What blows my mind is how many “progressives” I know who really support this libertarian-style maximum “freedom.”

I’ve been the stodgy conservative of my friend group saying “uh, maybe there was a good reason for banning this stuff?”

Pretty funny, since I actually was a committed libertarian for a while.

It's a little easier to think about when you ignore people's addictive tendencies in the large.

It also takes a blind spot re the forces that will influence events based on betting. I don't care about point-shaving in college basketball (some great stories there, see the Bad Sports episode [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15402912/]. But other real-world outcomes are too important.

A big difference I think is that Progressivism was based on Christianity and Utopian Socialist ideals in the 1800s and 1900s (at least in the United States). So it was much easier for them to support child labor laws, pensions, banning drinking and gambling, etc. by looking at it from the perspective of protecting the poor and destitute, making the nation strong, etc.. Even the Imperial Germans did progressive programs from a paternalistic conservative approach. People were pointing to the Gospel or Rerum Novarum. Not progressivism is more rooted in anarchism or marxism. Which is why they have a lot more saying to remove property rights. Or they will push for legalizing drugs and abolishing prisons, despite that obviously making society worse, but the state, property, etc are all evil.

A lot of libertarian dogma is based on classic homo economicus 'lets pretend people act perfectly rationally' type theories that just really break down when confronted with how humans actually act.