You are right about one thing. Humans are ill equipped to care about the welfare of those beyond their small tribe. But that's why we form governments and appoint leaders. They are supposed to look out for the greater whole.
As for your Climate Change alarmists, I take great exception to that and consider it a great fallacy. It is easier to sow doubt than to convince someone of a fact and that is what deniers have preyed upon. If you don't think we are all going to be fucked as a species in the next 100 years then you sir or madam are part of the problem.
And there is no overstating. The facts are the facts regardless if those facts take 25 years, 100 years, or 200 years to catch up to us. It's going to happen. We are putting BILLIONS of metric tons of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year for damn near a century now. The ONLY way you don't draw the same conclusions that 99% of scientists do is because a) Your basic knowledge of how greenhouse gases work is deficient or b) you clearly have an agenda and purposely adopt an ignorant position.
The reason alarms are raised is because there is a huge lag when it comes to the effects on the atmosphere and the climate. So if we wait until shit is so obviously wrong that even the Koch's admit it then nothing we do will ever reverse the damage.
Back in the 20s and 30s in the US, the mob ran roughshod over the land. The only way devised to corral them-- because of massive corruption on local, state, and federal levels-- was to invoke tax laws.
The statement is largely true but the libertarian in me wishes to suggest that stopping the mob was the WRONG priority. The mob was doing plenty of things they could have been prosecuted for besides tax evasion, etc. The actual crimes like assaulting people should have put them away. Society would have been better served then as now, had 'we' gone after those corrupt officials protecting the criminals at all levels.
I'd feel safer having got one crooked cop off the street than I would removing 10 guys who sell a little weed and untaxed liquor now and then.
Finally private property, emphasis private is the very corner stone of all other freedoms. Interfering and spying on with reporting requirements with the exchange of money between individuals threatens that most basic freedom. Is a tool that can be used to detect crimes sure, but there are other ways to do that, and much like mass phone record collection I don't believe its one that is justified.
The reasons they went after the mob on tax purposes was because there was never any direct evidence of violence by the bosses against their victims. But there was plenty of financial paper trails leading directly to said bosses.
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro