Yeah, I’m also libertarian and generally a bit to the left of mainstream libertarianism, and I honestly don’t understand why anyone would legitimately be on the more authoritarian end of the spectrum.
I appreciate that just plugging in libertarianism today could be bad, but surely most people want fewer people telling them what to do, right?
You would think. I mean, that’s the whole principle behind things like reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, isn’t it? The freedom to control your own body without the government telling you what you can and can’t do with it, as long as you aren’t directly harming someone else? And yet. Ignore the fact that Stalin et al. almost always had purges of LGBTQ+ people, and that the rights of women were–and are in current Russia–sharply curtailed.
Not sure what people call libertarianism here. For me it’s the american mad child of anarchism, individualism and far right capitalism. Certainly not something I would support !
Well, there are those. But libertarianism is a big tent, with everything from socialism to anarcho-capitalism underneath it.
I went into detail on my personal ideology using specific issues as examples. I think drag queens are great, and I’d love to take my kids to a drag queen story telling session (provided the show was intended for kids). I think road users should pay for roads, and they should pay roughly proportional to their destruction of the roads (i.e. trucking companies should pay much more than regular cars), and we should be investing in alternatives to using roads (so trains, cycle paths, etc) because that should reduce overall costs.
I do believe in eliminating the minimum wage, but that’s because I believe in the NIT (Negative Income Tax), so if you make under a certain amount, you’d receive a check in the mail, which would replace the minimum wage (i.e. it would guarantee everyone makes at least $7.5-15/hour, adjusted to local cost of living). I also believe in less power to corporations, and we get there by making it easier for small companies to compete against large orgs (i.e. remove liability protections for larger orgs).
Why? All a minimum wage does is prevent people from taking jobs that would otherwise go to automated systems. If someone wants to work for $5/hr, who am I to say that’s wrong?
The real concern here, I think, is that the minimum wage isn’t enough to sustain an individual or a family. The solution there isn’t to raise the minimum wage, but to ensure everyone has enough, regardless of wage. So hand out cash so everyone has enough, and then let people work for whatever price they want. Cash handouts should only go to citizens or permanent residents IMO, but everyone is free to compete for whatever wage they feel is fair, and wealthy people can pay the difference.
And that’s irrelevant if we have other mechanisms to ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living. If you are above the poverty line regardless, you wouldn’t have to take poorly paying jobs if you didn’t want to, but that shouldn’t restrict others from choosing to take that job.
Then I guess I’ll describe a few policies I believe in and how that fits into my personal ideology. In general, libertarians believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, meaning if it requires an initiation of force to achieve some ends, it’s immoral. Many libertarians are willing to throw some asterisks on there for pragmatism, so I’m more interested in libertarianism as a direction, not an end goal.
Welfare
I support a UBI-like program called NIT. Basically (FPL = federal poverty line, LW = living wage):
$0 up to FPL - receive full benefits, no taxes due
FPL up to LW - receive graduated benefits
above LW - start paying taxes
I want to eventually replace current welfare programs, but I’d start with Social Security, which rewards based on how much you put in, instead of how much you need. I think we should flip that on its head and give more to people with less saved, and nothing to people above a certain retirement income (they don’t need it), so it would be an actual safety net instead of a retirement plan. Benefits would be adjusted based on local cost of living.
Justification:
I find redistribution of wealth to technically go against the NAP (i.e. take from one to give to another), but welfare programs are worse because it generally rewards those with the time to navigate the welfare system. This would be automatic, when you file your taxes, if you’re below a certain income limit, you start getting payments.
Immigration
I’d like to move toward open borders, and make the immigration process as easy as possible. I’d make a one-time offer to currently undocumented immigrants to become documented; if they currently have a job or means to support themselves, they can stay, with some contingencies (i.e. start filing taxes, etc). I’d also increase the quotas for legal immigration, and work visas would constitute a 5-minute form, monthly digital reports for the first year to document your job situation, and if you get a stable job, this temporary visa would transform into a permanent one.
Justification:
Restricting free movement is immoral and against the NAP, unless there’s a legitimate reason to believe you’re moving with malicious intent (i.e. you’ll likely hurt someone).
Taxes
eliminate tariffs - this is basically a national sales tax and is regressive
eliminate corporate taxes - they encourage companies to leave, discourage wage growth, etc
raise capital gains taxes for high income earners - should match regular income tax rates
tax corporate stock grants to high income earners (say, >$400k) as regular income - whether an exec gets stock or cash shouldn’t matter from a tax perspective
sales taxes, if they exist, should be included in the list price of goods at physical stores; online stores should only include it if they know the shipping address; they should continue to be itemized separately in receipts
property taxes are effective, and we should be moving closer to a land-value tax
create carbon tax, and estimate carbon footprint of all imports unless the importing org provides believable documentation
We should require a balanced budget on average (say, over 10-years, tax revenue should match spending). A big part of this is spending cuts, primarily on our ridiculous defense spending.
