Trust me, the libertarian rebuttal to this would be "The experiment failed because it wasn't libertarian enough", followed by some tortured analysis about how the surrounding societal structure polluted a noble attempt at establishing pure free market incentives. For all too many, libertarianism is best understood as a religion. Objectivity is disregarded in an effort to arrive at the desired result, which is that only libertarianism can possibly be correct. Does anyone around here think we should go full communist? I don't think so. I think we all recognize that there is some optimal interplay of business and government. It's also not like the government has the equivalent of the Koch bros. & co. actively putting out propaganda to reinforce communist talking points. Please, don't pretend like academia is communist. Academia largely favors a more democratic socialist arrangement than is currently existing in the US. Despite plenty of bullshit rhetoric otherwise, that's not communism. My favorite Ben Shapiro video was when he shittalked empathy as a weakness and disadvantage in policymaking and debate. Please stay the fuck away from policymaking if you don't have (or at least can't exhibit) any empathy. Thanks.
I work for a woman who once told me, "Something about the way you explain things just always clicks for me. I don't understand something when ten other people explain it, then you do one time and I get it." I told her it was cognitive empathy, the attempt to think like another person and then say it the way you think might resonate with that person. She replied, "Oh. I have no empathy." That was two years before I started working for her, and the only only times I regret taking the job are on days when she inadvertently reminds me how true her self-assessment was.