My understanding of libertarianism is as basically generalizing on the idea of freedom from slavery as the most fundamental right. "Liberty" is then the narrowly-defined freedom from having force used against you. And you are only justified in using force against others to stop them from using force against you. As to whether loud noise or sulfur dioxide count as sufficient force against you seems arguable.

that's libertarianism's fatal flaw: you can't escape force and power (that is to say, politics) in any kind of society, let alone in a political system.

most of libertarianism is trying to cope with this core flaw, not living that glorious individualist life.

liberty as one of many (sometimes contradictory) values (and the academic lines of inquiry therein) is fine. a whole ideology based on the supremacy of that one value is simply unworkable. we're social creatures, not just a collection of coincident individuals.

That's not very accurate.

Libertarians believe in collective reason over centralized authority.

Here's a good run down.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-li...

This is all very fine, but what it misses are the power imbalances we have. This is not inherently a bad thing, but if I don't have the freedom to disagree with my landlord out of fear of being evicted then I'm not living a very "free" life. "Collective reason" sounds great, but in practice it doesn't really work. I feel it's very naïve.

You are absolutely free to disagree with your landlord by moving out and finding another place to live. Ideally there are no government constraints on either party (e.g. housing assignments, rental limitations and controls, etc.). I don’t really understand the rest of the point being made here. You wouldn’t have such a choice with a central authority giving you a housing assignment.

I would be curious about the works you find confusing on this matter. To me libertarianism (big L and small l) is very acutely aware of tradeoffs. This is sort of the entire "point" of libertarianism. I think your article is essentially a core libertarian message, so i think you may be confusing libertarianism with the American Republican Party (which is definitely not libertarian but occasionally adopts some of the language of libertarianism).

The point of libertarianism is not to be "acutely aware of tradeoffs". The contemporary libertarian writings I have seen were pretty much the opposite.

The parent asked for clarity on which writings, and I am similarly curious.

I can’t imagine a Libertarian worldview that isn’t aware of the fact that actions that impinge of the rights and freedoms of others need to be limited, and enforcing those laws are one of the few genuine responsibilities of the government. To pretend otherwise is a total straw man.

Yeah exactly. Libertarians don't advocate for zero gov't. There's a lot of demonization and (willful?) lack of nuance and understanding of it.

You should read Hayek 'The Road to Serfdom'.

I think you would get a lot out of it.