Libertarianism sounds great. It’s all about freedom — a lot of which I agree with. I think a woman should have a lot more freedom in her body and how she spends her money. However, we all need to ‘ante up’ to play the game of civilization (which means taxes). I’ve never seen a Libertarian fictional account (book) without at least some central government helping manage it.
Government keeps being posed as this awful thing (kicked into high gear by Reagan) directly attacking its citizens. In a democratic government, we are the government. So we are afraid of ourselves and each other (which is true — we actually are). How do we get past that and see ourselves/each other/the government as good — why so much self-hate?
Funny thing about Republicans — they love the government — it’s the easiest way to make money — get the government to tax the rabble and then attach themselves to the government bank accounts. Democrats also like to spend government money — but they aren’t as self-selecting for amoral, money fanatics. For most of my life (over 50), the deficit has grown faster in a Republican controlled Congress.
The thing most Libertarians like to overlook is that we live in a society — where we are all dependent on each other (and our ancestors). We have accumulated great wealth over thousands of years and when that wealth is too unevenly distributed it becomes destabilizing. The natural outgrowth of libertarianism is always authoritarianism. Wealth, when not disrupted (generationally — or other means), almost always grows to the point that one or a small number of families exert so much power that a free society essentially becomes a monarchy/dictatorship.
The solution to every social problem is compromising to find the most livable/optimal approach to individual freedom versus overall societal health. We can neither have full freedom to do whatever we want nor full societal control to have optimal health as a species.
Since we have so many experiments in different approaches to government — why not take a look at the empirical results of different governments and see which ones have the healthiest societies (happiness, freedom, health, long-term sustainability) — the libertarian/anarchies seem to rate rather low — the social democracies of Europe appear to rank very high. Our government/social structure of predatory capitalism also doesn’t rank very high.
I must admit though that as I get older instead of becoming more conservative, I am becoming more liberal which I attribute to being an engineer/scientist looking for more optimal solutions. Our solution space for problem-solving is dependent on who we have available to help solve problems. If you filter out the poor, immigrants, women, of color — a very small part of our population is left to solve these problems (saying this as a white, male who is part of that small population who also desperately wants more brains working on technological and societal problems).