Justification:
Taxes should be progressive, simple, and sufficient to fund the government. Taxes are a larger aggression against the poor than the wealthy. We should lean on Pigouvian taxes before resorting to regulations.
Social Issues
end qualified immunity - bad cops should be required to defend themselves as private citizens
same-sex marriage - rework marriage as set of simple, legal contracts, which each has requirements and benefits; marriage should be defined by those entering into it, the IRS, hospitals, etc should only care about legal contracts
drugs - legalize marijuana, decriminalize use/possession of any controlled substance, and only enforce actual violations of rights (i.e. violence, abuse, etc)
prostitution - legalize nationally, but also require it to only happen in areas zoned for it (states can decide what that looks like)
abortion - few restrictions during the first trimester (i.e. normal duty of care rules) until learning the gender of the baby, no “convenience” abortions until viability, and funded delivery and adoption after viability if the child is unwanted; after the first trimester, abortion is only allowed to protect the life of the mother or relieve suffering from severe developmental issues
Justification:
In general, if doing X doesn’t impact others, X should be allowed. If doing X hurts yourself, doing X should be allowed, but controlled such that those selling it would have a duty of care (can’t provide to those they believe it would hurt). This would be broad enough to apply to things like credit cards, gambling, and microtransactions in games.
For abortion, the rights of the mother and fetus need to be protected. To do that:
first trimester - privacy issue, because this is the highest risk of miscarriage
second trimester and beyond - symptoms tend to be much lighter, to carrying the baby to a safe term is reasonable
funded delivery and adoption - we cannot cause a financial hardship if we’re going to disallow abortion; decision must be made before delivery
IP Law
dramatically reduce copyright duration - roll back to original law, which was 14 years, with an optional, one-time renewal; also expand fair use
dramatically reduce patent duration - 5-7 years, with an optional, one-time renewal if they can show economic need
keep trademark law as-is
Justification:
IP law in general is illegitimate, but smaller creators need some protection from larger orgs that can beat them in production and marketing. IP law has been abused by large orgs against smaller creators, so it needs to be rolled back, but I think eliminating it entirely is also irresponsible.
Foreign Policy
no foreign wars w/o declaration of war by Congress
no funding for other countries unless they’re fighting a defensive war (i.e. fund Ukraine, not Israel)
In general, I believe in:
broad expansion of individual liberties (drugs, prostitution, same-sex marriage, abortion)
simplification of taxes, and elimination of federal deficit
fewer restrictions on citizens and visitors alike
prefer Pigouvian taxes over regulations
So I generally agree with Democrat rhetoric about social policy, Republican rhetoric about fiscal policy, and I disagree with both about most of what they actually do.
I also don’t like most libertarians, especially those who believe in anarcho-capitalism or strict border controls.
If you care, I documented some of my personal views here, but in general I mostly want to leave you alone. I do believe in a social safety net, so even if you completely screw up, you will always stay out of poverty.
Yeah, I’m also libertarian and generally a bit to the left of mainstream libertarianism, and I honestly don’t understand why anyone would legitimately be on the more authoritarian end of the spectrum.
I appreciate that just plugging in libertarianism today could be bad, but surely most people want fewer people telling them what to do, right?
You would think. I mean, that’s the whole principle behind things like reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, isn’t it? The freedom to control your own body without the government telling you what you can and can’t do with it, as long as you aren’t directly harming someone else? And yet. Ignore the fact that Stalin et al. almost always had purges of LGBTQ+ people, and that the rights of women were–and are in current Russia–sharply curtailed.
I don’t like libertarians
Not sure what people call libertarianism here. For me it’s the american mad child of anarchism, individualism and far right capitalism. Certainly not something I would support !
my local libertarians unironically said that people shouldn’t pay for roads. They also ranted about drag queens despite them not existing in my area.
Libertarian just screams to me, ‘remove minimum wage! more power to corporations! sell your health!’
Well, there are those. But libertarianism is a big tent, with everything from socialism to anarcho-capitalism underneath it.
I went into detail on my personal ideology using specific issues as examples. I think drag queens are great, and I’d love to take my kids to a drag queen story telling session (provided the show was intended for kids). I think road users should pay for roads, and they should pay roughly proportional to their destruction of the roads (i.e. trucking companies should pay much more than regular cars), and we should be investing in alternatives to using roads (so trains, cycle paths, etc) because that should reduce overall costs.
