I almost took it out - but I decided to include it because it was on the list you provided. Admittedly not sure what the broader context is from Bob Murphy's perspective. Though I think more generally the loud libertarians on the internet debating things like this does a disservice to the movement.

I think in general this is true, but not at the heart of the matter. I have not been very close to this topic the last few years so I could be wrong, but I think part of difficulty of converting more people is the image. I remember back in my facebook days a pretty popular libertarian on social media was just railing against the evil government because she got a DWI (as if private companies wouldn't be better at enforcing this). All that does is perpetuate the myth that libertarians are just people who want to conduct in illegal activities with impunity.

While I recognize there are idiots and terrible people in all "groups", other ones have the benefit of being mainstream. That is to say the fringe are seen as fringe and not representative of the broader group. Libertarianism does not have that liberty.

I really hope this is all that is needed.

My thoughts exactly - and I think it applies to the above about limited government as well. Or maybe with respect to limited government it is how we get to a limited government without the wheels needing to fall off. More broadly, libertarians often say "rich people care about the poor and will step up without the government." I just don't think people buy it. People see billionaires and millionaires living lavish lifestyles without doing much for the poor so I think they receive this claim with a heavy amount of skepticism.

I recognize that rich people do a lot for the poor already, however. Especially at the local level. Unfortunately the media has no incentive to cover this.

I wonder what the right foundation is.

Your comment about islands made me think of something i often ponder about science funding.

We spend billions on ever more powerful particle colliders and muon colliders (or whatever nima is proposing now) and I wonder what the marginal value to society is. I don't doubt we benefit from technological advancements that went into building the LHC for example, but I also wonder what we missed out on had that money been spent elsewhere.

Imagine the learning we could generate if we did some sort of randomized control trial separating people into different societal structures. An island with no government, an island with a communist government, and island with a huge welfare state, and etc., and then observe how the society evolves.