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I called myself libertarian at the beginning of highschool.

My political beliefs went from edgy ultra-communist to what could only be described as (edgy) ancap. In my head, the idea of a light set of laws, in particular the US constitution, with ideals of individual freedoms sounded amazing.

From the perspective of the US education system, the constitution is holy, and the best thing to happen to mankind. I truly believed that strong personal freedoms and the ability to rise from rags to riches was incredible. The ability for an immigrant to move from an oppressive world to a free one was idyllic. And I was told that libertarianism was the way to do that, that a free market is what caused that.

At that time, I made some new friends, and by god am I thankful one of them told me “lmao, the free market is kinda shit, and we really don’t have one” before I became obsessed with right wing pundits.

An idyllic view of libertarianism is not that bad, dare I say nearly a good one. But holy shit does it devolve into one of the worst political systems in practice. Granted, an idyllic view of nearly any political or governmental system is nice, but the ideal view of any system doesn’t really matter in practice.

To answer your question, I genuinely think the only way to consider libertarianism a good thing is to either:

• try and shed your edgy early political views and miss the mark spectacularly
• fall for right wing propaganda like I did
• Have no understanding of politics in practice.
• fail to realize the moment you askew rights for personal freedoms, you effectively give then up and allow someone with more economic power to have the personal freedom to trample yours.