Libertarians and public goods

Noah Smith in Libertarians embracing public goods, Tim Lee edition is arguing that many libertarians are now starting to realize that Government has a role to play in providing public infrastructure.

Is America waking from its long libertarian daydream? For years, many of our brightest intellectuals embraced the simplistic idea that "government is the problem". This attitude required denying the existence of public goods, i.e. areas where government activity complements private markets rather than replacing them. As a result, we neglected roads and other infrastructure, and partially privatized prisons and the army.

However, there are clear signs that libertarians - by which I mean the intellectual vanguard of the movement, not the Ron Paul goonballs - are, as a group, reconsidering the simplistic 1970s worldview. Here's Peter Thiel calling for all sorts of public goods. Here's Alex Tabarrok doing the same. Will Wilkinson, a Cato alum, has explicitly made the argument that public goods provision by the government can enhance personal freedom (a point I've tried to make as well). And now we have Tim Lee, a Forbes writer and former Cato dude, declaring "We're all infrastructure socialists now".