The thing is - 100% tax on cars is libertarian. You charge car owners something closer to the costs they cause to society. Compare that to the USA where we heavily subsidize car ownership.

Government intervening in the market to internalize externalities is not libertarian. At least, not by the definitions used by any self-identified libertarians I've encountered.

The libertarian approach is to privatize recovery of social costs so that instead of government internalizing the aggregated social cost into the transaction, each individual who can demonstrate an unlicensed adverse impact from the transaction has a personal cause of action to recover damages resulting therefrom.

A particularly generous libertarian might recognize a class action as an appropriate mass venue for aggregating such claims.

So if I have asthma I can sue all drivers who drove in the area where I grew up and all coal plants operating in the area where I grew up for contributing to the development of my asthma with each one paying a few cents? That sounds insane.

And... we are back to no-true-liberatarian.

In a libertarian utopia governments are not supposed to add taxes to neutralize negative externalities.

I think fuel taxes, market rate parking fees and road/congestion tolling would be more libertarian. If you live in a rural area the impact of your vehicle is much different than if you live in the middle of a dense city.

Also, a $50,000 car does not have double the societal impact as a $25,000 car (which could be larger and less fuel efficient). Progressive taxes aren't a very libertarian construct.

> Singapore and Hong Kong for example, which are otherwise libertarian paradises.

Wait, what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Singapore

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/hong-kongs-bus...

Half of Hong Kong's population lives in public housing, as does 82% of Singapore's population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

Which probably reflects that people are more willing to be exposed to market fluctuations when their basic necessities are met by the state.

If they didn't do that, everyone who wasn't rich would be forced out of those cities, or would have to live with their parents and not have any kids (in Singapore's case). It has more to do with the unregulated market that public housing was necessary (and in Singapore, it really isn't the public housing you are used to).

"Basic necessities are met by the state" and "most people live in public housing" are pretty antithetical to libertarianism, aren't they?

Economic freedom is very underrated compared freedom of political expression. There are many ways in which Singaporeans are much more free than we are.

Economic freedom (which I'm presuming means "lower taxes"?) isn't much use to you if you're executed for possessing drugs, or indefinitely detained without charge, need a permit to assemble, can't criticize the government, etc.

> if you're executed for possessing drugs, or indefinitely detained without charge, need a permit to assemble, can't criticize the government, etc.

Erm, all those things(+) can, and do, happen in 'free' countries. They're just not officially sanctioned and are reported differently. If you were to look at this objectively (without depending on just the official figures) I'd say per capita, human rights abuse / exploitation is worse in the US than Singapore.

(+) and worse, eg: get executed for being the wrong color at the wrong time and place

OK... but I never claimed the US to be a "libertarian paradise", either. Neither the US nor Singapore could be, by any stretch of imagination, accurately deemed "libertarian paradises".

>> libertarian paradises

Probably he/she meant to type authoritarian paradise ;)