I understand that your argument is that you don't think that the individual should be subservient to the government, only to the rights of others. I think this is a reasonable stance, until you start thinking about rights that are hard to defend alone.

Let's take a situation halfway between normal tort like vandalism and something like anthropogenic climate change; ground water pollution seems like a decent middle ground.

There is no doubt that corporations sometimes pollute ground water, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not. I think you would agree that this is an actionable offense. It is unclear to me how you think that this should be handled. A hardcore libertarian would say that this should be handled as a lawsuit between those affected by the polluted groundwater and the polluters. My remembrance of your past arguments leads me to believe that you might be fine with classifying this as a crime that could be prosecuted directly by the authorities. (Then again, maybe you envision a situation where a landowner doesn't care about the pollution of his ground water.) My problem with the hardcore libertarian argument is that it is exceedingly difficult for an individual or group of individuals to win a lawsuit against a corporation, because the corporation can easily outspend the individuals. In my opinion, this is the type of situation where the government is there to protect the underdog by preemptively preventing this sort of abuse. On top of protecting the underdog, it is also beneficial to try to prevent the abuse from happening in the first place rather than being solely reactive. For instance, a corporation may well see the loss of a lawsuit being less costly than the amount they're saving with their actionable offense and merely decide to do it anyway. (Given, there are companies, and individuals, who come to the same conclusion facing criminal rather than legal action anyway.)

What I'm getting at is that I don't see it as unreasonable that the government tries to proactively prevent harm, or in protecting the weak from the powerful. Does this sometimes result in abuses of that power? Sure, but, in my opinion, less so than if corporations were allowed to run roughshod.

If you want to talk about specific laws, I'm more than likely to agree with you. I am as concerned with personal liberty as you are, I just think that many personal liberties are better defended by the government than they can be by individuals. I honestly think that the federal lightbulb law is reasonably well written. It doesn't outlaw any specific technology; it merely requires better efficiency, and I don't think that it's unreasonable for the government to try to prevent the waste of an unrenewable resource. If you want to talk about mercury contamination, that's a discussion worth having: is the increase in possible mercury contamination worth the increase in efficiency in light generation? I'd say yes, but I think it's a reasonable discussion to have.

It's also reasonable to discuss global warming, but that discussion has, at this point, come to most of its conclusions. I personally think it's ridiculous to think that an increase in global temperatures is anything other than bad, but I'll admit to the possibility of being wrong. I won't admit that there seems to be any possibility that the climate isn't changing, though. I also think that it's likely that people are using climate change to their own personal political advantage, but that's true of virtually everything, ever. For example, I think you're using it to your personal political advantage.

Anyway, I think I've gotten to the rambling stage and I'll stop now.