Many groups want to remake the world (i.e. rule it), from naive idealists to cults that want to become monopolies.
When they compete, things tend to end up about as bad as they were before, but a lot of property may be reshuffled.
The remaining American libertarian parties are set to suffer another big defeat at the polls (this story could be written in any even-numbered year). Instead of making slow progress, it looks like they might be on the way out. The problem is that they mostly appeal to intelligent white male nerds. But I repeat myself too many times.
The situation is even worse in other countries, where libertarian candidates are stuck at under one twentieth of one percent.
Actually, the voters haven't rejected the libertarian program. They never considered it in the first place.
For that to happen, they would need to understand the likely outcome of a libertarian program. Other parties would gladly popularize the results for them.
There are two main points:
The potential benefit: libertarian socialism.
It's true that Medicare (and every equivalent program in other welfare states) is more efficient than private health insurance. It benefits from economies of scale, and the ability to bargain for favorable terms.
Through sheer self-interest, most healthcare consumers would join a voluntary insurance network that was larger than anything available now. Once it got started, it would absorb most competitors.
This would also be extremely illegal. Voluntary means it could charge elderly and medically defective people higher premiums, which violates the political imperative of hiding true healthcare costs. Libertarians refuse to speak of such things, any more than about racial differences, if there are any.
In this impossible future, members would only be required to pay for the health insurance they want for themselves. The young would not be forced to pay for the preferences of the elderly, but could set up saving accounts. They wouldn't pay for patients with expensive pre-existing conditions either.
However, this network would keep track of everyone's charitable contributions. Those who donated less than they could afford to, would receive less charity when they needed it. Like a voluntary tax, this would be a limited incentive to donate more. Most people fear the unknown more than a monthly deduction.
Another strange left-libertarian idea is a special income tax for people who earned their wealth 'unfairly'. High-paid CEOs, bank executives, and other well-off individuals are basically thieves who acquired vast sums by manipulating symbols, but haven't made others better off. Since the details are too complicated, this is a political non-starter.
The fatal disadvantage: the charity gap.
All the above benefits are erased by one simple fact. It's the reason why libertarian or other non-coercion candidates can't be elected to national office in the USA or any other country. The reason is simple:
Some people would noticeably die sooner under such a system.
Namely, customers of the most expensive healthcare - such as the brain-dead elderly, those applying for complex transplants, the severely handicapped receiving lifelong intensive care, premature babies, the most expensive cancer cases and injuries, and so on.
We live in a dysgenic world in which respectable voters (margin of error -1%) are committed to the notion that a braindead individual should be kept alive indefinitely, if that is what they would have wanted, regardless of the cost. This charity only extends to the border. Slaves and torture victims abroad can be safely ignored.
Taxpayers and other voters can't or won't compare the pain required to earn money to pay taxes, to the 'benefit' of keeping a severely damaged individual alive. Cost/benefit analysis is taboo.
However, they are also unwilling to pay for these individuals' upkeep through charity. Everyone should be forced to pay. It's the only way to hide the staggering sums 'invested' every second in life-prolonging healthcare.
That's why I don't have health insurance.
Few people are willing to repudiate the right to have lethal violence used on their behalf, to allow people not to work hard if they really don't want to. It's a negative belief, a rejection of the mainstream. This is the ultimate extremist position, lightyears beyond the fringes of respectable politics. There appears to be not the slightest chance this viewpoint will be recognized, let alone accepted. We'll have worldwide Islam or Maoism first, probably some combination.
I would like to claim that the reason libertarians can never change the world is that they are one of the least evil groups in existence: not in their generous love for others, but in their absence of excessive love. However that's probably not true.
The only outsider's right that matters is the right to opt out. That right will never, ever be granted. It can only be seized or held in secret. For libertarians, disobedience, avoidance, and evasion are the only answers.
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Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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