> On the other hand, the chances of libertarians getting their way in a large-scale society like the US is exactly nil, and there's an excellent case to be made that injecting libertarian-motivated policies in a non-libertarian environment, for no reason beyond their agreement with libertarian ideology, can be more disastrous than the alternatives.
Exactly; the funny thing about government intervention is that it ends up creating a need for more government intervention. Regarding the current financial debacle, a libertarian might oppose further regulation of financial institutions, but given the reality that the government has proven that it will bail them out when the going gets tough, they would probably just create the same problems again.
A libertarian would just say that we shouldn't bail them out, and maybe they're right, but a half-successful libertarian campaign would just result in more "heads I win tails you lose" bets by the financial sector and would be worse than either a more heavily regulated economy or (if the libertarians are right) an unregulated economy.
Exactly; the funny thing about government intervention is that it ends up creating a need for more government intervention. Regarding the current financial debacle, a libertarian might oppose further regulation of financial institutions, but given the reality that the government has proven that it will bail them out when the going gets tough, they would probably just create the same problems again.
A libertarian would just say that we shouldn't bail them out, and maybe they're right, but a half-successful libertarian campaign would just result in more "heads I win tails you lose" bets by the financial sector and would be worse than either a more heavily regulated economy or (if the libertarians are right) an unregulated economy.