Why are more Liberals not Libertarians?

I am referring to American Liberals (i.e. socialist-leaning ideology) and not to European Classical Liberals, which are similar to libertarians in philosophy.

1) Liberals tend to favor security and social harmony at the expense of individual liberty. One example: liberals favor income redistribution through progressive taxation, to make people more "equal" and more likely to get along - whereas libertarians believe everyone is entitled to the fruits of his/her own labor, even if there are differences in earnings.

2) Liberals prefer centralized power (or a strong, theoretically impartial, father figure, generally a democratically elected government) to regulate the millions of transactions between individuals - or the market - again, with the end goal of social stability. Libertarians are very staunch opponents of strong government involvement in said transactions between individuals, claiming that giving a government a monopoly in enforcing rules is more dangerous and more corrupting than letting individuals or groups of people compete freely.

3) Liberals favor military intervention around the world, to spread their ideals and to solve humanitarian crises (let's not forget that, due to circumstances, the most war-bent US presidents since the 20th century have been leftist Democrats: Woodrow Wilson and WW1, FDR and WW2, Truman with the atomic bomb and the Korean War, Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, LBJ with Vietnam, Clinton with Somalia and Serbia, Obama with Libya, Syria, ISIS, etc.) The one exception to this trend was the Bush dynasty. Right-leaning Republicans such as Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, and even Reagan (despite his rhetoric) have been more wary of using military power to advance US goals. Libertarians even more so oppose a strong offensive military intervention, and prefer a purely defensive foreign policy.

4) Liberals often dislike unchecked free speech (although not in the US), often opposed to offensive speech. Libertarians believe that one of the pillars of a civilized society is for anyone to publicly espouse any belief without any fear of criminal repercussion. (Again, in the US, most people, including liberals, staunchly protect free speech - perhaps a cultural trait, but in most of Europe and the rest of the world, people can get arrested or fined for making certain ideas public).

5) Liberals are wary of freedom of association, with the assumption that one party in a transaction is always exploiting the other - hence the need to regulate agreements (e.g., establishing minimum vacation time in a contract between a private entity and a private individual). This is to protect the supposedly weaker negotiator. Libertarians believe that transactions between consenting individuals or groups should be left free, without interference from a third party.

5) Liberals tend to favor a strong central authority to affect economic outcomes, and pick "winners and losers" within market competition, through anti-monopoly laws, affirmative action, arbitrary taxation and tariffs, etc. Libertarians are wary of giving a strong central authority this power, with the belief that it corrupts the wielder of said authority.

6) Liberals tend to see people as part of various tribes: genders, races, age groups, economic status, and see some as inherently strong and others as inherently weak, intellectually inferior, unable to compete in a free market. Thus, they prefer policies aimed at benefiting the tribe as a whole, at the expense of the individual. Often, they see the tribes as antagonistic toward each other. Libertarians believe in color-blind, gender-blind, etc policies which apply to each individual exactly the same, stemming from the belief that all individuals can find their niche in society, regardless of the natural talents they possess at birth.

In a nutshell, liberals believe a strong central authority (run by their peers) is necessary to steer society to become better and more harmonious. Libertarians believe that individuals are best off left free to achieve their diverse goals, to cooperate uncoerced, and even if the end result is not so equal, society tends to be better off.

Thus, liberals and libertarians have incompatible sets of beliefs, and it makes absolutely no sense to look for any overlap.

Why is Communism evil?

A person on Quora asked a more long-winded version of the question in the title, and this was my response:

Karl Marx's ideas were evil because they were based on hatred and antagonism (class struggle) rather than tolerance and diversity. In his proletarian utopia, only one kind of human could survive. Since that human did not exist in the real world, when the system was put in practice, existing humans had to be transformed into that type or be killed off. Luckily nobody was able to implement pure Communism as Marx had dreamed, but many were seduced by the dogma and tried it out on real people, causing untold amounts of suffering.

Let's look at the system when put in practice:

1) Political Failings:

Communism tried to solve existing social problems and inequities by concentrating power in the hands of a small elite unaccountable to anybody. Without a system of checks and balances, this system inevitably lead to large excesses by these ruling elites - more often than not leading to genocide and mass murder.

2) Economic Failings:

Communism concentrated economic decision-making into the hands of a small elite, unaccountable to anybody. Time and time again, this way of running an economy proved much less efficient than a free market for goods and services.

Think of an analogy: if google maps were updated by a centralized institution, would it be as efficient as the model it adopts now (open source, with millions of users updating the data in real time)?

With such an inefficient economy, most communist societies ended up in dire poverty; for the most case, the regimes which survived had to radically transition from the communist economic model to a freer market.

3) Foreign Policy Failings:

Communism was an aggressive dogma, and communist societies were required to spread the ideology by force around the world. That is why you had Cuban fighters in Angola or Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. Often the ideological need for conquest coincided with more practical needs - with such a poor economic model, the stronger communist countries (such as the USSR or China) needed resources from other countries in order to survive economically.

I never understood why people often say "it's a nice utopia, it just can't be put into practice". Communism has a bad reputation in the civilized world for very good reasons.

Capitalism: An Utopia

As much as I detest socialism and collectivism, as an ideology, I have arrived at the conclusion that capitalism is also an utopia, which, when put into practice, cannot exist in reality.

The problem with socialism, American-style liberalism, and related ideologies is very simple: the principle might be good (I disagree with that too, but let's not get too philosophical here) - the more advantaged provide for the rest. Goods and services produced are redistributed in a more equitable way. The problem is very simple: the redistribution is done by an elite, a small privileged group, and thus cannot be equitable no matter how you turn it. In addition to the incentives created ("why should I produce anything when I won't be able to enjoy it, because some douche will take it away from me on a whim?") it is also highly inefficient. People will no longer produce all they are capable of producing because of the lack of incentives, and humanity will suffer (basically it will be poorer than otherwise).

The apparent solution is capitalism. I will not rewrite economic theory here, why that system is more efficient, nor will I go into the moral arguments of why it is more equitable (people produce only things that are needed by others, with minimal waste, and uncoerced).

However, I realized that this ideal is also an unattainable utopia. Capitalism relies on a fair and blind justice system, and an unbiased legal environment where the market can thrive and people can prosper. However, this environment must also be upkept and enforced by somebody, and again that is a small elite. And the probability of this elite being incorruptable, of upholding the law and never according special favors, is for all purposes 0.

Many point to the Russian ogligarchy as the failure of capitalism; I saw it as a system that was as far away from capitalistic as possible (there was no rule of law to protect the uncoerced transactions between individuals and firms; law enforcement was monopolized by an entity that formed winners and losers in the system, as opposed to allowing the market to determine them). Now that I look back at it, I see things more clearly: it is impossible to have an impartial entity protect the mentioned transactions and their fairness.

Because no elite in power or watchdog will ever protect or enforce the fair and unbiased system of property rights laws and other legal pillars of capitalism, I reached the conclusion that such a system is utopian in nature. Having reached this conclusion, I offer no alternative solution for a system best equiped to fostering human advancement. Perhaps a return to slavery, where I am the master and everyone else my slave, but even that wouldn't be too efficient, because I don't have dictatorial tendencies, or even desires, and I am prone to wasting time writing blogs instead of enforcing maximum production. The only solution I can think of now is anarchy, or the law of the jungle. But it's not popular, and the generations indoctrinated in the public school systems around the world are not likely to even listen to the arguments in its favor.