2. Time will tell what 50 years forward looks like. I don’t doubt that China will advance economically. I hope it will also advance on the human rights front also. Frankly, I hope by then the Chinese have unambiguously first-world expectations concerning everything from political rights, civil liberties, economic expectations, economic security, working conditions; the whole ball of wax. What’s painful for my worldview is the horrifying possibility that the economic liberalization that China is going through now is somehow a prerequisite for the democratization and other political reforms that might be part of China’s future. I want to believe that economic development needs political reform more than vice versa. So I’m furious at the neoliberals and other development-centric people who preach the pompatus of democracy waiting in line behind capitalism. I freely admit this is a case of “shooting the messenger.” Sometimes the truth hurts, but sometimes it seems some messengers want to give the knife an extra turn just to drive home the point. Nightmare scenario from my perspective is the young prosperous generation of future Chinese is happy with the higher standard of living and either apolitical or supportive of whatever kind of politics keeps the gravy train running, in a decidedly un-idealistic way. But in the end, it’s their country, not mine.

4. I want to believe this is the case, but I’m losing the faith.

5. I perceive libertarians as people who see entrepreneurship as a more effective way than activism to change the world for the better. While that doesn’t make them

6. Albert Einstein is more important than which mentally impaired child? Wasn’t Albert Einstein once a himself a mentally impaired child once? Or is that more anecdote than history?

7. I’m aware of the existence of libertarian idealists. I’m also aware of the “idealist ideology but not utopian ideology” talking point. I don’t think I’m a utopian, but I might be. I view utopian vs. idealist as more degree than kind, but I view a lot of things that way. “Black and white” just doesn’t work for me for very many things. I’ll take your word for it that you’re an idealist. Perhaps you’re just pursuing different ideals. The belief that human nature is inherently self-interested is something I think of as decidedly anti-idealist. I don’t idealize the push-and-shove society.

8. I don’t remember saying that private welfare is unimportant to laissez-faire society.

9. There are many definitions of libertarian. Since you are an idealist, perhaps you are more of an agorist or something.

10. Here I explicitly disagree. The idea of big business being a persecuted minority is seriously flawed. A market economy is a command economy. Wealth commands resources. Access to resources, access to key people, access to inside information; it all circulates within the gated community. All the right wing populists play-act at not being political insiders, but economic insiders are a bigger political phenomenon than political insiders.

I promise I will read at least book-length work by Hayek cover-to-cover; that of your choosing if you choose to suggest one in particular. I have been studying the stances of a wide variety of different libertarians. I know more or less who the major factions are and what are the sticking points between various among them. This essay is a critique only of those who identify with laissez-faire capitalism; the people who re-branded laissez-faire capitalism as “libertarianism.”