> I think this view, of "free trade", is very popular among my crowd as well as popular among Sci-Fi authors.
In the sci-fi I read/watch, "free trade" is very popular and very well presented (and I'd say pretty accurately) - it all looks cool and pretty at a first glance, but then it turns out that big parts of the population are extremely poor miners slaving away their whole lives in some godforsaken hellholes, and on the free market you can easily buy anything from innocent people's organs to weapons of mass destruction.
As for libertarianism - it has some good ideas, but the more extreme forms burst into flames at the first mention of the word "externality".
In the sci-fi I read/watch, "free trade" is very popular and very well presented (and I'd say pretty accurately) - it all looks cool and pretty at a first glance, but then it turns out that big parts of the population are extremely poor miners slaving away their whole lives in some godforsaken hellholes, and on the free market you can easily buy anything from innocent people's organs to weapons of mass destruction.
As for libertarianism - it has some good ideas, but the more extreme forms burst into flames at the first mention of the word "externality".