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@praustrian Shrug. Without taxpayer-funded health care, you get epidemic disease. Pee in the poor peoples pool, and the rich people have to swim in it.

@praustrian 3. Even private industries rely on taxpayer-funded infrastructure

Libertarians love to act as if taxpayer-funded services are a burden, but private businesses depend on them daily:

Private businesses use roads, airports, and public infrastructure built with taxpayer money to transport goods.

Tech companies profit from the internet—originally a taxpayer-funded project.

Pharmaceutical companies rely on government-funded research to develop new drugs, then sell them at massive markups.

If libertarians truly opposed all taxpayer-funded services, they should demand that businesses stop benefiting from public infrastructure, government patents, and taxpayer-funded bailouts. But they don’t—because they only oppose public spending when it benefits ordinary people.

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4. A purely privatized system would be a disaster

Libertarians never explain what happens when:

A child can’t afford school.

A sick person can’t afford healthcare.

A scientist researching climate change can’t find private investors because the results might hurt corporate profits.

In a fully privatized world, education, healthcare, libraries, and science become luxury goods—accessible only to those who can pay. That’s not freedom—that’s feudalism with extra steps.

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Conclusion: Public funding ensures accessibility, fairness, and long-term stability

Public services exist because markets do not ensure universal access.

Private businesses already rely on taxpayer-funded services while pretending they don’t.

Privatization leads to higher costs, worse service, and more inequality.

So yes, libertarians are against education, science, and healthcare for anyone who can’t afford them—they just hide it behind ideological buzzwords.

@praustrian This is a deeply naïve and ahistorical argument that assumes a fantasy version of the free market, divorced from the realities of power, cost, and collective need. Let’s unpack it:

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1. "If people need transportation, they build roads" — this has literally never happened on a meaningful scale.

Roads are a classic example of a public good:

• They are non-excludable (you can’t easily stop people from using them).
• They are non-rivalrous (one person using a road doesn’t prevent others from doing so).

Because of this, private companies have little incentive to build or maintain roads unless they can charge tolls and restrict access. That means rural, poor, or low-traffic areas would be ignored entirely. This is exactly why states build roads—to ensure access for everyone, not just profitable customers.

Even in the U.S.—the heartland of privatization—nearly all major road networks are publicly funded and maintained. Private toll roads exist, but they are the exception, not the rule—and they often come with higher costs, worse maintenance, and limited accessibility.

@praustrian 2. "If people need health, they develop vaccines" — but history shows the free market didn’t.

Most of the vaccines you benefit from today were developed with public funding. Why? Because vaccine development is risky, expensive, and slow, and private companies avoid it unless they are guaranteed large profits.

The COVID-19 vaccines were developed with tens of billions in public funding. Moderna’s mRNA vaccine? NIH co-developed it. Pfizer received pre-purchase guarantees, without which it wouldn't have invested.

Historically, vaccines for polio, measles, and smallpox were either publicly developed or massively subsidized by governments and public health organizations.

Left to the free market, vaccines for non-profitable diseases—like malaria or tuberculosis—are neglected, even if millions die every year. If you let the market decide, only the wealthy and the profitable get medicine.

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3. "If people don’t need nuclear bombs, companies won’t make them" — this is dangerously wrong.

The idea that profit-seeking entities wouldn’t make something destructive unless people wanted it ignores how markets and incentives actually work.

Private arms dealers already profit massively from selling weapons in global conflict zones.

Companies built the nukes—but at the direction and funding of the state, which absorbed the cost and risk. If they could profit from it privately, you can bet some would try—and there would be no democratic accountability.

Do you really trust Lockheed Martin or Raytheon to act based on moral restraint rather than profit? Without regulation, “market demand” doesn’t mean what’s good for people—it means what’s profitable, even if it's deadly.

@praustrian 4. The free market does not provide universal access—it maximizes profit.

