In defense of a libertarian welfare state: response to Michael Shermer.

Mr. Shermer worries that once we empower any organization to employ the force of law to mandate collective action of any kind, we will have embarked on a slippery slope to a totalitarian state that will destroy every liberty we cherish. This concern is overblown. Governments have been mandating collective action since the dawn of recorded history. And although history does, in fact, include a considerable number of brutally totalitarian states, people around the world clearly enjoy much greater liberty today, on balance, than they ever have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]