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Douglas_Knight comments on Survey Results - Less Wrong
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Taken together, bullet points 2, 3, and 4 are a textbook strawman.
To me, this speaks more to the extent of your motivation to find merit-worthy libertarian writing than to the merit of libertarian ideas. It so happens that an entire school of libertarian thought ("policy libertarianism") is dedicated to studying the specific consequences of government action. One interesting claim: "State actors are (made up of) people who are subject to the same irrational biases and collective stupidity as market actors, and often have perverse incentive structures as well."
If you're interested in reading some reasonable libertarians, you might try The Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, or EconLog as starting points.
Really? Respectfully, it seems much more plausible, based on the tone of your post, that you're couching an appeal for your own preferred policy in hypothetical terms than that you're actually suffering from a failure of imagination.
That's certainly not what I meant by "poisoning the discourse," or I would have made my comment on it. It isn't a strawman (in the sense of purely made up). That is how most libertarians argue. I liked that post much better, but it still doesn't say why these actions by the majority of libertarians matter. Maybe they've poisoned the word already. Saying "these guys are nuts, avoid their brand name" is just pointing out a bad situation, not making it worse. There are other reasons it might matter: a consequentialist libertarian should ask himself how he reached that state, if it was from fakely consequentialist libertarian arguments.
It reminds me of Robin Hanson's advice to pull the rope sideways; while that seems like good advice on how to choose policies to focus on, his advice not to choose sides seems exactly backwards. Instead, choose a party, prove your loyalty, and pull that party sideways.
I am not afraid of fakely consequentialist libertarians, because I think I can tell the difference. Except that I am afraid of Cato, which argues from the conclusions and might be cluefull enough to invest in rhetoric. Why would you ever look to lobbyists?
Let's not argue semantics. I had intended to express the following simile:
(3-bullet-points : rigorous libertarian thinking) :: (straw-facsimile-of-human : actual-human)
I'm afraid I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here. Can you clarify? I recognize it may not speak to the question you're actually asking, but my immediate reaction to this is: "Arguments employed by most libertarians are completely irrelevant. It's the arguments employed by the strongest and most sophisticated libertarians that demand our attention."
I'm confused here, too. You mention falsely consequentialist libertarians and seem dismissive of them. You mention the Cato institute, and suggest they are arguing in bad faith and therefore very likely to be wrong. Your reference to "tell[ing] the difference" suggests you might entertain the idea of a consequentialist libertarian who argues in good faith. Is it possible that an earnest consequentialist libertarian could be right? What about?