Most people's gripes about socialism are senseless whataboutism. "But Venezuela!"

Anarchism (or libertarian socialism if you prefer) isn't just about "offering services for free". It's about a lack of hierarchy. You don't have billionaires. Americans today are not ready to embrace anarchism.

If you want a good sci-fi novel that explores practically how anarchism could evolve from the current US state, The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin is a classic.

I definitely want to read the Disposessed as it has come up a few times in discussions lately.

I will say that if you devise a system where no one can become a billionaire but you don’t expressly say that, I think a lot of people would in principle support it. If you say people will live and work in one location, they will own that land and the facilities, and they will cooperate to produce output and they have agreed to share the output as needed between their community members, most Americans I think would say they do not oppose you doing that, and many leftists I think would be interested in joining.

“Libertarian socialism” in the historical literature is synonymous with “anarchism”, and that is my intended usage. Contrary to popular belief, anarchism is a specific idea for the organization of society that typically advocates for worker control of the means of production, direct democratic control of society, mutual aid between people, care for those that need care (“to each according to their needs”), and disintegration of most of the hierarchies of our current world.

It is difficult to achieve from where we are but by no means impossible. It certainly seems fair and worthwhile, and it is my goal to realize this in the US.

And you’re right! Most people who oppose socialism actually just oppose centralized control, so we have many unknowing allies in the US and that makes it more realistically achievable here.

If someone can figure out how to fix the free rider problem without central control I think everyone would be happy. The problem with the libertarian solution -- purely voluntary charity -- are that a) it is proportional to sympathy rather than need, as many are observing above and b) it amounts to a tax on the generous and a self-reinforcing transfer of economic power and opportunity to the least pro-social members of society. The latter is the free rider problem. When people look back on the golden age of the 19th century or whenever when charity was voluntary, they're remembering the comfort of the fortunate, not the success of this system at buffering the shocks of misfortune.

I don't see how using the state for welfare guarantees a better solution to (a)? It's just that in a democracy (a) goes by sympathy of the voters instead of sympathy of the rich.

Well, there’s libertarians and there’s libertarian socialists, and the latter focus hard on how to solve these problems. I’d say first of all that we haven’t solved these problems under capitalism so we only need to beat what we have, and also that I am a robotics engineer and I believe robotics can be used to provide a basic level of material well being to all members of society and free up people like doctors to see whoever needs care without charging them etc.