Why I'm not a libertarian

There are two concepts which have been steadily pumped into the American psyche over the past 30 years by conservatives and libertarians:

• Government is bad
• Free markets are good

This worldview reached it's zenith during the Reagan era when it took hold as "truth" in the minds of many Americans. While these statements contain some truth--there is bad in too much government control and is good in markets--the statements become false in their absolutism. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle with shades of gray and a little more complexity:

• Government does a lot of good, but has a tendency to go too far and needs to be restrained. 
• Free markets encourage growth and innovation, but, left unchecked, create a winner take all society which people won't tolerate for long.

That won't fit on a bumper sticker, so as usual simplistic bumper sticker slogans dominate what should be a marketplace of ideas. Steering between the right amount of government control and the right amount of freedom in the markets is the key to governing. Despite what we're led to believe, even most conservatives accept that there has to be a balance between government and free markets. Free markets by themselves are not the answer.

The problem with free markets
Free markets lead to concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. It's just a fact: winners in the marketplace get power and use that power to crush competitors and gain more power. In fact, the notion of free markets is actually an ideal that doesn't exist in the real world. At it's core, government is nothing more than citizens making and enforcing rules for their society. People will always do this. It's as much a part of the natural flow of things as are the natural systems we call markets. Just as humans will always create behavioral rules enforced through some type of police and punishment system, when things get too unequal in a society, people will organize to change it, generally through some type of government control.

Libertarians, at least free market libertarians, think that government should only be involved in enforcing agreements and private property. They don't accept that the human desire to organize and structure society is just as natural as markets and that freedom and good is maximized in the balance of these two forces. I'm not a libertarian because I believe:

• Government is good
• Free markets are good

But it's all about balance.

Hmm...that would fit on a bumper sticker.