you or your close ones more than you do. No bureaucrat is going to hurt for you if something bad happens. And if they don't care they lapse, forget, do a shit job. And if they fuck up you are the one who suffers. There is no perfect world, so people must keep alert and ready. For a quick example, people outsourced the responsibility for retirement in many a country, and something tells me this is a distaste in the making.

Look at this honest face, how can you not trust them with your safety?
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When various bad things happen and people call for caution and awareness, many on the left start screaming about blaming the victim – an offshoot of the silly belief in a world that can be created where nothing bad ever happens. Off course, a rational observer will notice that many a time there is, in fact, no victim blaming. No one is saying it your fault whenever something bad happens, but, sadly, when you get seriously hurt the fact that it is not your fault is not worth a rat’s ass. Even if the ones responsible go to jail, that will not ease your suffering.

The world is not always a safe place and all the wishful thinking in the world will not make it so. It would be ideal if it was, but it’s not. We can work towards making the world better, but in the meantime be careful. Even if the car should stop at a crosswalk, look before you cross because you are the one ending up in the hospital.

We will always have thieves, rapists, murderers, asteroids, and tidal waves, volcanoes, all of which will injure or kill us. To complain it's not fair that we have watch out and protect ourselves against these things misses the point; the world is full of things, natural or human or combination of both, that will harm us and death awaits us all implacably. A characteristic of adulthood is taking responsibility for one's life, with everything this implies.