According to Hospers, libertarian freedom ensures people the right to behave in any way they choose so long as their behavior does not prevent another person the same degree of freedom. Furthermore, the sole role of the government should be to enforce this freedom. In my opinion, libertarianism is about as practically possible as perpetual motion machinery (read: impossible).
The average person is not knowledgeable about enough things to function independently. The government's involvement in specific spheres allows this man to live as harmlessly as possible. For example, the government's involvement in money and the economy allows this man to put his money in a savings account at a given bank and expect a specific interest rate. This same interest rate set by the government provides the personal banker at this same institution the convenience of not having to negotiate interest rates with individual customers, which in turn saves the management of the bank the headache of keeping track of all the different interest rates for all the bank's customers.
If the government's only role was to ensure that personal freedom were not violated, we would have to rely too heavily on private firms to provide everyday infrastructure. The problem with private firms is that they work for the profit of the firm. While, the government's main goal is acting in accordance with the greater good, private industry's main goal is generating profit. (And we all know that when it comes to choosing between generating profit or acting in accordance with the greater good, the former almost always trumps the latter.)
In conclusion, while the idea of libertarianism is enticing in theory, I don't believe it is practical. It demands too much from the average person. Though our current system is far from perfect, it is good enough. It is a product humans, who by nature are imperfect beings, therefore it is unfair to judge it against standards of perfection.
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In response to Alali's problems with libertarianism, I would have to agree that a lot of the libertarian view depends on people being morally and academically educated, I disagree with the idea that our private sector should not be held more accountable for the everyday infrastructure of human life. As industry has grown in the United States, large corporations have become more and more concerned with making sure their 'constituents' (a work once reserved for politics, that I now believe fits in terms of those individuals who are impacted by any particular corporation) are being cared for. Corporations are beginning to realize that they are only as strong as those who support them, and corporate social responsibility is becoming a huge buzzword in human resource and corporate strategy divisions across the country. While I do agree that libertarianism in its most ideal form is unlikely in many societies, I do not believe that private corporations should shirk from the responsibilities they have acquired in our increasingly globalized society.
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