>How can liberty effectively counter fear?
The short answer is that we shouldn't because it's a waste of time, it's wiser to focus on ourselves and to spend our energy trying to realize our own libertarian society, rather than focus on what statists are doing and to do nothing but react to the next big thing they're panicking about. We should leave behind state-critical libertarianism and preferably ignore statists completely, and engage in self-focused libertarianism instead:
"We are all familiar with mainstream scholarship: the ideas, beliefs, and theories that form the rationale for contemporary mainstream society. Of course, corresponding to mainstream scholarship is mainstream society itself, the society in which these ideas, beliefs, and theories are put into action."
"Unfortunately, in the libertarian world, we have no society, corresponding to our scholarship, in which our ideas, beliefs, and theories could be put into action. This fundamental asymmetry—mainstream scholarship/mainstream society; libertarian scholarship/no libertarian society—is libertarianism’s “elephant in the room.”"
"Libertarianism has perhaps succeeded as a scholarship movement, but it has failed as a political movement."
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"The modern libertarian movement was founded by writers who objected to the laws of non-libertarian society. As there was no libertarian society to which they could emigrate, and as they were subjected to laws they found objectionable, their writings naturally focused on the legal theories and legal structure of non-libertarian society. Libertarian scholarship thus became largely a critique of non-libertarian society. The goal of libertarian scholarship became the liberalization of non-libertarian society. Though this was quite natural and understandable, in retrospect, the libertarian’s focus on non-libertarian theories and non-libertarian society may have been a costly diversion. Imagine, for a moment, if the most capable political minds in one country spent most of their effort theorizing about the politics of another country, or if the most capable thinkers of one religion spent most of their effort theorizing about the beliefs of another religion. What if the management of one company spent most of its effort criticizing the management of another company, or if the parents of one family spent most of their effort critiquing the parents of another family?"
"To a significant degree, libertarian scholarship has been directed toward the theories and practices of mainstream society, rather than toward the goal of constructing a libertarian society in a polycentric social order. We have positioned ourselves not as leaders of our own social creed, but instead as critics of the non-libertarian social creed. We have expended a lot of time and energy trying to provide mainstream society with an improved social theory to guide their social actions. Meanwhile, we have neglected to construct a social theory to guide our own political actions in a non-libertarian world. Through libertarian scholarship, we have gained a thorough critique of mainstream society. But, we may have lost something more valuable: a society we could call our own."
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"What if we tried something different? What if instead of trying to establish libertarian relationships between non-libertarians, we focused all of our theoretical and physical energy on trying to establish libertarian relationships between libertarians? For example, what if we tried to “abolish” the legal minimum wage only between those of us who object to the notion of a legal minimum wage? What if a group of libertarians decided that in commercial dealings amongst themselves, they would institute the libertarian principle of voluntary agreement in deciding wages?"
"What I have in mind is a polycentric social order in which non-libertarians have non-libertarian relationships, while libertarians have libertarian relationships. I am not proposing any changes at all in non-libertarian social institutions, laws, scholarship, or any other aspect of non-libertarian society. I am only suggesting that libertarians focus their efforts on establishing libertarian relationships between libertarians. I think that if this was our exclusive focus, we would have some chance at success."
"How would we go about this? Where would we begin? What are the possibilities? What risks accompany the various possible strategies? This, in my opinion, should be the focus of libertarian scholarship. The most important question facing us as libertarians is this: How can we establish a nascent libertarian society in a polycentric social or legal order? How can we establish a society of libertarians, not only in the world of scholarship, but in the social, legal, and commercial world as well?"
https://www.panarchy.org/knott/libertarianism.html