Businesses that did not opt out could proudly advertise that they were in full compliance with government regulations. The self-proclaimed consumer advocates of the world may live just as securely in that world as they do in the one that exists now. They may continue to buy government-regulated products and services. They may also write angry articles, declaim on television, and take out advertisements in newspapers warning the public when they discern a danger. . . . For libertarians, the term society is strictly an abstraction designating interaction among individuals.
Individuals are the reality.
Critics of libertarianism, Marxists especially, have used this emphasis on the individual to argue that libertarianism in practice leads to atomization and alienation. Libertarians counter that individuals are social by nature, that it is in their self-interest to cooperate. But the absence of coercive government programs is most decidedly not nothing. It's a growing economy, the individual initiative and creativity of millions of people, and thousands of associations set up to achieve common purposes. Nevertheless, precisely because libertarians do not seek political solutions to social problems, they often find themselves at a disadvantage in political debate for the simple reason that they have nothing to propose.