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[irking every __massgroup I join]
The libertarian tradition in America is the best hope for returning the country to economic growth, by rebalancing the seesaw of rights towards the individual and away from the megastate solutions of the major parties.
But the growth will not lead towards "live and let live", in fact it will lead to a strengthened community morality that many libertarians may not be happy with.
Humans are societal beings, evolutionarily disposed to live in small communities of 150 or so. Even in our modern cities, it is unlikely that any one person can maintain a circle of acquaintances exceeding this number. In the prehistory of our species, it was vital for each person to go about cooperatively producing things to eat and places for shelter, and also producing the next generation. Sloth and laziness really were deadly sins, as was homosexuality. Even in our national history we find many examples of colonies which teetered on the edge of failure mainly because the early colonists avoided work.
So our species is called on to produce produce produce. The laws of our society therefore are geared towards increasing production. Laws against drunkenness, drug abuse, sex abuse and suicide, while variably unenforceable, exist in order to promote work and production, both economic and within the family.
This production is not just preferable but vital for our continued survival as a society.
Around 35 years ago we decided to disconnect our money from its physical anchor (gold), and not coincidentally we disconnected work from reward. You could make much more money trading oil or corn futures than actually pumping oil or growing corn. While our economy tanked and poverty and misery increased, we developed cultural coping strategies to make it morally acceptable to deviate from production both economic and physical. In truth, what point was there in working when a swing in the currency could destroy all your effort, and why have children when you were getting poorer all the time and wouldn't be able to feed them?
If at some point we re-establish the link between the dollar and gold we will find the connection between work and reward. In that case, the resulting society will not be more tolerant of deviation from the commandment to "go forth and multiply".
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