A Charles Dickens novel shows us what it was like to be in the shoes of the working class or poor people during the Victorian era, living under an unrepresentative Capitalist system where only male land owners had the right to vote. Business owners self interest and greed are the motivating factors behind their endless pursuit of more wealth at any cost.  Capitalism is good if you are rich but ordinary if you are poor and live under a Capitalist system.

In a consequentialist slave-based mob rule society, this might be true. Not in a liberal society. Rights are reflections of human nature. The recognition of rights (not construction) are to prevent majority mob rule from performing unethical functions. If one has a right to life, then the democratic process (collective) cannot vote one to be killed. If Germany was a liberal society, which recognized natural rights, then the holocaust would have been more difficult to enact. If the Soviet Union recognized natural rights, then the millions of people sent to gulags would have been free. Both of these societies were the manifestation of your concept of "collective discourse" determining what is right. 

How are rights natural? One must only observe how people interact with one another without force or coercion, and one must assume that all human beings work to maximize their own happiness, in a natural setting. Property is a natural phenomenon, not only in human beings, but in animals. Property is the natural predispotion of humanity. If one takes property, one must do it by force or coercion. This means that one is dominated by another individual or group of individuals, and is consequently not free. If they are not free, their society is illiberal. 

One cannot have a liberal society without natural rights being the basis for the law. It is by definition illiberal, and this conversation is a perfect example of it.

However, even if we take a consequentualist perspective, the conclusion is the same. People are more happy when they are free. And the only way to freedom is the recognition of natural rights. The recognition of any "rights" superior to natural rights, ends with societies that are worse off. 

Consequently, notice that the countries with the most freedoms tend to be the happiest. 

Yes correlation =/= causation. But considering all other factors in addition to correlation, it seems reasonable to make the assumption that freedom leads to prosperity. 

And what was it like 100 years prior to Dickens living in the same country under repressive economic policies, many of which similar to that of socialism? Was it a paradise? What was it like to live in Soviet Russia, Communist China, or today in Venezuela and Cuba? Were the poor better off? The poor were in destitution because of scarcity, not because of capitalism. Capitalism was working with a precendence of impovershment since the start of civilization, and quite it frankly did very well to improve the standards of living of all persons in the world, effectively reducing worldwide destitution from 80% to 20% (today) even in its most limited form. 

Any concept, or ideal, pursued beyond its own worth becomes burdensome. You see liberty as some sort of panacea that would solve all of the world's problems, and i do not disagree that respect for the dignity of the individual and their capacity for self-governance is important to maintaining our happiness. However we must be aware that one man's freedom can create another man's misery, quite easily. One man's right to property, broadly interpreted, could mean the effective serfdom of thousands or millions as that man uses monopoly powers in the market place to dominate the market-sphere and repress those under his domain.

Liberalism needs restrictions to check the excesses of those who would take their freedom and do evil with it within the bounds of a so-called "liberal" system. These restrictions need not jump off some slippery slope into Bolshevism or Nazism, this is an over-simplistic view of the world.

In addendum, look at what the various socialist policies have done in America and Western Europe. They have checked the excesses of robber-baron style capitalism by helping to enforce minimum living standards across the board. How much has social unrest diminished in America since the New Deal, or how much more stable have Western European societies become since the early 20th century? The "consequentialist" evils of the 20th century were a reaction to the rapaciousness of 19th-century liberalism: the Marxists were those who had always been poor and merely saw the serf-lord replaced by the mill owner as the master of their fate. The Fascists were those small producers who had had some measure of success in the old system, crushed by an unfeeling marketplace against which they could not hope to compete.

Actually, no, I don't think liberty will solve all of the world's problems, utopia does not exist, but it will create the least problems. 

