1. This quote is frequently taken out of context to mean something very different from its original intent.

2. More importantly, we give up a little "Liberty" for a little "Safety" all the time, it's basically a primary purpose for any government. I mean, should I be able to cruise down the highway at 120 MPH as I'm snorting a line of coke? Liberty-vs-safety tradeoffs are nearly all the tough calls in government.

That being said, I don't think most would consider driving 120 mph while snorting coke an essential liberty. The OP makes a much more reasonable point which you refuse to address.

This isn't an academic argument, either. Just look at the gun debate in the US. Many argue that any curtailment of the right to bear arms, from a pistol to a bazooka, is an infringement of essential liberty. Many others strongly disagree that the right of individuals to own high-powered firearms is an essential liberty.

It's a matter for debate what liberties are essential and different people believe different things.

Your example is not one of "liberty", at most can be one of "licence", and surely not of "essential liberty".

While debatability is normal, that in this context of liberty the point of discrimination is "how and how much one's action affects others" - akin to the dialectic between "freedom to vs freedom from" - should be a trivial point, and at the same time is evidently something not clear in many.

Categorizing "speedracing under an influence" is not a hard exercise.

Edit: I am also seeing - and in the past 18 months the evidence has boomed -, a widespread inability towards the judgement of "why this policy", both in the affected public and the issuing power, including monstrous faults deviating from straight reasoning and display of shallow arguing (not even any more explainable by electorate positioning). I have seen a boost in lack of judgement. This is very ghastly - it is a return to the famed quality/quantity of discrimination in times of witch-hunting.

Inequitable societies will prioritize the safety & liberty of some groups above others. People also have different ideas on where the balance should be (well, excluding anarchists) but that is merely a matter of degree, not kind.

Of course that oversimplifies things, but this over used & out of context quote ignores that fundamental fact of any minimally organized group of people.

I agree with what you say about these decisions being made as a society, and there being disagreements.

I would like to point out that you may misunderstand anarchists. Anarchists understand disagreement over such trade-offs better than most, and work harder than most for compromise and census. Anarchists are fine with large political structures and rules, as long as they are not forced upon anyone. Anarchists prioritize not forcing anything on others [0].

An anarchist might refer to what they have been doing in Switzerland for the last 150 years as a great example of bottom-up direct democracy in action [1], which is basically what political anarchy is. Currently a country of 8.5 million people, Switzerland is split into 26 cantons (they divide into more when needed). Each canton has its own constitution and parliament (averaging ~330k people each). Cantons are divided into municipalities (some large, like Zurich, and some small, with only 2-3k people). A big part of their political culture and the structure of their government is that what can be done locally is done locally, and the people are in charge. People can petition for a vote to not only create new laws and amendments, but to have laws they don't like removed.

Many of the problems in the U.S. are due to the fact that the federal government was never meant to be as involved in our lives as it is (10th amendment, powers default to the states) and was not designed to be responsive to the people (technically states vote for president, not people). So now there are 330 million of us arguing about more and more stuff. Even worse we allow rich people and corporations to fund politicians (which is illegal in most civilized countries), to the detriment of most people. The U.S. needs less plutocracy (rule by the rich) and more democracy (rule by the people).

Sorry, this has been on my mind lately. I just learned about how much anarchists are into democracy, and about Switzerland's democracy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchists (refer to first sentence)

[1] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli... (page 4 shows how powers are divided)

That's pretty much what I meant. Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process then things can fall apart, and an inability to opt out goes against anarchist principals:

Does everyone in a Canton agree? If not, it's rules are still imposed unwillingly on some. Aren't there still rules imposed upon the entire population that each Canton must observe?

Although I admit that was oversimplifying in my prior comment when I characterized anarchism as simply one thing. There are multiple schools of thought, and I suppose that not all of them reject all aspects of the "social contract". They do, however, exist at the extreme end of the balance I mentioned.

> Bottom up democracy is one thing, but if people can opt-out of the results of that democratic process then things can fall apart, and an inability to opt out goes against anarchist principals?

> Does everyone in a Canton agree? If not, it's rules are still imposed unwillingly on some.

What exactly falls apart? If half the people want to go left, and the other half right, is there something wrong letting them each do their own different thing? Is it so important to be united at scale that people should be forced into something they don't want to do?

It is my understanding that when power originates with the people then municipalities, cantons/states, and federal governments only are invested with powers if enough people in those structures agree. Ideally consensus - nobody vehemently opposed. Otherwise the smaller groups retain their independence. Along these lines the Swiss have the ability to repeal laws via petition/referendum. Like you said before, societies need to figure out for themselves the details of how they handle these things.

The Swiss legislate their social programs at the canton level, each an average size of .3 million people. If you have a problem you can knock on the door of your representative, each answering to a couple thousand people. You might even know that person already.

Compare that to the U.S. where most social programs are legislated at the federal level, involving 330 million people, one representative per 500k+ people. Look at the disaster that is health care in this country, written by industry lobbyists, overriding several new and interesting state plans, passed just barely by one senator who died before the bill was finished, almost repealed by the same margin several years later, still fought over and still a mess.

I don't understand why many in the U.S. think we have to do things at the federal level when the Swiss do the same things in cantons that are the size of U.S. counties or mid-size cities.

There are things the Swiss do at a federal level, like foreign affairs, national highways, nuclear power, etc. I don't know how flexible they are, but if a canton didn't want to participate wouldn't it make sense that the non-participating canton doesn't get the benefits - no federal defence, no highway, or none of the nuclear energy? Is that necessarily a problem? But they agree these are things worth cooperating on, and they do.

David Graeber (democracy/anarchy) and Lepold Khor (bigness problems) influenced my thinking on a lot of this.