Libertarianism Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Reinventing Itself.
The movement is becoming less focused on policy and more on projects, especially in finance and governance.
One new frontier of libertarianism: mining for Ethereum.
Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg
A little more than a year ago, a lifelong “libertarian” (quotes very much necessary) took stock of the movement and declared it “pretty much hollowed out.” For one thing, he wrote, it cannot “solve or even very well address a number of major problems, most significantly climate change.” For another, Internet culture encouraged “smart and curious” people to seek out and synthesize eclectic views, making “capital-L Libertarianism” passé.
Its successor was something he called “State Capacity Libertarianism” — an ideology that acknowledges both the power of markets and the need for government. To quote from the article: “Strong states remain necessary to maintain and extend capitalism and markets.”