The facts should be clear to any objective observers; libertarians oppose statism and recognize that the left and right are the opposite side of the same anti-liberty coin. As such they are destined to be in opposition and to fight for less government involvement no matter which of the two statist parties is in power.

I'm really struggling to parse resistance to the idea that the lots of people who claim to be “socially liberal, like markets, but think “tax is theft” libertarianism is for crazy people” wouldn't be the kind of people who claim to “like markets,” but can't name a single case where they'd like more markets or less regulation– with the possible exception of regulations abolished in the late 70s or early 80s, like on trucking or airlines or long distance, that they don't want to bring back, or in a few cases where people don't want to regulate their own industry but want to regulate everything else. Not that that isn't true with social issues as well. There's always some reason or excuse to intervene more.

For example, see Virginia Postrel's comments on liberals, libertarians, and the CPSIA.

But finding liberals who oppose any new regulation is almost impossible–no matter what the perverse consequences. My particular bugaboo is housing. But the CPSIA is another good example.

Libertarians always boast of surveys that show large numbers of people who describe themselves as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” or whatever. They ignore that the exceptions fill a room and make the description meaningless in most case.

I don't think its resistance, I just simply don't know people who fit into that category. And I know my own experiences aren't sufficient, so I look around for people in government, in the media, or on the internet who might fit it. And I don't really find many.

I think you can find many liberals who are fine with markets when they feel things are working well, and will answer surveys to that effect, but really don't support anything that actually supports that viewpoint. Sure, these are just my own experiences. And I truly do apologize if I've missed the data that you've presented about people who hold socially liberal, pro-market beliefs, but who do not already identify as libertarians.

The facts should be clear to any objective observers; libertarians oppose statism and recognize that the left and right are the opposite side of the same anti-liberty coin. As such they are destined to be in opposition and to fight for less government involvement no matter which of the two statist parties is in power.

I'm really struggling to parse resistance to the idea that the lots of people who claim to be “socially liberal, like markets, but think “tax is theft” libertarianism is for crazy people” wouldn't be the kind of people who claim to “like markets,” but can't name a single case where they'd like more markets or less regulation– with the possible exception of regulations abolished in the late 70s or early 80s, like on trucking or airlines or long distance, that they don't want to bring back, or in a few cases where people don't want to regulate their own industry but want to regulate everything else. Not that that isn't true with social issues as well. There's always some reason or excuse to intervene more.

For example, see Virginia Postrel's comments on liberals, libertarians, and the CPSIA.

But finding liberals who oppose any new regulation is almost impossible–no matter what the perverse consequences. My particular bugaboo is housing. But the CPSIA is another good example.

Libertarians always boast of surveys that show large numbers of people who describe themselves as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” or whatever. They ignore that the exceptions fill a room and make the description meaningless in most case.

I don't think its resistance, I just simply don't know people who fit into that category. And I know my own experiences aren't sufficient, so I look around for people in government, in the media, or on the internet who might fit it. And I don't really find many.

I think you can find many liberals who are fine with markets when they feel things are working well, and will answer surveys to that effect, but really don't support anything that actually supports that viewpoint. Sure, these are just my own experiences. And I truly do apologize if I've missed the data that you've presented about people who hold socially liberal, pro-market beliefs, but who do not already identify as libertarians.

If you think the capacity of government to do such good is limited, then that really gets in the way of the virtuous ego-trip. (Which is why Brian Moore's liberal friends are generally not interested in serious economic discussions: it gets in the way.)

Will, you are trying to get American liberals (i.e. politically cross-dressing social democrats) to give up easy virtue. An effortless virtue they have built into their sense of identity. Good luck with that.

A giant case in point is the amount of time and energy they spend on sites like DailyKos, the comments section of the WaPo, and a million other places. If they took 1/10th that time and dedicated their time or services to helping some of the people they supposedly 'care' about, then they might have an impact. But instead they can just continue to whine about how the awesome super-duper government should fix everything because they say so.

If our politics were heavily involved in soda, I'd expect there to be much less diversity and more clumping around Coke vs Pepsi. You might like it if politics were just intellectual debate with no other ramifications (as someone who once hosted a mirror of the Against Politics site, I'd sympathize) but it isn't. Intellectuals will largely be engaged in rationalization for positions they didn't reason their way into in the first place. Rawls' arguments for baseball being the greatest sport and the New Deal as justice come to mind.

'… struggling to parse resistance to the idea that there might be lots of people who are socially liberal, like markets, but think “tax is theft” libertarianism is for crazy people.”

That right there? That's a thumbnail sketch of a neo-liberal.