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Most people want the government to solve their problems and give them free stuff(i.e. socialism). They are 'statists'. At tbe very most, libertarians are minarchist, and many are some sort of no ruler/just rules people.

I left libertarianism as a party because everyone else I met who proclaimed to be libertarian were also extremely misogynistic. It was hard because I like the values of personal liberty, property rights, etc. Its just hard when the guys were clearly lumping women in with property and not believing we should have personal liberty which got super lame and exhausting.

A core value of libertarianism is freedom from coercion. Political parties are the sorts of entities who exert coercive forces on people, so it is a nearly impossible task to organize a libertarian political party. My guess is libertarians will always vote for the least worst option facing them, at a particular time and place. Your observation that both the right and the left are calling for more government intervention seems correct. The disenfranchised on both sides of the political spectrum feel that something needs to be done, and populists take advantage of that energy to seize power. Classical liberals, now called libertarians, warned that the preconditions for this sort of collectivist power encroachment were being put in place with the adoption of Keynesian economics, in the 1940’s. I’m thinking of F.A. Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”, in particular. So prophetic.

Libertarianism is incompatible with how lazy and entitled most have become nostr:nevent1qqsqgtwgtke2a9c952kmuly7mas2vmpxdm4w795yh636alqnym77ldspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgxzvwz9

At the core of this problem is that people want to control what others do. In a sense, libertarianism doesn't work, because it denies them this ability. There's way more to it, but I think that's the central issue.

Folks aren't poor enough to be Libertarians.

Great book, one chapter dives into how Clinton and GOP were spooked when Perot won such a large % of popular vote. They addressed the debt with paygo, and also (not in book) made lots of changes to how debates happened and thresholds, worked with media to disincentivize platforming 3rd parties, and putting effort into making silly things (like not knowing “Aleppo”) a bigger deal than they are. The duopoly does not want more competition or democracy, they want power and will go to great lengths to keep it.

People are brainwashed into thinking you only have two choices and that voting for anyone other than one of those two, are wasted votes. We didn’t have a third party for this past election but we did in 2020, yet people still felt like they had to vote for Trump or Biden which seemed completely insane. I voted for Jo Jorgensen.

Libertarianism as a movement seems to be full of difficult and unlikeable people, with a mindset of extreme individualism and independence. They struggle to form and maintain large enough social groups to make meaningful change. Conservative and progressive parties attract compatible, socially cohesive people working on (in essence) the reduction of societal friction through standardisation of interaction. Libertarianism conversely aims to remove any standardisation and leaves maximum societal friction. You are free to conduct your business how you individually please, but so is your customer, competitors etc. Libertarianism has meritocratic success outcomes, and abandons the unproductive. This is detrimental to at least the lower 50% of society. So a libertarian party relies on hyper-individualistic, high-merit people, forming a group and coming to a consensus which is all the exact opposite of their nature. It may happen occasionally but it seems unsustainable. Anthropologists say the single biggest success contributor for Homo sapiens was their ability to form larger communities over Neanderthals who could only form small communities.