The Road to Campus Serfdom

Still, I like trying to "steel man" the opposing argument.

Without the use of governmental power that the article describes, would things like segregation, red lining, or extreme marginalization of LGBTQ people have ever ended?

Consider that left-handed people were stigmatized for thousands of years for reasons that seem absurd and ridiculous to almost everyone now. In some cultures being left-handed and failing to "convert" could get you killed. Traditional cultural taboos can be unbelievably sticky. It's probably something humans evolved to do as a survival strategy since some taboos, particularly those involving hygiene or practices for ensuring food supply, have extreme survival value. Abandon a taboo that kept a disease at bay or ensured next year's crops will grow, and you all die. But it's a bias that also allows very irrational pointless and cruel taboos to persist forever.

Now imagine that you are a member of one of these groups. Are you going to read some Hayek and decide that it is more prudent and wise to forego the use of government power to improve your lot? Are peopler really going to do that?

I think one of the reasons that this kind of libertarian conservatism has fallen far out of favor not just in the US but globally is that the answer is no. Whether the sphere is cultural or economic, when people run out of options to improve their lot they are never content to just sit around and wait out of some prudent respect for the balance of power. At some point the desire for action wins and the balance of power is broken.

... and with things like cultural taboos, what other levers are there?

I suppose there are economic ones. If you don't like social conservatism, vote with your dollars. Ultimately this includes moving away from places that are too rigid in their thinking, which ultimately harms these places economically.

But the counter-argument there is: people tend to cling so hard to their cultural taboos that they will endure economic hardship to preserve them. So then what you get are large impoverished regions of the country and sectors of the economy, and that too is recipe for discontent and revolt.