You seem to be describing our current corrupt democracy that produces crony capitalism that gives favors to big businesses and enables the business owners to become one of the 6 people that own everything.

A major point of libertarianism is to tear down the government structure that enables that crony capitalism and restores real competition in the market.

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bcrosby95 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

So we're going to make government weaker, and by doing so, they will stand up to corporations that are now stronger than them?

If that's true then Libertarians have a rosier view of government than I do. A regular David vs. Goliath situation. Biblical stories aside, my money is on Goliath.

	▲	sylos 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		David and goliath is not a story of a little man defeating an impossible giant. It's the story of a technologically advanced crack pistol shot vs a guy a with a knife and a hundred yards to cover

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throwway120385 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does it though? We've been living through that experiment with elimination of anti-trust and with other libertarian goals being met -- reduction of taxes, introduction of private industry into the public sphere, collection of tolls from public infrastructure, austerity, and general reduction of the size of government. All we've gotten is a replacement of the government with private enterprise. IOW there are a lot of companies out there that provide "public goods" for profit that are some combination of more expensive or lower-quality than the equivalent public services were in the heyday of the US. I think you should agree that without any kind of regulation at all companies are merging into uncontrollable behemoths, and without the ability to meaningfully "vote with our wallets" one of the central tenets of libertarian capitalism is pretty broken. I disagree that the US federal government is responsible for this state of affairs. Rather, the US federal government is taking a pretty strong stance of irresponsibility for this.

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FireBeyond an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What of observed human history gives you any hope that such a thing will happen?

All of these systems function well ... "in theory". Even the ones you may not agree with. Socialism and communism are perfectly fine theoretical systems, until you introduce humans into the equation with desires for power, wealth, etc.

I have seen no hint that Libertarianism is somehow above this and will be the panacea. I also have no idea how you come to the conclusion that collusion will not be a problem in a libertarian world.

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WalterBright an hour ago | parent [-]

> I have seen no hint that Libertarianism is somehow above this and will be the panacea.

The US has been the closest any country has come to libertarianism. And the US thrived on it.

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anigbrowl 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The US would have thrived on any system because it started the game with a continent whose indigenous population was small, pluralistic, nomadic and technologically backward, and whose natural resources were abundant or completely untouched. The colonists had access to the technology of the leading power in the world at the time, and had imported slaves in bulk from another technologically backward continent to jump-start their economy by the time the US was established.

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tombert 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That seems a bit reductive; I don't even know that you're "wrong", but there are a lot of factors that might have led to the United States' success. We have a lot of natural resources and a lot of our land is readily habitable.

Yes, the US also has relatively liberal economics [1], and maybe that's why the US has done well, but I think there are too many confounding variables to conclude it's purely because of economic liberalism.

[1] I mean liberal in the academic sense, not as a synonym for Democrat.

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paulryanrogers 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Doubt. Arguably the US thrived because it is too far from Europe for their wars to cause too much devastation. Unregulated industrialization also gave us child labor, 12h days, 6d work weeks, and company scrip.

After WW2 the US stood alone and enacted a lot of socialist ideas. Then spent a few decades slowly erroding those worker rights and sensible regulations in favor of corporate interests.

	▲	throwitaway222 a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Then the government shifted back to workers rights in the last 20 years, went too far, and the companies decided to hire abroad.

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28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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