I do believe in eliminating the minimum wage, but that’s because I believe in the NIT (Negative Income Tax), so if you make under a certain amount, you’d receive a check in the mail, which would replace the minimum wage (i.e. it would guarantee everyone makes at least $7.5-15/hour, adjusted to local cost of living). I also believe in less power to corporations, and we get there by making it easier for small companies to compete against large orgs (i.e. remove liability protections for larger orgs).
No minimum wage is fucking stupid
Why? All a minimum wage does is prevent people from taking jobs that would otherwise go to automated systems. If someone wants to work for $5/hr, who am I to say that’s wrong?
The real concern here, I think, is that the minimum wage isn’t enough to sustain an individual or a family. The solution there isn’t to raise the minimum wage, but to ensure everyone has enough, regardless of wage. So hand out cash so everyone has enough, and then let people work for whatever price they want. Cash handouts should only go to citizens or permanent residents IMO, but everyone is free to compete for whatever wage they feel is fair, and wealthy people can pay the difference.
Without minimum wage, companies will pay their workers the absolute least. That’s why there’s a minimum wage!
And that’s irrelevant if we have other mechanisms to ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living. If you are above the poverty line regardless, you wouldn’t have to take poorly paying jobs if you didn’t want to, but that shouldn’t restrict others from choosing to take that job.
Libertariansism is just edgy facism. They pretend to have different ideals but in reality they only care about stomping on others.
Then I guess I’ll describe a few policies I believe in and how that fits into my personal ideology. In general, libertarians believe in the Non-Aggression Principle, meaning if it requires an initiation of force to achieve some ends, it’s immoral. Many libertarians are willing to throw some asterisks on there for pragmatism, so I’m more interested in libertarianism as a direction, not an end goal.
Welfare
I support a UBI-like program called NIT. Basically (FPL = federal poverty line, LW = living wage):
I want to eventually replace current welfare programs, but I’d start with Social Security, which rewards based on how much you put in, instead of how much you need. I think we should flip that on its head and give more to people with less saved, and nothing to people above a certain retirement income (they don’t need it), so it would be an actual safety net instead of a retirement plan. Benefits would be adjusted based on local cost of living.
Justification:
I find redistribution of wealth to technically go against the NAP (i.e. take from one to give to another), but welfare programs are worse because it generally rewards those with the time to navigate the welfare system. This would be automatic, when you file your taxes, if you’re below a certain income limit, you start getting payments.
Immigration
I’d like to move toward open borders, and make the immigration process as easy as possible. I’d make a one-time offer to currently undocumented immigrants to become documented; if they currently have a job or means to support themselves, they can stay, with some contingencies (i.e. start filing taxes, etc). I’d also increase the quotas for legal immigration, and work visas would constitute a 5-minute form, monthly digital reports for the first year to document your job situation, and if you get a stable job, this temporary visa would transform into a permanent one.
Justification:
Restricting free movement is immoral and against the NAP, unless there’s a legitimate reason to believe you’re moving with malicious intent (i.e. you’ll likely hurt someone).
Taxes
We should require a balanced budget on average (say, over 10-years, tax revenue should match spending). A big part of this is spending cuts, primarily on our ridiculous defense spending.
Justification:
Taxes should be progressive, simple, and sufficient to fund the government. Taxes are a larger aggression against the poor than the wealthy. We should lean on Pigouvian taxes before resorting to regulations.
Social Issues
Justification:
In general, if doing X doesn’t impact others, X should be allowed. If doing X hurts yourself, doing X should be allowed, but controlled such that those selling it would have a duty of care (can’t provide to those they believe it would hurt). This would be broad enough to apply to things like credit cards, gambling, and microtransactions in games.
For abortion, the rights of the mother and fetus need to be protected. To do that:
IP Law
Justification:
IP law in general is illegitimate, but smaller creators need some protection from larger orgs that can beat them in production and marketing. IP law has been abused by large orgs against smaller creators, so it needs to be rolled back, but I think eliminating it entirely is also irresponsible.
Foreign Policy
In general, I believe in:
So I generally agree with Democrat rhetoric about social policy, Republican rhetoric about fiscal policy, and I disagree with both about most of what they actually do.
I lean authleft because it’s too easy to manipulate people into voting against their interests.
I don’t like Libertarians.
I also don’t like most libertarians, especially those who believe in anarcho-capitalism or strict border controls.
If you care, I documented some of my personal views here, but in general I mostly want to leave you alone. I do believe in a social safety net, so even if you completely screw up, you will always stay out of poverty.