Your argument assumes that if people "need" something, the market will automatically respond in an efficient, equitable, and moral way. That’s simply not true:

• The free market ignores the unprofitable, even if those needs are essential (like clean water, rural healthcare, or rare disease treatments).
• It exploits the desperate, charging the highest possible price for life-saving goods (e.g., insulin in the U.S., which costs 10x more than in countries with price controls).
• It prioritizes short-term profit, not long-term public interest (e.g., fossil fuel companies suppressing climate science for decades).

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Conclusion: The free market alone does not meet human needs—especially for the most vulnerable.

The world you describe has never existed—and for good reason. When essential services are privatized:
• Access shrinks,
• Prices rise,
• The poor are excluded,

And profit, not need, becomes the only driving force.

That’s not freedom. That’s a corporate dystopia dressed up as economic theory.

@praustrian Thank you for clarifying your position, but your distinction highlights the core contradiction at the heart of libertarian thinking: both forms—minarchism and anarcho-capitalism—rely on idealized assumptions about markets, coercion, and human behavior that fall apart under scrutiny. Let’s take them both seriously for a moment and then unpack why neither holds up in practice.

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1. Minarchism: Government with a monopoly on violence, but “limited”

You say the more realistic libertarian position is minarchism, which holds that government should exist only to provide police, courts, and defense—funded by taxation.

But here’s the catch: once you accept that government can tax, wield violence, and claim a monopoly on legitimate force, you’ve already conceded that markets do not work for certain essential services.

From there, it logically follows:

• If markets can’t handle defense (a classic public good), why would we assume they can handle healthcare, education, or infrastructure?
• If you accept that some public goods require taxation, you’ve given up the moral claim that taxation is inherently theft—which is central to anarcho-capitalist rhetoric.

Minarchism tries to have its cake and eat it too: It wants a state powerful enough to provide security, but small enough not to interfere in anything else. Historically and structurally, that simply doesn’t happen. Once a state exists and collects taxes, power concentrates, and capitalists—rather than “the people”—start shaping that power to their advantage.

@praustrian 2. Anarcho-capitalism: Privatizing defense, courts, and police

This version of libertarianism is pure fantasy—an ideological utopia with no real-world precedent and zero historical support.

Let’s imagine your “future” world:

• Defense is privatized. Who provides security? Competing defense agencies? That’s not peace—it’s feudalism or warlordism, where security depends on how much you can pay.
• Courts are privatized. Justice becomes something you buy, not something that protects you. Whoever has more money can afford better legal outcomes. That’s not freedom—it’s rule by the rich.
• All infrastructure, education, and healthcare must be privately funded. The result? A society where the poor die or go without, while the rich live behind walls protected by private armies.

Even thinkers like Nozick, who supported minimal state functions, rejected anarcho-capitalism for this reason: it collapses into inequality and chaos, not liberty.

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3. Libertarianism refuses to confront power—especially corporate power

Both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists are obsessed with limiting state power, but they completely ignore the coercive power of private capital:

• A boss who can fire you at will holds more power over your life than any bureaucrat.
• A landlord who controls your housing wields direct power over your security.
• A pharmaceutical company that sets insulin prices at $300 a vial controls whether you live or die.

Libertarians see state coercion everywhere—but somehow don’t see the economic coercion of capitalist hierarchies.

@praustrian Conclusion: Libertarian “realism” still ignores the real world

Minarchism tries to look pragmatic by admitting some state functions are necessary, but even it:

• Ignores how capitalism shapes and captures the state,
• Relies on the same myths of free and equal exchange, and
• Fails to address how real people—especially the poor—experience inequality and coercion in a capitalist system.

Anarcho-capitalism, meanwhile, is simply a thought experiment gone rogue—a vision that leads not to freedom, but to rule by the richest and strongest.

So yes, your position is more “realistic” within the libertarian camp—but that says more about how unworkable libertarian ideology is than it does about practicality.