I tend towards libertarian defaults on social issues, but this completely breaks down for compulsive behaviours with severe externalities - gambling, smoking, etc.
And naturally there's no such thing as "libertarianism except for the addictive stuff", because then someone in power gets to decide what is addictive and therefore regulated, and in short order everything is defined in those terms.
This problem is the Achilles' Heel of libertarianism. It's still a better set of starting assumptions than the alternatives, but it's no comprehensive solution to politics in the way smart young people often want it to be.
It seems nonsensical then?
You would have to pretend non-linear negative externalities don’t exist, or can be waved away with some magic wand.
Don’t reduce it to the simplest, weakest version. Pure, untrammeled libertarianism has its weaknesses, but “unless it hurts others directly, you should be allowed to do what you like with yourself” isn’t a bad starting point.
Libertarianism works better than any other economic system for abstract agents. When you replace the abstract agents with mammals, however...
Whenever I hear libertarian economic theory I always picture my physics professor prefacing every problem with "assume a perfectly uniform sphere..."
Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. After investigation, the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer, "I have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
Libertarianism has no answer for how to deal with finite resources (for example land) that will be snapped up by the first agents.
The industry assures us they’re just filling demand that already existed, that used to be fulfilled by a black market anyway. So now it’s all above board and taxed and hunky dory.
It’s a bit odd they spend a lot of money on advertising to stimulate demand though, hmmmmmmmm /s