Libertarianism is a vague, umbrella term for a slew of ideas, most of them focusing on things Libertarians are against, rather than for. Only one thing could be said about Libertarianism objectively: No libertarian societies exist today or have ever existed...
Well, it it less vague than the statist part. Read Rothbard he is terrific to my opinion.
Libertarian societies existed in the past and Rothbard gives example of it.
Celtic Ireland until the seventeenth century (more than thousand of year of libertarianism), the beginning of United Start (the influence of the state was negligible at the start)
For the private court, there was the Romans, also Anglo Saxon law was developed by competing judge, not by state decree. (ref "the law and the courts" in "For a New liberty" of Rothbard)
The concept of supreme court were judged are appointed by state is the anomaly of history. Not the other way around.
Private arbitration between 1900 and 1920 were the main way were business settled dispute in the middle age and down to 1920. Enforcement relied on consent or ostracism and boycott.
Libertarians appropriate many important thinkers like Proudhon, who believed that property was theft,
Libertarianism without private property is NOT libertarianism. The first principle of libertarian is Non Aggression Principle.
Before we can decide what is considered Aggression, you need the concept of property.
Anarchist than don't want the concept of property are closer to communism than libertarians. (Marxist communism consider state ownership an issue. But it seems this forms always tended to state ownership)
I would say that Marxists are nearer from libertarians than we are from statists. But without individual property, the wealth will always tend to accumulate in the hand of those with political power, which is why I believe it did not work.
...thus limiting libertarianism debates to teh purely theoretical, hypothetical realm.
Both Christianity and Communism are great in theory.
As I said, there are many case of libertarianism in history.
Nowadays dark net is a living proof that commerce without force enforcement is still possible.
School is even worse. The worse it is the costlier it becomes. A kid with internet would kick his teacher ass quick. (to which I point to
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves?language=en)
And to my experience as teacher/trainer myself.
The cost/benefit of government services is not worth it, and make everybody poorer by force. (which is why I am against taxation, since protest, nor breaking the law will help, I'll just find my way for subsidy to fall in the right pocket)
If it appears like religion, it is more because we can't make justice the the work of hayek, mises and rothbard in a forum post. However I like to see if their point can be discussed, and I have not seen it yet, except with the argument "it does not exist anymore, so it does not work".
