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Now wait just a second-- why should anyone believe this? I'm a Free Stater, and all Free Staters are evil policy Satanists who are willing to lie and cheat and steal in order to get their demented policy preferences. The mere fact that I moved all the way from Texas suggests that I am a servant of Beelzebub and therefore should not be trusted. Obviously I'm just trying to infiltrate the Blue Hampshire community for my own nefarious purposes-- because, if I'm not a libertarian ideologue, why would I have moved?
[What follows is my life story. Feel free to skip ahead to see specific policy views.]
As it so happens, when I moved (2008) I was a libertarian ideologue. A "market anarchist", as I put it. Now, if the transition from market anarchist to liberaltarian sounds awkward-- it is. But if we look more closely at the underlying basis of my beliefs, we can tell that the transition was bound to happen.
Before deciding I was an anarchist, I considered myself to be a moderate Democrat. Al Gore was one of my heroes. (I had a brief run-in with Ayn Rand and Objectivism before that, but the nonsensical dogma aggravated me.) So, while I have sympathies with libertarian ethical views (government is coercive, coercion is wrong, therefore we should abolish or minimize government), they clearly aren't a priority.
What did convince me were economic arguments. Economists argue that markets maximize efficiency. A short leap of logic leads to the realization that, in regards to the government problem, if we could just create a market of governance, we could maximize governmental efficiency! A beautiful solution. Since this idea is the core of market anarchism, I happily jumped on the anarchist bandwagon.
Here is an old post on facebook-- I think it's from 2007-- that corroborates my story so far:
"all anarcho-capitalists are (small-L) libertarians"
I disagree with this. I happen to think that a government using something between Libertarian and Democratic approaches would work the best.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist because I don't believe governments should have the power to force anyone to pay for their services. They should be treated as any other business. This is unrelated to my political affiliation. It's possible that many people would want to buy the services of a fascist government. That would be fine with me. If somehow they managed to prosper under those conditions, I would be surprised, but it wouldn't upset my ideology.
The reason I side with Democrats occasionally is that there are public goods that governments are in a better position to provide than separate companies. At some point separate companies will surely find a way to provide these, but until then the higher-quality governments will do it, in a Democratic sort of way, and they will be successful.
You can see that conflicts between my inner economist-- the public goods problem-- and my inner anarchist were occurring from the get-go. Though I quickly become a more mainstream, libertarian anarchist, my growing interest in economics led me to emphasize that I was an economist first, libertarian second. If it came to it, I would sacrifice my libertarianism to my understanding of economics. And it came to it.
The "free markets maximize efficiency" conclusion is based on a stylized model with plenty of assumptions. Many markets, on the face of it, seem to approximate these assumptions, and therefore seem to call for free markets. Health care is one example. But, if you take a closer look, you realize it's a wretched confusion of market failures, where government could realistically improve the outcomes.
As I took more and more close looks at different markets, the market imperfections built up. The inadequacy of economic efficiency as a guide (because it ignores distribution issues, among other problems) also became obvious.
I found a graceful way out in Let A Thousand Nations Bloom. It provides an overarching political philosophy that isn't reliant on anarchism or libertarianism, yet still captures the essence of my thinking-- governmental choice and competition and innovation. I also took steps to isolate myself from the Keene libertarian crowd to further ease the transition. My efforts to reach out to liberals, in preparation for a friend's State Representative race, forcefully confronted me with all the liberal beliefs I had accumulated, and I finally decided I was too liberal to call myself a libertarian. Thus began the hunt for a new label.
Here's a sampling of my specific policy views (there's much more to my worldview than policies, but everyone wants to know policies):
Cap and trade-- I would prefer a carbon tax, but it's pretty good. I'm a member of The Pigou Club. (Are you?)
Obamacare-- I have mildly positive feelings about this, due to these guys. I'll have to do more research before I have stronger feelings.
Wealth redistribution-- I definitely support government redistribution towards the poor. I'm more skeptical about the middle class. I'm basing these tentative views on happiness research, which finds that poor people gain significant amounts of happiness from higher incomes, while people with above-poverty incomes gain little or no happiness. And my preferred way of achieving this is through a progressive income tax with a negative income tax for the poor-- because it's so simple!
Macroeconomics-- Keynesian. Paul Krugman is my second favorite pundit. (Thus, I am not obsessed with ending the Federal Reserve.)
Civil liberties-- I <3 civil liberties. Glenn Greenwald is my favorite pundit.
Marriage equality, women's right to choose, marijuana decrim-- check.
Wikileaks-- Wikileaks is bringing democratic accountability back into foreign policy. Awesome.
Minimum wage-- I lean against it, due to these guys from MIT. Analyzing the data regarding the minimum wage is sadistically difficult, so I only lean.
Regulation-- ? I probably support some form of banking regulation, and other bits here and there. But mostly a big question mark. I need to read more.
Education-- I'm familiar with a lot of the research: good teachers help, smaller classroom sizes are iffy, charter schools and school vouchers are iffy, throwing money at the problem doesn't work, etc. I also subscribe to the signaling theory of education, at least partially. I'm not yet sure what policies I'd recommend based on these.
My two favorite politicians are Antanas Mockus and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and you can browse a list of my favorite social science books here.
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