I'll go out on a limb and say it openly

Libretarianism today is an ideology which fills the place that Marxism filled 90 years ago. Through the use of key emotion-wrenching ideas--in the case of Marxism, "fairness", and in the case of Libretarianism, "liberty"--ideologies neutralize vast swaths of the intelligentsia, encouraging them to advocate for the weakening of exactly those watchdog forces in society which their parents constructed to keep fascism at bay. Whether they follow the beat of Karl Marx or Milton Friedmann, adherents' perspective is the same: if only this special system were in place, life would inevitably be ever so much better for everybody, and the system would remain so forever because it's so much better than anything else that nobody would want to change it.

History shows us that civilization is a work in progress. Government as we have it today is not perfect and self-regulating: it always requires effort and vigilance. That doesn't mean that unregulated market forces can do the job of government any better, and we have ample examples--from the lack of regulation of homeopathy in the USA today to the history of Ford Motors in Germany in the 1930s and 40s--to remind us that unchecked market forces can be very dangerous.

Anarchy is a power vacuum waiting for the next dictator to come along. Economic anarchy is an economic vacuum waiting for the next robber baron to come along.

I lived for ten years in student cooperatives--societies including large cohorts of Marxists and Friedmannists, both groups expecting a student paradise to emerge momentarily, as soon as they rid themselves of "undesirables" who study when others want to party. Cooperatives can be a viable form of business, but in the hands of unrealistic idealists, they're inherently unstable. Turnover due to graduation remains the salvation of student cooperatives. And exactly the lack of regulatory structure which student idealists hope will be paradisical lead directly to nightmarish scenarios in which a few reap most of the benefits of the organization while demonizing a few others who do all the work to keep the organization afloat, while an apathetic middle group sticks fingers in ears to ignore the situation until it becomes desparate and the business reaches the verge of failure. Many of these people from all three segments go on to participate in successful organizations, including cooperatives, with strict by-laws and swift enforcement. So it seems that many graduates of student cooperatives have learned the lesson of the need for regulation and vigilance. They certainly apply it later in life.

And so, that experience leads me to say to any idealist who thinks they have the "perfect" form of government or marketplace: Set one up in miniature, on a scale of between 25 and 300 people, and actually live in it for a year or two, and see if your point of view doesn't shift or become more subtle. There's nothing like being your own voluntary experimental subject.

--Matthew H. Fields