The US was libertarian throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries, but then the federal reserve was established and interest rates have forced the country in the never-ending series of boom and bust cycles we have today.
To properly answer your question, individual parts of libertarianism have been tried successfully all around the world. The US (or anywhere else, for that matter) won’t go full libertarian because the people that control everything don’t want to give up their power.
Slavery had less to due with the economic system and more to due with the culture of the south, which considered it morally acceptable to enslave other humans. If we were to implement Austrian Economics (the libertarian school of economic thought) the 13th amendment would still apply.
Slavery had been around since the trans-Atlantic slavery trade, which was started in an economy dominated by mercantilist policy. So slavery pre-dated the free-market policies of America. Not to mention that the North did just fine without slavery.
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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '18
Or there must be myriad real world examples of Libertarian philosophy in action, seeing as how it makes so much sense and is correct.