Jonathan S. Shapiro writes:
 > It is almost never healthy to seek to silence someone who asks telling
 > questions.

He's not.  He's asking leading questions.  At least, those are what I
saw from Actually Reading His Conclusion.

 > The privacy wars are an example. As an individual, I clearly want the
 > ability to reject random advertising.

This is a poor example.  There are many unilateral ways to reject
random advertising.  A better example would be use of information
about a person.  The MPA can't keep DeCSS off the net, but it can get
the government to control whether businesses use it.  Similarly,
people can't keep their personal information from being distributed,
but we can get the government to control whether businesses use it.  I
don't see any way to control this without using governmental violence.
I'm sure there *is* a way, it's just that *I* can't see it.

 > Are there flaws in pure libertarianism? Equally certainly! In the pure view
 > of libertarianism, he who has the money makes the rules.

And this cartoon view is similarly balanced by a cartoon view of
government in which the government makes all the rules, and voters
have no say at all.  If you don't see it as a cartoon view, consider
that some rules are impossibly expensive to buy, e.g. the rule that
lets "he who has money" kill people, or less trivially, "all the
bananas," or more evidentially true, "all the silver." (remember the
Hunt Brothers foolish attempt?)

 > As an individual, I find this prospect frightening. It is too easy
 > to sell birthrights, and too hard to buy them back.

Could you propose a model of how I might "sell my birthright" to, say, 
Microsoft?  Or Redhat?

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