In our time, corporations have gained more rights than people, along with the power to enforce those rights against the rights of others. Meanwhile they have few responsibilities, and can vanish rather than face the consequences of their actions (unlike real people).
In the US, the "Libertarian" moniker has been reserved by those who don't seem to mind our situation in which 1% of the people control more than half of the wealth, and that wealth represents more power than the government.
Humanity is the great bulldozer, figuratively paving over the entire world, making it into the image of death. The people on the wheels and shovel of that bulldozer are the little people who don't have a choice to do anything else. If the wealth were properly distributed, people would be empowered to choose other courses of action, or inaction.
It is said that because of machinery we are 90 times more productive than our ancestors. Then it would be possible for only 1 in 90 of us to have to work, or to work over 1/90th of our lifetimes. That is a path we could choose if wealth were distributed evenly. But instead the rich have both the desire to get richer, and the means, by putting us all to work toward that end.
Our work does bring us more stuff, but it is mostly the kind of stuff we could live without. Faster computers, bigger cars, farther flung vacations. Meanwhile, we are sacrificing the "stuff" that really counts -- the survival of life on the planet earth.
We should orient our thinking toward a better kind of world would be like. Karl Marx stated the ideal beautifully, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." This concept does not mean government ownership of everything, as was practiced by the so-called Communist governments that started in the 20th century. They perverted Marx's ideas, much as the Apostle Paul perverted the ideas of a legendary (perhaps mythical) countercultural activist called Jesus. These so-called Communists actually developed State Capitalism, and proved it could be even more tyrannical than the Laissez Faire kind.
In his last works, Marx envisioned a world not just beyond Laissez Faire capitalism, but beyond work itself. This is the goal of my philosophy. We now have the means to create the technology to realize this perfect socialism, but outdated ideas, cultures, and religions prevent us from doing so, or even starting in that direction.
To start, we must realize that most work does bad things, so therefore we must work less. Virtually all work results in the creation of additional greenhouse gasses (as compared with non-work), and most work directly or indirectly leads to the all the other bad things that humanity is doing to the planet and other species. Even if one's work isn't directly cutting down forests, if one's work uses or works toward the creation of a product which uses paper, animal or agriculturally derived products, fossil fuels, etc., the work is contributing toward deforestation.
But even an enjoyable U.S. lifestyle (the U.S. emits 1/4 of all carbon dioxide) could be sustained with a world population at about 1/20 current levels. And the ever increasing populations of the U.S. (it is projected to double again in the next 50 years) and other countries is making ALL of the problems worse.
So childbearing is contributing to all our problems, and may even be considered the root cause of all of them. If only one in ten couples voluntarily had a child (and the others voluntarily chose not to) most of our problems could be easily solved. This is, in fact, the easiest solution, and involves only having most people give up what constitutes a huge investment of work (perhaps the hugest): child-rearing. (This would also greatly reduce the need for other work such as the buidling of new roads, schools, factories, offices, and homes).
I personally want to give my best wishes to all of those bearing and raising children; the job they are doing is determining our fate, so I naturally wish they do the best possible job (in particular, I hope they are developing the ability to think rather than just accept authority). But it has to be said that for about nine in ten parents...it would have been a fundamentally more moral choice to choose not to have children, by whatever means (abstinence, birth-control, or even abortion).
As compared with work, pleasure can be virtually harmless. The best kinds are pregnancy-protected sex and masturbation. Likewise the use of non-addictive recreational psychedelic drugs (such as Marijuana and LSD, used properly, and not under current prohibitions which make proper use impossible) can be harmless, and even a very good thing by opening minds to new ideas. But religions don't want us to be open to new ideas.
The "moral" rules of traditional religions may be seen mostly as coercion to produce the maximum offspring. Since those offspring were raised "in the religion", this was therefore a way for the religion to grow.
Marx missed the point when he said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Like a virus, religions use human beings (and ultimately, the earth itself) to win their competition with other religions (and non-religion). But, by devastating the environment (the earth) their host (humanity) lives in, they are heading toward the destruction of their host. Such it usually is with young viruses, and religion is one of the youngest.
Left to our desires, we would do roughly the right thing. But those desires have been subjugated to the whims of religion and capitalism, and are leading us off the precipice.
An alternate view from a (sadly misinformed but neverthess entertaining) friend of mine.