Of course what the article omits is that being a libertarian also means that you never have to admit that you're wrong, since there is no perfectly libertarian societies out there, any failure can somehow be twisted to be blamed on government (while any success can be attributed to 'market liberalization').
In other words, libertarianism cannot be evaluated using simplistic case studies. That, however, is in no way a critique of libertarianism. Indeed, you could easily recast the complaint as follows: "Being a leftist means that you never have to admit that you were wrong; for so long as there
is a market—and even they do not propose to do away with markets altogether—any failure can somehow be twisted [so as?] to be blamed on the market (while any success can be attributed to 'government regulation')."
Truth be told, even if there weren't always a readily-available scapegoat, "failure" would never have to be acknowledged. To say that your ideology is preferable to all others, is not to say that it will right every wrong.
(EDIT: We're also assuming, it should be noted, that consequentialism is the proper measure of an ideology. But since everyone seems to accept that proposition to one extent or another, we probably aren't sidestepping a major issue.)
