The libertarian approach absolutely does lead to progressivism because people, broadly defined, want progressivism. You have to take a narrow subset of society for the libertarian approach to be genuinely popular, or you have to abandon the pretense that you're optimizing for the good of all people. Don't take my word for it, listen to one of the most successful libertarians in recent history:
> The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron. [...]
> The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country[...]
Thiel goes on to detail how his only hope of accomplishing libertarian ideals is by escaping to either cyberspace, outer space, or the sea, leaving behind all those people who if asked by libertarian means would reject his ideals. (And he's gone on to invest in companies like SpaceX that are working on bringing this plan to fruition.)
The whole reason you get articles like this is because libertarianism can't survive on the merits, and so (apart from Thiel's approach of escape) they have to argue that people aren't playing by the rules, that somehow universities do not have the liberty to rescind invitations or that if they do it's because they're bad people. But they are playing by the rules and they're exercising their liberties.
One doesn't need to run to tell a teacher every time another kid is mean to them. This is exactly the same. The solutions isn't always interventionist, I don't see why that is funny. Do you really expect someone to step in and settle all your disputes for you?
It's hilarious that the pure libertarian approach is literally "do nothing".
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