Is 19th Century U.S.A. the closest we've been to a Libertarian Ideal?

[bldysabba]

Sorry for not showing up till the second page in a thread started by quoting me. I was originally responding to the following statement.

@wolfpup

My argument there would be that all historical experience seems to show that the kind of anti-government non-regulation proposed by libertarians ends up causing social strife and instability and great injustices, in labor markets, in health care, in the social safety net, in the ability of small businesses to compete fairly with giant multinationals, and throughout society.

There is often the sentiment, as has already expressed in this thread, that libertarianism is somehow equivalent to anarchy, and will lead to society falling apart. I’m not putting up (late)19th century US as some sort of exemplar of libertarian ideals that should be emulated, but as a real world setting which approximated the ideas of limited regulation. It resulted, not in an unsuccessful and anarchist failure, but in the richest and most powerful country in the world, a great magnet for immigration from all around the world. It may not ensure a great life for every single person, but it can certainly be associated with lots of things we regard as positives - growth, innovation, improving standards of life on average. Not social strife and instability and great injustices. The greatest social strife in the period was the result of the most non-libertarian of practices - slavery.

On the flip side we have the real world setting which approximates the ideas diametrically opposed to libertarianism, i.e communism and its close counterpart socialism. The real world setting that most closely approximated their ideas were the Soviet Union, pre 1980’s China, pre 1990’s India. I really don’t feel like listing down the mind boggling human suffering that took place in these areas because too much power was concentrated in the hands of government. I will instead quote Amartya Sen, himself a very ‘left’ oriented thinker, on Hayek

A third contribution of Hayek is of particular interest to those on the left of the political spectrum. Hayek’s critique of state planning is mainly based on a subtle psychological argument. He was particularly concerned with the way centralised state planning and the huge asymmetry of power that tends to accompany it may generate a psychology of indifference to individual liberty. As Hayek put it: “I have never accused the socialist parties of deliberately aiming at a totalitarian regime or even suspected that the leaders of the old socialist movements might ever show such inclination.” One of Hayek’s central points was that “socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists disapprove”.

We can hardly ignore the massive accumulation of evidence - before and after publication of The Road to Serfdom - of tyrannical use of bureaucratic power and privilege, and the political and economic corruption that tends to go with it. Hayek’s central point here was to note that even though socialism has a strongly ethical quality, that is not in itself adequate to guarantee that the results of trying to implement it will be in line with its ethics, rather than being deflected and debased by the psychology of power and the influence of administrative arbitrariness.