The question libertarians just can’t answer

From Salon:

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

More here.

Of course, the easy answer to this question is that there are no libertarian countries because libertarianism only works in one's imagination, and then only if one ignores a lot about how business functions.  That is, libertarianism's fatal flaw has been ever thus: removing government from the economic equation must necessarily result in big business not only running the country, but also running roughshod over it.  Indeed, removing government from the economic equation actually hurts the economy, a lot, because without an outside force controlling economic interactions, the strongest economic agents will assert such control themselves, which means one for you, nineteen for me.  And slavery, why not?

The reality is that the rise of "Big Government" perfectly coincides with the rise of big business.  "Big Government," in the end, exists because it has to exist.  There is no way the modern economy, the modern nation state, could exist without "Big Government."  We throw it away at profound risk.  Actually, no nation will EVER embrace American style libertarianism.  It's suicide.  Even we won't embrace it.  And everybody knows it.  I mean, big business essentially runs the country, anyway, but continues to do it through the government, which it knows it needs in order to keep the whole house from caving in on itself.

So libertarianism is pure fantasy.  A joke philosophy for know-it-all Peter Pan men to get a sense of superiority over you.  It is not a serious point of view.  That it has become such an important part of our public discourse is testament to the over-the-top insanity which has engulfed our nation.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$