superluminal said:
What about the indirect harm caused by many human actions?
If you'd stuck with the libertarian movement longer you would already know the answer to that question. We don't believe in restricting government controls on direct harm because of some lofty philosophical notion. We believe in it because government controls on direct harm are often barely workable, and government controls on indirect harm nearly always cause more harm than they prevent.
Indirect harm is difficult to define, to observe, to measure, and to determine who caused it. What is the indirect harm caused by prostitution, drugs, pornography, bare-knuckle prizefighting, 24-hour taverns, or horsemeat burgers? Even if you manage to define it, it's even more difficult to devise a control that is fair, effective, and without ruinous second-order effects.
Every law that now makes us scratch our heads and wonder what idiot thought it up started out as a good intention, usually to protect someone from indirect harm.
Zoning laws. They're ruining cities, aribtrarily making some landowners wealthy and others poor, and providing a windfall for the well-connected. But they started out as a well-meaning attempt to stop someone from building an all-night supermarket outside your bedroom window.
Drug laws. Like laws against prostitution, all of their alleged harm is indirect. It was feared that drugs would destroy the very fabric of our society, creating an environment in which children would choose not to go to school and adults would commit acts of violence. America's first experiment with prohibition created the very conditions it was meant to prevent. There weren't many good economists in those days and they weren't respected (viz. the creation of the Federal Reserve) so no one understood that making a popular commodity illegal creates a black market and black markets employ minors as runners and settle commercial disputes with gunfire. Now we know better. Whoops, I guess most of us don't. Anyway, Prohibition started out as the good intentions of women who thought they were being good Christians and good mothers. Even though Prohibition itself was ultimately rejected, the War on (other) Drugs that it spawned is still causing far more indirect harm than it prevents.
Interracial marriage was once illegal because it was believed to be harmful to "society." If you'd been alive then, how would you have disproven that to a nation that had barely outlawed slavery? All you could say is that since the alleged harm is all indirect, the government has no business with it.
In the final analysis, that's the only refuge we have from despotic government. If there's no direct harm, then get out of my face.