My libertarian streak manifests itself in wanting to be free to do the wrong thing so that I can choose to do the right thing. What is the point of character if you have no bad choices to eschew? I want to be allowed to swim where it’s foolhardy – I’m grateful for the warnings, but only the warnings – so that I can decide NOT to swim where it’s foolhardy. And I want to not pollute the air because it’s right not to pollute the air.

But I also want the air not to be polluted, and it appears that only coordinated, collective action can achieve that result. So I must weigh my somewhat narcissistic desire to decide for myself against the risk of getting emphysema because others don’t share my self-control. (It’s self-control, not self-governance, that I believe libertarians want to practice.) If I decide that collective action is required, I have, to my mind, no libertarian stake in defining HOW it will be coordinated. I have a practical stake – I may want local control, I may want control by a body to which I may be elected, or to which I will have access – but these are political as opposed to philosophical matters. As soon as I say that I will abide by ANY compulsory rule that I cannot veto and from which I cannot opt out, I am surrendering my liberarian desideratum for a communal one that I value more highly.

What remains for the libertarian is the scope of delegation. I would rather delegate authority to make air-pollution rules to a responsive air-pollution rule-maker than have that authority arise as a result of some broader delegation of power to a more generally empowered government. That, I think, is what Dr. Isom is driving at: governments just aren’t as good at making rules as private users are.

Ideally – but not optimally in the real world – the enumerated powers of the government would be granted on a case by case basis as the need arose. First we’d see if a private solution can be reached, then we’d delegate rulemaking to the most narrowly drawn committee as would get the job done. Unfortunately, so many things need coordinating that we’d be forever trying to figure out who should decide what. And so we get a sitting government. Of course, the problem is that a sitting government is like a standing army: it doesn’t want to just do nothing. It has a hammer, and so every problem looks to it like a nail.

The point of this ramble, though, is that the train leaves Libertarian Station when the issue becomes too complicated or communally applicable – like air quality – for users of the commons to resolve by private rule-making. From there on, we’re talking engineering, not philosophy.

“In that work Vincent asks what are the preconditions for a self-governing citizenry. He answers that a self-governing society must be composed of citizens fully capable of embracing the “cares of thinking and the troubles of living.””

I do not know what “cares of thinking and the troubles of living” are, but it seems to me that all one needs for a self-governing citizenry is an ethic of respect for other people’s property and liberty. In other words, adherence to the 8th Commandment (irrespective of one’s religious beliefs) will take us much more efficiently to a self-governing citizenry than any other approach.