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More to my point that you've misconstrued here. Governments have in the past, and continue to, fund and do immense amounts of fundamental research. But that wasn't my argument.
I was attempting to point out that no entity public or private can do the kind of complex research and invention required today without a stable, relatively safe, relatively predictable government in charge that provides basic infrastructure and services. We aren't getting our best (or any) innovations out of Syria or Iraq, or Palestine, or Myanmar, or the or Prospera etc...etc... (these are not examples of gulchs, just unstable regimes.)
I'll be impressed if/when we have an actual libertarian "country" as case study that is outperforming more traditional current governance types. It is also just so damn hard to pin any libertarian minded person down on what exactly they believe and how that would translate into a governing body or country. I don't think I've once gotten a straight answer.
I guess that's fair and we're actually going to see this with Argentina and to some degree El Salvador.
I thought Hoppe was pretty damn clear, open and consistent, actually.
Personally I ideally desire Patchwork, also known as Feudalism, and an efficient and minimal guardian of my natural rights. And I'll settle for a destruction of central orders and a return to smaller and more personal forms of government, inasmuch as is pragmatically possible. You know, like Machiavelli.
This obviously makes us enemies inasmuch as you seem to desire greater levels of centralization and support Administrative States as inherently legitimate sovereigns. But that's what this place is for, right? Talking to people you disagree with.
I've seen some chatter that El Salvador should try to model itself on Singapore. I would say Singapore goes against pretty much every libertarian ethos except for being pro-business. It has about as heavy a hand as you can have as a government controlling society and citizens. Although I wouldn't class the UAE or Hong Kong as particularly libertarian either. So maybe we should start there. Clearly you have an affinity for the ideology, how do you square the circle regarding these regimes and personal freedoms etc...
As I have stated, I've never really nailed down a "libertarian" on what they actually believe and what a real world based on those beliefs would look like, even when I was the treasurer for our college libertarian society wayyyy back in the day (threw some good fundraising poker games). Maybe this is my chance if you're willing to go to bat.
I'm game. This being all under the caveat that libertarianism is a fairly large ideological tradition and many will disagree with me on specifics, either because they're anarchists or because they have different social views or views on power.
But they are moreso than the West, and it is really all that matters to me.
To understand why, a good guide is the conceptual frame of Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty. The basics of his view is that members of any human organization faced with the deterioration of the quality of the organization are faced with a dilemma if they want to address this problem. They can either use voice, which is to say that they can use the mechanisms of the organization to internally struggle to improve it. Or they can use exit, which is to say dissolving the relationship between them and the organization.
Libertarianism, in essence, is the ideology that favors exit paired with competition as the mechanism for solving social problems under the name of Freedom of Association. In this sense, libertarians do not care about political rights (voice) as much as liberals or socialists. But they care absolutely about exit rights. They are perfectly happy for organizations to provide services to them that they have no direct input in, as long as their ability to fully divest from such an organization is guaranteed.
Hans-Herman Hoppe is most famous for taking this lens, applying it to government and attempting to build over the years a view of a system of government that would rely on consent and still allow for the preferences of various different human groups to be addressed by free association.
In Democracy: The God that Failed, he excoriates universal suffrage (voice) as a solution to the political problem, much preferring to is the rise of natural elites, who would nevertheless be beholden to natural law. To this end, he envisions a system of "covenant communities" that would be able to exclude members that are undesirable to them. For an example he gives the idea of a village having a sign that reads "no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Muslims, Germans, or Zulus".
This is essentially how international cities function. You have no political rights. Law is applied swiftly and strictly. Undesirables are kicked out. Property rights are strongly guaranteed. Taxes are minimal. And private life is strongly separated from public life.
The west does not function like this. You are encouraged, if not forced to participate in politics. Law is loosely applied if at all. There are laws on the books against divesting yourself from essentially any group. Property rights are heavily conditional. Taxes are high. And the State is immensely interested in spying on and controlling private life.
Everything is more complicated that this in the details, of course, but I hope that I can at least give you a broad feeling as to how a libertarian might see these international cities as havens of freedom compared to, say, the European Union.
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