Libertarian Progressives

Although there are a few who would no doubt like the term, in the main I suspect many libertarians would want to, upon introspection, rid themselves of error.
There is a strand of libertarianism that would, for instance, be happy to do away with marriage. And I remember enjoying many treatises of the future, with various forms of corporations providing services that governments monopolize now.

But we can see marriage pre-dates all insitutitions. Should we actually have freedom of association and private property, many would arrange their lives in a manner that they have been not free to do so since the rise of the modern state. Religions would likely matter more, not less. The state would be less political and more personal- as the power of the vote of the non-owner wanes in favor of allowing the successful property owner- i.e. the people who have personally demonstrated some real world capacity- to administrate.

This would not be a continuation of the ancient regime, but it would look similar. Such a world must be grown, because it requires not only removing bureaucrats from power, but removing the bureaucratic mindset from those who would be part of the noble class.

What often happens is that there is an assumption that people engaged in marriage, church, or other institution are always and everywhere under duress and that therefore they don't really know what they want, and that when we magically arrive at full libertarianism we will suddenly all be free from all this stuff...

And how is this different from the revolutionaries? Foment insurrection and promise the glorious future. The only difference is the libertarians promise not to be in charge at the end of the day, which means they won't be in charge ever. Most libertarians aren't helping, but harming any chance of moving in the right direction.

We live with the illusion of freedoms of religion, speech, thinking, etc... This is because the bureaucrats don't immediately ban much of anything. First they fashion their version of the thing- and then often they even redefine it. Marriage, hate, love, assault weapons- the list is practically endless. The tactic is simple: to make you err so that you cannot free yourself from them. If you reach back for tradition, looking for some bedrock upon which to stand, you'll find even that has been meddled with.

But of course, the progressive libertarian is not reaching back for tradition, so perhaps he is unaware of the conflict- that his imagination, or lack thereof, violates his principles. Liberty is not a virus; it does not auto-generate. All memes must travel through minds, minds come attached to people (at least the ones we are concerned with here), and people are attached to each other.

So family will matter. Private property will matter. Agency will matter and it shall be determined mostly by how succesfull you are with the other two. Who shall rule? If we are as free as can be, the property owner will rule over his property, and any larger sort of governance will arise through contract and free association of the owners. The children of owners tend to marry each other...

Individual certainly may choose to break their contracts, but the consequences will be unpleasant enough to make sure most don't. Because a violation of contract is harm to others. A wife determined to break up her marriage harms her husband, children, and frankly much of the community, assuming the community is healthy.

Some of this harm could be expressed directly in property terms. Certainly our modern divorce industry is much concerned with getting its hands on family assets, so much so that it has abandoned any concept of enforcing contract. Additionally, the community would prefer what ever it built up together not to be ripped apart.

The people don't want to build just to find out everything is going to be consumed like Detroit.

None of this negates anything- it just puts in it context, whereas much of these conversations are context free. But freedom itself is not context free.