No, as I will argue here.

I tend to believe that libertarians of a scholarly bent have gained possession of a body of knowledge that other people have not gained. People who advocate free markets have learned something that socialists have not learned, generally speaking. I offer anecdotal proof from my experience.

If a person learns one outlook and then learns another outlook, I suppose it is generally possible for that person to establish successful communication with others who have learned the first but not the second outlook by remembering the first outlook and reverting to the views and terminology of that first outlook. This is why adults can often succeed in communicating with children, because adults were once children, can remember how things look to children, and can talk in terms that children use.

I grew up in the left and was not exposed to the arguments for free markets until I was in my late 20s. Some hunger drew me into those arguments and over several years I learned a free marketeer’s paradigm. But I can still recall how I used to think and feel. If I push aside all I’ve learned in the last 30 years, I can conduct empathetic conversation with a socialist.

So the test which I offer to prove that libertarians know more than socialists is this: Can person X who feels committed to paradigm A talk and sound as if he believes paradigm B to the extent that person Y who feels committed to paradigm B would concur that X understands Y’s views?

Can I converse with a socialist and leave the socialist feeling understood? Generally yes.

Can a socialist converse with me and leave me feeling understood? Never; or at least not yet.

This make me believe that all the socialists whom I have met so far remain ignorant of the libertarian paradigm. If a socialist knew the libertarian paradigm and wanted to converse empathetically with me then he could do it, as an adult can converse with a child. But I have never met that socialist.

That is why I answer “no” to Peter’s question.

Ronald Coase and Thomas Sowell come to mind as additional converts from socialism.

I think the supply of ideas matters. In a world in which more-or-less free market economics is not widely supplied by academics and public philosophers, people who are skeptical and want to understand how the world works in a hard-nosed way may become socialists (or perhaps other things — like engineers) because that’s what’s mostly available. So ideas win by expanding choice sets, not (so much) by conversion, though conversion may happen as choice sets expand.