I'll let Al keep his kingdom but try to be serious anyway and in part take Baylen's side on this.

Libertarianism is a radical ideology: it tries to go to the root of problems, and I like that.  I marched yesterday in New York City with the Poor Peopleís Economic Human Rights Campaign, and a bunch of people who would would mostly identify as radicals nominally marched in support of pitifully liberal solutions.  Government-subsidized housing, government-mandated living wages, even government-provided health care can make peoples living conditions better (and as bad as things are for the poor under the occasional leftist in power, or even self-professed free-marketer Bill Clinton, things are even worse under the likes of Reagan or Bush)-- but these demands certainly don't go to the root of the problem.  The root problem, of course, is the market, but only as it presently exists.  By my economic theory, housing and a living wage and to a lesser extent even health care take care of themselves fairly well in a market economy— as long as there is a fairly equal, rather than wildly unequal, distribution of wealth.

These policies that don't go to the root of the problem also won't bring people much real power over people's lives.  Indeed, lack of significant power over our own conditions is the root problem.  Everything that humans do -- as governments, businesses, and otherwise -- is a decision, and leaving the majority out of that decisionmaking is inevitably bad for the majority-- perhaps more so when few in the minority with the most power are willing to recognize that decisions are being made, that they have disproportionate power, or that the choices affect us collectively.

I hope that in the Narcosphere community, in addition to ending the state violence and incarceration of the drug war, this is another goal we can all agree on: that all people should have the most control possible over their own lives.

The way we, humanity as a group, have power over the circumstances of our lives is by organizing ourselves.  We can meet our needs, and fulfill our dreams, only by working together in groups.  That is what industrialized society is or any society is.  But there are of course different ways of organizing ourselves - or being organized by others - with very different results for our individual power over the circumstances of our lives.

Governments and markets are two very important ways of organizing ourselves.  Both have advantages and disadvantages in ideal theory, but the big problem is that in practice undemocratic governments and highly wealth-unequal markets are ways for a small group of people to control the rest of us.

And presumably one or the other or both wouldn't be necessary in some other way of organizing humanity, but their regular use for evil, in an unequal world, doesn't make government or markets inherently evil, or of no possible utility in a fair world where people have equal power.

Practically, in the present, if you are really for the market and claim to care about people, you can be for economic libertarianism for the United States and other first world countries, but you have to be for allowing protectionism, disrespect for intellectual property, and even direct government intervention in the economic sectors in other countries.  That's simply the history of development, whether an ideology chooses to recognize those facts or not.

Another thing about markets and the ideology behind them, it always seems to work out that property is more important than people, which I hope you'll agree is insane.

Just as it is organized businesses and government and co-ops and whatnot that provide what living conditions we do have, it is organized groups -- labor unions most prominently -- that have fought for the changes in government and business policy that have mostly made little things like a middle class and civil liberties possible, and as Al points out precious few of the leaders of social movements were economic libertarians.  Individual libertarians (in the more general sense) may stand firm on their principles, but until they take over New Hampshire I'm not going to believe in libertarians' ability to organize for positive change, though individual libertarians may be a force for good. Congressman Ron Paul is very consistently libertarian and is a hero of mine in the U.S. Congress, but remember there are precious few good people to choose from.

At worst, economic liberterians can wittingly or unwittingly provide an ideological cover for business interests that are not, in fact, in the economic libertarian camp.  Capitalists (here I speak of those with a lot more capital than street cart, which might be rented anyway) will seek everything they can get from government.  Capitalists will try to get every possible profitable trade protection, government subsidy, government handout in research or development, and government use of violence to extend their corporate interests.  Because of their power in influencing government, big businesses have most of the nanny state, while the rest of us receive more the police state.

As most of the conditions that affect our lives are collective conditions, this requires collective in addition to individual power.  Direct exchanges between and among people and groups (that is, markets), and everyone in a society contributing resources to have actions carried out on their behalf, but not necessarily directly for them (that is, government), can certainly be part of the means by which we exercise individual and collective power.  Both markets and government can be parts of a just and free economic and social system that provides for all our needs and a good part of all our desires-- with the dramatic change thout each person's power in markets or in governments be broadly equal to any other person's.

This is, anyhow, my lame, limited vision for a nice conservative, progressive revolution, not throwing anything out until we're sure we're good and done with it.  But make no mistake that a revolution will be necessary to achieve liberty and justice, and it is the ways we organize ourselves in this struggle that may hold the most promise for organized humanity, formerly known as civilization.