 One type of reply is to argue that while taxation to establish a social minimum policy regime might reduce one kind of liberty, it will promote another, more valuable kind of liberty. According to this view, true or real liberty does not consist in the mere absence of intentional coercion, but in the positive capability or power to act in pursuit of significant goals, such as self-development. Poverty, so the argument runs, diminishes this true, “positive liberty”; by abolishing or alleviating poverty, welfare programs, financed through coercive taxation, increase the true, positive liberty of society’s more unfortunate members. The loss to the taxpayer in terms of “negative liberty” (liberty understood as the mere absence of intentional coercion) is, so the reply continues, morally outweighed by this gain in terms of “positive liberty”. This type of reply to the freedom objection has a long history (Freeden  1978).[7]