[A]s a public political philosophy libertarianism is morally inadequate. In practice, it will produce minus-sum consequences…
Libertarian doctrine drops the cooperation criterion of gamesmanship in favor of “YOYO” – “you’re on your own.” The libertarian dogma of “the invisible hand” decrees that a collection of self-serving individuals seeking only to maximize their own personal freedom and wealth, will somehow, by “spontaneous generation,” evolve into an optimum social arrangement. No explicit rules and regulations are required apart from those laws designed to achieve the goal of the protection of the lives, liberties and property of each individual.
It is a neat and simple belief system which, unfortunately, neither history nor practical experience will validate. Instead, history has taught us that when a society officially embraces what Ayn Rand calls “the virtue of selfishness” and greed becomes the controlling force in community life, wealth and power do not “trickle down” to the masses, they “percolate up” to those in control, leaving those masses impoverished and disenfranchised. Government, having been “drowned in a bathtub,” offers no relief to the oppressed. “The free market” and “competitive enterprise,” extolled by the libertarians in theory, are set aside in practice. The prevailing capitalists regard competition as inefficient and inconvenient, and still worse, the constant competitive pressure to improve and innovate erodes profits…
How, then, are diversity, free markets and competition to be preserved? How else than through the intervention of anti-trust laws, which means an activist government, which, of course, is anathema to the libertarian.
Morality as a Plus-Sum Game - Why Libertarianism Fails as a Social Policy
![Activists: Insurance industry’s flight from [libertarian] Heartland a symptom of growing climate change acceptance
The recent flight of insurance companies from leading climate change denial group The Heartland Institute isn’t just due to the group’s offensive Chicago billboard comparing scientists to “Unibomber” Ted Kaczynski. Experts told Raw Story this week that the overt rejection of Heartland’s billboard is more of an exclamation point on the rapidly growing trend of insurance companies owning up to the brutal reality of the world’s worsening weather.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rmmfQHuJ1qztsh3o1_1280.jpg)
![Accretive Health’s stock plunges after shakedown allegations
A fast-growing Chicago company that specializes in medical debt collection is under intense scrutiny after the Minnesota attorney general accused it of shaking down patients for payments [at their bedsides], sometimes before they could receive treatment.
Yet another example, libertarian (and other right-wing) imbeciles, of government protecting us from corporate depredations.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m33h38Q43r1qztsh3o1_1280.jpg)
