> As others have said the USA is far from a free market. Instead the wealthy use the state to manipulate markets for their benefit, and the rest of us suffer as a result.

Some might still call that a free market.

Well it’s not the libertarian conception of a free market. I’m not that kind of libertarian but as I learn more about their theory, a major complaint is that right now the wealthy use their money to influence the state to influence markets. The libertarians theorists would prefer the wealthy use their wealth to compete in the market, not use the state to force things to the benefit of one firm. That’s why they want a weaker state. So it can’t be influenced by the wealthy.

However lots of people misunderstand that theory and think the wealthy influencing the state is what libertarians want. I’ve not found any libertarian theoretician who advocates for that.

There are more make believe libertarians than there are libertarian theorists and they like virtually everyone else want the board tilted to benefit them. The people that are most likely not to want the board tilted are however those who already substantially benefited by the current state of affairs.

It's trivial to forget that their isn't much in the way of ground truth underneath society what people think of as the government not meddling much with society actually usually means leaving alone the current result of centuries of meddling if if the current distribution of tokens and things were the result of natural law and any change or redistribution is the only coercive act. If you imagine a board with certain positions privileged above others and spaces pre parceled out to certain players all the existing restrictions on players movements and actions are all coercive its just coercive in the ways that is presently expected as normal.

I mostly agree with you. Most people, whatever theory they subscribe to, are bad at their theory. There are a lot of Christians who aren’t good Christians. Lots of Republicans in favor of big government if the project is military in nature. Lots of liberals claim to care about people of color but still advocate for policies that harm minority groups. Most people simply have muddy politics because they’re more focused on other things. I don’t think it makes certain underlying theories bad just because lots of people claim them but don’t practice them. Christianity is full of great loving ideas, republicanism makes sense in a lot of ways, etc.

But I disagree that getting the government out of the way means leaving existing power structures intact. What I have learned from libertarian theory is that a whole lot of existing power structures exist (in the USA where I live) specifically because someone bribed the government in to supporting something they wanted. Take Disney continually extending copyright laws for example. Instead of getting old media in the public domain we get ever more restrictive copyright law because some corporations found it worth fighting for. Removing government in that instance would reduce existing power imbalances. So called “right to repair” laws for example provide a balance to the powers granted by government to corporations that would lock customers out of repairing their own equipment. I’ve also heard a few credible stories of instances where big corporations advocate for regulation that ends up squashing competition. Of course some kind of regulation whether from the state or by other means is necessary to avoid pollution, waste, abuse, etc.

In essence I am saying that even though there are many who call themselves libertarians who simply don’t understand the theory or advocate for its actual practice, this does not mean that libertarian theory is itself bad. I think instead that certain aspects of libertarian theory appeal to people who maybe just don’t want to pay taxes but never really learn or care about the theory behind the idea.

Exactly! Offering to buy food rather than give the money they’ve asked for is just the worst kind of paternalism.