As a general rule of thumb, I view people who dismiss a “liberal-libertarian alliance” out of hand to be unreasonably reactionary, and mostly going with their heart — and not their head — which I nearly always view as a bad thing. In any case, since it is rather reasonable liberals who often dismiss “liberaltarianism”; I like to take it upon myself to highlight areas, identified by liberals, where their views and the views of (pragmatic) libertarians overlap.

Kevin Drum serves up a choice example:

Here’s the pitch: corporate income taxes are a drag on businesses and are ultimately paid by consumers anyway. That’s bad. Conversely, a tax on carbon would reduce our oil use and spur energy efficiency. That’s good! Likewise, a tax on financial transactions would reduce speculative volatility and help stabilize the financial sector. Also good! So we’d trade one bad tax for two good Pigovian taxes.

I think he has a wrong idea on the “Tobin tax”, or the marginal effect of speculative activity on market efficiency…but at least we’re moving in the right direction. I think that a carbon tax would, in the long run, allow for relaxing of the personal income tax as well. Indeed, if we promoted consumption taxes along these lines, there would be no need for an income tax at all. By eliminating income taxes, not only would we rid ourselves of something I find to be morally repugnant, but we would also be increasing the efficiency of our tax regime. That means lower taxes on net would produce greater revenue. A Pareto improvement!

These type of welfare-enhancing deals can be found literally everywhere, if one has the inclination to look. They’re oftentimes subtle but nevertheless are nearly always an improvement over the status quo.