I don't class an emotional hurt as being a legally actionable injury. i.e., the law doesn't need to get involved in telling people to be nice or telling them to care about other people.

I'm going to disagree with this assertion about morality:

it would immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work

The first charge is that this would be an immoral risk to take because you might hurt yourself. In my understanding of morality, it is up to each individual to decide for themselves which risks and consequences and injuries to themselves are immoral. For example, I would not go skydiving, but other people choose to do so. They are taking a risk I choose not to take, but I do not think they are immoral for taking the risk, and I do not think an increase in the magnitude of risk alters the morality of the situation, because they are risking themselves. As another example of higher risk, some people choose to try to circumnavigate the globe on solo fights or boat trips. This is a huge risk; some people have perished in the attempt. But the fact that they were risking serious hurt to themselves does not render their decision immoral.

The second charge is that you are risking hurting another person. But again, this is their risk to take. They decide to travel on a road that includes other human drivers knowing that doing so incurs some risk of injury. Taking that risk is not immoral. As an analogous example, wrestlers or boxers choose to fight each other knowing that there is a risk of injury to each other, but doing so is not immoral because the risk is voluntarily accepted by each participant.

Ideally, travelers could choose between a variety of competing travel arrangements, including roads that might choose to exclude human drivers for the safety of travelers, or roads that choose to allow them for those who desire to take that risk. What would be truly immoral would be to forcibly monopolize some or all of the transportation options, so that people do not have the freedom to create differing transportation alternatives that compete with one another. This would limit the choices of travelers such that some might have to take risks they do not want (e.g., roads with both human and automated drivers, because pure-automated roads are not available), or cannot choose to take risks that they find rewarding, such as choosing to drive when automated drivers are available.

Dr. Walter Block has written an entire book on how the American highway system is currently subject to this kind of immoral forced monopolization, currently causing 40,000 needless traffic fatalities per year, and how the elimination of this immorality is entirely practical and beneficial.

I don't want to force you to give up the governmental system you choose. I just want you to disavow the right to force me to support your system. You can continue to fight your wars, pledge allegiance to your flag, collect your taxes from your members, etc. But I would like the chance to get together with other people like me and quit supporting your system and start competing systems.

I don't want either you or me to force each other to do anything.

non sequitur

From what I understand, most Austrian economists dismiss bitcoin because according to Austrian economics, currency must arise from something that is originally useful in the market for purposes besides money. And Austrian economists don't teach that deflationary spirals don't occur; instead what I've heard is that they believe that deflation is not a bad thing.

I'd like to see bitcoin adapted to represent trading units of gold or something else, issued by multiple competing sources and redeemable from the original issuing source. I think that would be a better test of Austrian economic principles.

All of that may be true. I would still argue that people have the right to participate in such a system if they choose, and other people have the right to make whatever conclusions off of it that they think are warranted.

If I'm reading this right, the word GIF has been around a long time, but it is "word of the year" because of the new usage, as a verb. I've never heard this usage, and I can't for the life of me figure out what it could mean. Does "to gif" mean "to convert an image to GIF format"? Does it mean "to capture an image in GIF format"? Neither one of these sounds like something that would be a very common usage, so I'm sure I'm missing something. What does this new verb mean?

If China can use the dollar, then seceded Texans can use the dollar if they want to. I would imagine they wouldn't want to. And I would hope the law would be like early America, where people used whatever other people would accept, and currencies could compete (and therefore held their value). In those days, most people used the Spanish milled peso, Spain's answer to the Thaler coin. Both Thalers and pesos were about an ounce of silver. The Thaler name gave rise to "dollar."

Personally, I'd rather see seceded Texans use silver ounce coins, but I'd want them to be able to make up their own individual minds.

You've got me wrong. I'm a Texan who wants to secede, but my policy would be open immigration: you can come from anywhere, so long as you buy or rent a place to stay, or get permission to stay with someone else. I'm for a much more liberal immigration policy, and I welcome a fusion of American+Texan+Mexican culture.

Conquest is immoral and doesn't provide any legitimate claim. I hope you stand with me in opposing it.

That's an inalienable right, actually.

You are a tyrant.

Great, but I think there's another way to get those, and I don't consent to you building them at my expense.

To me there's nothing different between that and a religious belief. You think you know what's best for me, and you believe you are justified in forcing it on me. I think that's every bit as immoral as making me attend or support a government-linked church.

No, please abandon your illegitimate claim over my life, body, and property. Just because you think you know what's right for me doesn't give you the right to make me cooperate.

I don't agree that my presence within a boundary drawn by other people constitutes consent. I'm in a spot that your government claims, but the claim is not legitimate and does not rest on any legitimate principle that makes it "theirs" and not "mine." I don't consent. I agree with you as far as raising children, but your analogy fails because I am not in your house. I am in my house. You and I did not partner together to buy two houses and form an association where we each have some say in what goes on in each other's houses.

I'm glad to hear that. Then my decision ought to be praised, as well as my efforts to persuade others to also withdraw their consent.

I wish. If you think being blue in a red state, or red in a blue state is hard, try being the guy who doesn't raise his hand at the office when the VP says "So, who voted today?"

It essentially already is. But there's some faint hope if we can get a critical mass of people to believe in everybody having the freedom to withdraw consent, and nobody having the right to force others to say pledges, fund wars they don't believe in, adhere to religious principles they don't believe in, etc.

I am lobbying to change it. I am appealing to you, and every other member of the public, to stop forcing your will on me. In exchange, I will not force my will on you. I won't force you to support wars you do not believe in, won't force you to abstain from drugs unless you believe in abstaining from them, won't force religion or any other belief on you, won't prohibit you from marrying anyone you choose of any gender (so long as they consent), etc.

Leave? Why should I leave? This spot is mine. Not yours. That's my whole point.

It is my land. I paid for it and bought it from its owner. The government does not own our land any more than it owns our bodies. It doesn't own any of our property. But it does lay claim to all of the above, and that is stealing.

What would be right would be for your government to get off of my land. I'll make you a deal: you guys stay off my land, and I'll stay out of your lives, won't make you pay for any wars I believe in, won't make you support my church financially, won't stop you from using drugs if you choose, will stay out of your womb (if applicable), etc.

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I don't consent to this system. I've heard most of the arguments for it, and I don't agree. You haven't persuaded me, and I don't consent. It's fine with me if the rest of you live under whatever system you like, but I don't think you should be allowed to get your way at the expense of the rest of us.

Anyway, when the other guys wins, don't complain to me for the next four years, all right? You agreed to live under this crazy majority rule system. I did not.