Joel Kotkin Talks with Amanda Vanstone about the Limits of Libertarianism

By: Amanda Vanstone
On: Counterpoint

What are the limits of libertarianism? Joel Kotkin explains that ‘in recent years, libertarians increasingly seem less concerned with how their policies might actually impact people. Convinced that markets are virtually always the best way to approach any issue, they have allied with many of the same forces – monopoly capital, anti-suburban zealots and the tech-oligarchy – which are systematically undermining the popular rationale for market capitalism’. He goes through some core libertarian beliefs and how they’ve changed and says that ‘in many ways, libertarians, like all of us, are victims of history’ and that to become relevant again, libertarians need to go beyond their dogmatic attachments, focus on bolstering the vitality competitive free markets’. That ‘libertarian ideas still have great relevance, but only so much as they reflect markets that are open to competition and capable of improving everyday lives’.

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