The former type is perhaps more at home among the Democrats, and absolute civil liberty is more closely associated with the political left. The latter type is perhaps more at home in the Republican Party, and absolute laissez-faire is associated with the political far right.

Individuals may fit better into one or the other type, and libertarians generally are not a close match to the core of either party. So then we face questions about pragmatic, political give-and-take — in other words, compromise.

Government-sponsored or government-run safety net and minimal trade regulations are functionally compatible. As a matter of pragmatic politics, more likely congress can pass legislation for free trade and free enterprise, if people will walk an economic tightrope only with a safety net. People might accept the dynamism of “creative destruction” that dumps a ton of misfortune onto people who are economically at the wrong place at the wrong time, if the system does not leave them stranded in cold indifference.

This may be the best compromise that would yield good results in policy, and can be achieved politically. This may not satisfy Che Guevara or Ludwig von Mises on ideological grounds. It is possible to find balance without ending up with a so-called deadly beast that has the head of a tiger and the tail of a shark. Laissez-faire theocracy is a more awkward match than this, even if the necessary compromises leave all Democrats somewhat unsatisfied.

It depends on what you mean by this whether you’ll be able to get any liberals to sign on. If you mean you want people to save and invest more, then there are probably plenty of programs that liberals would be happy with–like, say, if the government matched the first X dollars that people put into a 401K every year.

OTOH, if you mean that you want people to be more dependent on the performance of their savings and investments, by weakening social insurance, the safety net, or progressive taxation, then liberals aren’t likely to have anything to do with it.

I suspect that the reason Republicans have largely abandoned fiscal libertarianism is that it is perfectly sensible for them to do so. A broad consensus is emerging that excessive risk and inequality should be resisted and mitigated even if–especially if–their increase inevitable. If globalism increases risk and inequality, the government should act to protect people from those trends rather than cheerlead to make things worse. So if you want to ask what we’re willing to cede in exchange for what ponies, the answer is simple–compare risk and inequality under the new proposal with those things under the current policy.

It’s not quite that simple, as liberals and libertarians will have different economic models, especially when it comes to incentives–I think patients will do a lousy job of managing their own health care, and I don’t think Bill Gates cares how many billions he or his foundation has as long as he has more billions than anyone else.

There really isn’t much to bargain over. There just aren’t enough libertarians to make a difference. Libertarians do effect the elite consensus but that is about it.

Liberals see social justice issues like universal health care, minimum wage and preserving social security as the type of issues that can get them a populist majority. For understandable reasons, libertarians are not going to be on board.