Antifragile, Diversity Libertarianism

I would argue that socialism and libertarianism are not forms of government, or even philosophies of government, but values that are brought to government. All government essentially involves balancing security and liberty, and the socialism/libertarianism dichotomy is really a spectrum that reflects where one finds that balance. And the narrow/broad distribution discussed in the article is another expression of that spectrum: on the left, the more egalitarian distribution one might associate with socialism; on the right, the broader distribution that might be associated with libertarianism.

But neither socialism nor libertarianism is equipped to deal with corporatism, which is orthogonal to the balance between the security and liberty of individuals, because it involves an entirely separate kind of participant. Corporations can warp the landscape much like gravity warps space, creating demand for inferior goods and shifting massive external costs onto the general public. The author identifies some of the effects of corporatism as problems for libertarianism, and describes them in terms of the uniform/diverse distribution model. But the article doesn't address the corporatist roots of those problems, in much the same way that a flatlander could identify problems created by 3-dimensional invaders but would struggle to see the real cause.

>(If you did want to argue against diversity libertarianism, you'd want to show that relevant systems are more fragile than anti-fragile; giving people more options will usually make them worse

No, the more fundamental problem with 'diversity libertarianism' is that diversity and libertarianism cannot exist together. Increasingly complex systems, such as human societies (but even non-human systems) require control and governance as they grow larger to institutionalize and manage knowledge that makes them function. Complex system produce hierarchies required to manage them.

The fact that our complex internet infrastructure is managed by large companies isn't some kind of random accident or failure of government or whatever, it's the natural result of trying to tame complexity. (the notion that making complicated things is 'hard' the article stumbles upon).

The only way to get, locally at least, the kind of system that libertarians like is by embedding it in a system of governance that actively displaces the natural state of affairs. This is why you can have, paradoxically, Shenzhen within communist China but not in Germany, or charter cities in the UAE but not in France. Western countries with their moderate and constrained ability to exercise power lack the authority to create radically ungoverned spaces.