Which is why I was so disappointed to see that throwaway spin in there seemingly blaming the covid pandemic on the Jones Act shipping regulation. That's just bad form.
“Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace”
Can demonstrably not all coexist.
If we were pre-internet, pre global information exchange with excessively easy ways to tell if a source is good or bad, understandable. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. At this point, this is malicious.
I'm certainly of the opinion that we are not at the frontier for these and that all of them have room for improvement that does not necessarily sacrifice the others. But if we were, I (and almost certainly CATO) would be capable of making a decision as to which of the priorities was more important in a given situation and trading off against the others. You are arguing against a straw man.
Your claim that these priorities are all fully incompatible with each other, is, in my opinion, much hotter of a take and less well supported than the idea that anyone could have a reasonable preference for the combination.
I fully acknowledge that these ideals must play some semblance of a role in creating laws where reasonable, with the possible exception of a “free market”, but that’s only because even regulated markets are horrible, evil institutions, so letting it be even more free is fundamentally idiotic.
You can call it a “strawman” all you like. Grafton demonstrates that it’s not a strawman at all. Libertarians actually believe this, and they actually argue that the issue is that grafton wasn’t libertarian enough (narrator: that wasn’t the problem).
I also can't decide which claim I think is the more ridiculous.
Right-libertarians have unquestioning faith in the belief that “the market and competition will handle (it)”. This belief is held despite the literal millennium of evidence that states this is false, and every single attempt at such failing miserably.
Left-libertarians believe in strong personal freedom and somewhat strong regulatory bodies on the market.
I don’t know why you don’t believe that this is what libertarians believe, as it’s what libertarians themselves claim to believe (despite their being easily trapped to state things counter to their own beliefs).
But the CATO institute is a particular organization with relatively consistent views. If you can point to it clearly and plainly espousing the views you are talking about, I will be surprised.
The article you are currently commenting on is a demonstration of their inconsistent views and they were only a few days ago complaining about the exact opposite issue.
Libertarianism has no consistency. It cannot be consistent by definition because libertarian pillars cannot be reconciled.
Left libertarianism is a bit better, but even the individual pillars on their own are irreconcilable. Free market cannot be reconciled with itself. Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with itself.