In recent years, libertarianism has been gaining much support throughout the nation. Many of their objectives are very noble-trying to reduce military spending, ending a needless and bloody war on drugs, reducing the debt, and ending unproductive bureaucracy and waste. However, there is a certain fantasy surrounding libertarianism- that if the government would just get out of the economy everything would be nice and rosy. The problem is that this system has already been tried and found to be wanting.
Now, I know those who support libertarian ideas will say that we never truly had libertarianism, and they might have some truth to this claim. However, we do have a picture of what a libertarian society would look like from the Gilded Age. There are few government regulations in the workplace, so workers get treated like animals. There is no quality public education system; so many children have to go to the factories to work. There are next to no environmental or food regulations, and so the environment and health of the nation suffer greatly as a result.
Another problem with libertarianism is that those who preach it cannot give one solid example of it working in the real world. Those who claim the positives of a more welfare state or socialist system can give the examples of Denmark, Finland, or Norway, which have some of the highest standards of living in the world. What examples can libertarians give? The only examples of societies that were close to libertarianism were not very good places for the majority of the populous. We could give the example of the U.S. in the 1800s or Latin American countries.
Another problem with libertarians is that those who push this economic idea are often led by ideologues and right wing think tanks rather than responsible economists. Why? Because any responsible economist realizes that libertarianism would be disastrous for the masses and ultimately bad for the overall society. After all, it was a lack of government regulation that led us to so much of the current mess we are in. Libertarianism has been pushed by the likes of past ideologues such as Ayn Rand, and modern ideologues like Peter Schiff. Libertarianism may look great on paper, but in reality, it would be disastrous, with a few people controlling everything and the masses struggling to merely survive.
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