It is very good at outlining the basic economic textbook critique of laissez faire free-market ideology. I think it is basically right, however, a little to long and complicated to persuade his audience. Who is his audience? He states elsewhere,
It was never aimed at smart libertarians anyway, just as a way to knock down trolls who have read too much Lew Rockwell and too little anything else. Its points still mostly stand. And I'm not sure I would specifically self-identify as a libertarian either. I seem to have several political philosophies at several different levelsI don't think most of the Lew Rockwell, Mises.org types don't have the kind of attention span needed to be sufficiently knocked down.
I included the last sentence because I sympathize with it a lot -- the sentence about different ideologies at different levels. I wrote a post about this but never posted because believe it or not, I proofread my posts and never got time to read through this one thoroughly. It's called Government: Broad and Narrow Views. It states that the more meta-level I think the more libertarian I get, and the more narrow view I take the more liberal I get. I will probably post it later.
In the same post, Scott mentions a comment that he says may have shifted him away from non-libertarianism irreversibly. Intriguing...
So the non-libertarian FAQ got a response by another smart and articulate person ( The non-non libertarian FAQ). This is what brought my attention to the first FAQ in the first place. Personally, I would like to see David Friedman's response, which is probably sitting the read file of Scott Alexander's e-mail.
