Tucker Carlson: I think a lot of people have awakened to the now demonstrable fact that libertarian economics was a scam perpetrated by the beneficiaries of the economic system that they were defending so they created this whole intellectual framework to justify the private equity culture that’s hollowed out the country.

That’s my personal view and I’ve seen it up close my whole life, so I think it’s a fair assessment. I think a smarter way to assess an economic system is by its results so you can assign whatever name you want to the economic system of the United States. You could call it market capitalism. You could call it I mean you could call it a whole host of different things but I I don’t think any of that’s useful. Those are boring conversations.

I think you need to ask does this economic system produce a lot of Dollar stores and if it does, it’s not a system that you want because it degrades people and it makes their lives worse and it increases exponentially the amount of ugliness in your society and anything that increases ugliness is evil. Let’s just start there. So if it’s such a good system why do we have all these Dollar stores.

The Dollar store is the clear, I mean it’s not the only ugly thing being created in the United States but it’s the one of the most common and it’s certainly the most obvious so if you have a Dollar store you’re degraded and any town that has a Dollar store does not get better. It gets worse and the people who live there lead lives that are worse. So and the counter argument to the extent there is one: oh they buy cheaper stuff. Great but they become more unhappy and the Dollar store itself is a sort of symbol what’s what’s a physical thing it’s a real thing; it’s not just a metaphor, but it’s also a metaphor for your total lack of control over where you live and over the imposition of aggressively in your face ugly structures that send one message to you, which is you mean nothing. You’re a consumer, not a human being or a citizen and so again I don’t know what we call our current system but its effects are grotesque. They’re grotesque. It’s wrecked. I’ve been here 54 years and I watch carefully. That’s my only gift is I watch and this has become a much uglier place, a much more crowded place, a much more hostile place, a place that cares much less about people so whatever system that produces that outcome is a bad system and you can call me whatever you want oh you’re a socialist I don’t care what you call me actually I’m beyond caring about name calling. It’s bad and I oppose it.

Glenn Greenwald:  Yeah, believe me, I know I got in a lot of trouble once for suggesting that you and Steve Bannon are a lot more socialist in a certain limited sense than a lot of people who claim that title and of course the nuance of that point got completely lost but I do think the fact that you are focused so much on kind of the welfare of ordinary people and you know, you go to anywhere in the world, you go to obviously you go to Western Europe and you see these structures that people spent 200 years building just for the sheer beauty of it and you go into nature and you see beauty like it never exists and you go to developing countries and you see a kind of dedication to buildings even that are designed to be inspiring and to kind of stimulate things in the human soul and then you go to the places in the United States where our infrastructure is falling apart where our new structures are designed to be as ugly as possible and it’s a very difficult thing to do to communicate these sort of spiritual components of our politics but ultimately politics does have no purpose other than to elevate the happiness of our citizenry and by every metric the happiness of our citizenry is declining: suicide, addiction, use of anti-depressants. All of that.

Libertarian economics, also known as free-market or laissez-faire economics, emphasizes minimal government intervention in the economy.

Key features of libertarian economics that contrast with collectivist (statist) economics.

1. Individual Liberty: Libertarians prioritize individual freedom and believe that individuals should have the right and autonomy to make their own personal and economic decisions without excessive government interference.

2. Free Markets: Libertarians advocate for free markets where prices are primarily determined by supply and demand, rather than by government regulation, the exception being goods and services impacting national security and violating existing criminal laws of the land.

3. Limited Government: Libertarian economics generally limits the role of government to national safety and security, protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and ensuring that markets function smoothly without monopolies or fraud.

4. Spontaneous Order: Libertarians reject the idea of central planning, believe that localized markets can spontaneously generate order and allocate resources efficiently without the intervention of government.

5. Opposition to Redistribution: Libertarians strongly condemn government-directed wealth redistribution, especially when used by incumbent politicians to purchase political support.

6. Sound Money: Libertarians advocate a sound monetary policy to eliminate artificial manipulation, including inflation, by a central banking authority. Many argue for a return to a stable gold or commodity-backed to maximize value retention and generational wealth building.

7. Regulation: Libertarians are vocally critical of government regulations that unduly restrict businesses and markets, create barriers to entry, curtail innovation, and lead to unintended consequences. Especially when such regulations allow the government to pick winners and losers to further political ambitions.

The opposite of libertarian economics is typically associated with a collectivist approach that leads to more authoritarianism and has communism as its theoretical endpoint. 

Key features of collectivist economics that contrast with libertarian economics.

1. Government Intervention: Collectivist economics emphasizes active government involvement in the economy, including regulations, subsidies, price controls, and state ownership of industries.

2. Central Planning: Collectivist economics features central planning, where a group of “experts” (often academics with little or no practical experience) dictates production levels, resource allocation, and prices in various sectors of the economy.

3. Redistribution of Wealth: Collectivist economics features wealth redistribution to address historical or current inequities using the false paradigm of disparate impact where outcomes associated with a certain class of individuals must approximate that class’s distribution within the general population else it must be affirmatively addressed by discrimination against another class of individuals. Collectivism is preoccupied with progressive taxation, welfare programs, and other mechanisms targeted at reducing income inequality within a politically-desirable class.

4. Public Ownership: Collectivist economics advocates for state ownership or control of key industries and utilities, such as healthcare, education, transportation, and energy.

5. Regulatory Framework: Collectivist economics demands an extensive regulatory framework to oversee businesses, protect consumers, and address externalities like environmental pollution. Power resides in the bureaucracy that can create laws using administrative rules and regulations to usurp the power of duly elected representatives who may disagree with their prescriptive.

6. Social Welfare: Collectivist approaches emphasizes population control through the use of social welfare programs, public services, and safety nets to support disadvantaged or vulnerable populations.

7. Monetary Policy: Collective economics demands an active role for central banks to managing the money supply, interest rates, and ensure overall economic stability.

It's worth noting that the progressive communist democrats, like Elizabeth Warren, are quick to point out that libertarian economics does not adequately address the very social issues, such as income inequality, environmental protection, and market failures, from which they derive their political power. The primary goal of progressive communists is to create an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy within the population and then use intersectional identity politics to create real or imagined victims whose grievances will be addressed by surrendering their vote to the Democrat’s coalition of the disaffected.