Monopolies are an entirely different discussion, and we can discuss for pages about the topic. I'd just like to mention that natural monopolies exist much less often than government created ones. I won't go as far as some, and say they don't exist at all, but I will say that natural monopolies die in free-markets because there is a huge economic profit to disrupt them. It is only through a combination of subsidies, regulations, and government priveleges that you find monopolies that last for decades and ruin the lives of millions. Nevertheless, anti-trust laws are suppose to deal with monopolies, and you can do that without redistribution of property. Furthermore, the government itself is a coalition of monopolies. It says that it is the only means by which the law can be created, delivered, or enforced. How many lives are ruined by governments and the "collective" process? 

Remember, liberalism is the default human position. It is government and collective decision making that is artificial. It is this process which needs to be limited, because it is this which hurts people. If we are to assume that government is a necessary evil, then it makes sense to limit it as much as possible as to protect one's natural liberties (default position without government.) If we are to accept that government should not exist at all however, the same conclusion is true, as the elimination of all government is an ideal that cannot be realistically achieved today or with the current social structure of human beings. 

Also, liberalism naturally has restrictions. All individuals have rights, and if rights are intruded upon by others, then just compensation must take place through some means. It's precisely how, say, privatizing  common property solves the issue of the Tragedy of the Commons, an issue socialists tend to solve by saying "people won't be greedy anymore in a socialist society, and will change their nature so that they take care of common property bettter."  This is one consequentualist reason for private property to exist. 

One question though: how can you reasonably believe that a collective can represent all of the variation in humanity? All of the different individual goals, wants, and needs? All of the different backgrounds and histories? It makes very little sense. We are all different, and it doesn't hit home that a collective, just because it voted, knows what I want for myself and those I care about. It is very unintuitive. Is the answer that I must sacrifice, be altruistic? If so, why? What has constrained me to be tethered to persons I do not know nor do I interact with? A social contract? Why am I, as a person who has free-will, sentience, and the capacity to make my own decisions, allowed to enact this will freely, as long as it doesn't harm others? Because of the potential to harm others? 

Again, these are all questions I'm interested in, but they all summarize to one question: Why must force be used? 

You wrongly judge freedom and happiness is based on how much material possessions people own. It is ironic that people living in wealthy countries have higher rates of depression, suicide rates regardless of how much wealth or material possessions they own in comparison to third world developing island nations. So what is wrong with third world nations and primitive cultures working together as a community instead of being all against each other in a mindless competition for more wealth and more possessions?

"Because of the potential to harm others?"

That's it in a nutshell. Society determines which are public goods and public bads, and activities that have shown a tendency to create public bads ought to be regulated. There can be no absolute which says that non-aggression alone absolves individuals of their responsibility to society, because unintended consequences are abundant, and if society can head off these unintended consequences before they occur, so much the better.

Absolute liberty (even keeping the non-aggression principle in place) does not lead to absolute happiness, and finding the balance between individual good and public good is an eternally ongoing process, but one that we should not shirk in the name of absolutes.

Is it these policies or was it natural economic growth and the reduction of scarcity which has reduced civil unrest? Could it be that the United States and Western Europe became so productive after the Great Depression that the populations were never destitute? I don't credit the stability to legislation, but to human innovation and ingenuity reducing prices of necessities. If anything, this progress has existed despite the New Deal, not because of it. Of course, in the short term, the New Deal benefited those it chose to benefit, and repressed any socialist revolution, but in the long-term the story is different. 

Question: Why doesn't there exist rober-baron capitalism in the free-markets of Hong Kong and Singapore? Shouldn't they be riddled with this social unrest and destitution among the poor? 

And the potential good that might arise from that freedom? Is that irrelevant? What about the positive externalities? How does society calculate what is good and bad? I think this balance is found by spontaneous order, not by central democratic planning. 

I don't believe in "absolute happiness", there will always be other emotions. That is human nature. 

Because they are small enough societies that they can externalize these public bads in many cases. Hong Kong companies take advantage of cheap Chinese labor, off-loading the dark side of capitalism into their suzerain.

Singapore, meanwhile, sees 60% of GDP generated by a government owned corporation, Tamasek Holdings.