Went from an idealistic, anarcho-syndicalism view to a socially conservative, minimal state view as I became more cynic with age. Still more or less libertarian the whole time though.

I've also always tried to position myself far from what I see as the pseudo-moralistic, full-of-certainties views of the folks who call themselves liberals nowadays...

Me... i'd always been interesting in history and politics.

I'd have political discussions with a friend of mine when I was in grade school

Was basically a communist at that point, because it seemed simple. Some people have resources, others don't... force people to spread it around... i mean rich guys had the fun jobs anyway. Seemed simple. (back then I thought wealth was zero sum.)

Considering this was between 1990-1994... I probably freaked out my parents. Didn't know anything about the cold war at the time. Just was looking purely internally.

Was also pro intervention... didn't know much outside the US, but knew there were "bad guys" and were through history, so taking them out should be a good thing, right? Simple.

In Junior high, Civilization 2 came out. As such, I read a Wealth of Nations.

Why? Adam Smiths trading company was a bad ass wonder. Made sense at the time.
That and some other economics stuff gave me a basic understanding of the economy and how wealth is constantly created and that the "pie" is always growing outside of just like... mining gold and diamonds.  Still didn't change my economic beleifs that much outside of getting out of STRAIGHT full blown communism level confiscation.

In general I also learned more about South American history, already having learned just about everything I could about Asia and Europe. At that point I learned a lot about how revolutions fail, and in general how interference in matters can actually make things worse even if the person in charge is a huge dick. Learned about some of the dickish stuff corporations did in South America.


Still wouldn't of voted for a republican though. Clinton seemed to be doing great.

Then in college i had actual college classes that taught economics, and in general had some experience with the real world, working and such, ended up being pretty moderate in most areas except for social issues in which I was always pretty liberal.

Al Gore seemed like a betrayal of Clinton, with John McCain actually being closer. So i read a bunch about what each candidate stood for among the 12 or so politicians and who was actually supported by which lobbyists... and watched C-SPAN while playing video games. (I had 3 tvs set up, my house was always the entertainment house.)

That made me purely a moderate, because I realized Democrats get their money all from the same places as republicans and are mostly just giving lip service.

So i voted for Mccain in the primaries. Though Bush won, partly due to some crazy ass racist tactic where they convinced people that john McCain's adopted foreign child was a mix raced love baby he had while cheating on his wife...

So I voted for Gore, cause well... fuck Bush had no credibility in my mind.

read even more about economics, had more economics classes and just paid attention what happened in different markets around the world, and become decidedly more. Right wing isn't the right word, so much as non interventionist.

To have simple, persistent and consistent rules... that's definitely the way to go.

Then I got a job working the government.

... after that, i decided that government should be "burned down" well past where I actually think it should exist. The built back up to the levels I think are correct regarding social welfare and such... because there really is no way to reform it... and really what we need are experiments, and a political culture that's willing to try things on a trail basis and say if something fucks up or didn't work "Oh, that fucked up/didn't work." rather then "Oh that fucked up/didn't work, but we're keeping it around as a bargaining chip/wasting money/admit we were wrong."

I think most people who end up working for the government end up feeling this way.

  TLDR, I suppose it'd go

Communust -> Socialist -> Union Democrat -> Clinton Democrat -> Moderate -> Frieberg School of Economics/temporary libertarian. (really fits better then anything else from what I can tell.)


While social issues basically went from Liberal who was fine with intervention to Liberal-Isolationist... with that switch occurring sometime during the Clinton Regime. Not sure when or why.

All I know is I was pissed Bush 1 left Iraq, and I was pissed Bush 2 went into Iraq.

Oh i forgot one part to that long ass explanation.

During that whole time I slowly realized that people are all different.

Just like how people have pain thresholds, people have all different kinds of needs and wants.

I realized that no matter how much you alter the tax to be progressive even if you did come up with a perfect "shared sacrifice" formula....

it wouldn't be so.

Two people who worked the same job, and were paid the same, will have different "base requirements and wants."

Even though they would both pay the same taxes and tax rate... their tax burdens would actually be far different.

Hence interest in more unique based tax methods.

Libertarianism sounds good and dandy on paper, but not so effective in today's complex governmental, social, and economical structure.

In the meanwhile being a liberal/progressive is a far better choice than being a conservative Republicans -with its tea party manifestation. 

Went from not caring to a social-democrat with a touch of green.

More or less neoconservative to libertarian/minarchist.

Once I began doing a lot more work as a business analyst, excel spreadsheets became my friend. It became real easy to start looking up and analyzing data. I've probably looked at thousands of various charts and spreadsheets that get referenced on various political-leaning data points.

Between that, and listening to every lecture Milton Friedman gave, it became pretty apparent to me which way my political views should change. That is, a liberalization of social views to the notion that a free market of morality is preferable to social authoritarianism, since bad behaviors under a libertarian society and government will get weeded out faster than subjugation and negative habits becoming taboo.

Economically, I've always been free market, but I've learned to define it better. I know why I don't like most specific government programs in the US, and can usually haul off a list of a few bullet points. On a personal level, I've come to realize that the government is abysmal with how it handles money, and any money I pay in is likely to be used vastly less efficiently than I can use it for most government services (pensions, health care, welfare, ect).

I think that covers it. Debate has a way of sharpening your views, so between here and other forums I frequent, I've learned a lot from the times I'm wrong, and done what I can to research issues and come to some sort of conclusion based on data. Time and time again, most comparisons I look at leave our federal government lacking severely, yet wanting more. Every answer the government gives for a problem is "More money" or "More power" when it rarely gives positive results for what is paid in.

This summarizes my views on what the role of Government should be (copied/pasted from the Libertarian Party of Canada website)

The only proper functions of government, whose powers must be constitutionally limited are as follows: settling, according to objective laws, disputes among individuals, where private, voluntary arbitration has failed; providing protection from criminals; providing protection from foreign invaders.

We don't need social security, welfare, universal healthcare, massive over-regulation, victimless crimes (drugs, prostitution, etc.). Less taxes and more freedom would benefit all.

I have found that there are several problems with the libertarian philosophy. Namely, the contradictions. Libertarians argue that the  free markets are the best way of organising society for 95% of all cases, and not for the last 5% (the things listed in that passage, for example). Libertarians also believe in the primacy of the individual over the state, and yet to fund Government for that final 5% the only logical and consistent means is through taxation... taxes fundamentally assume that the state takes precedent over the individual.

My other issue with Libertarians is that they still monopolize law creation and law enforcement into one institution with the ability to infringe on rights, and assume that they will never abuse this power. This seems a little naive, even the greatest Constitution ever composed by humanity (the US Constitution) was unable to prevent abuse from this power. Hell, even the first few Presidents/Congress' showed evidence of acting outside the authority of  the Constitution... and they included the people who wrote the bloody thing.

I can see the allure of the libertarian philosophy... I called myself a libertarian for a long time, however, these very fundamental flaws in the philosophy eventually caused me to reject it.

Well, I went from typical liberal wussy to more conseravitve views, but that's so typical for my age it doesn't worth elaborating. Really, I'm not bound to any religion or ideology except for self-righteous antisemitism.

I don't think that's correct at all. Libertarians know very well that all power will be abused, but as Jefferson said, the price of liberty is eternal vigiliance. I'm not even really sure what the alternative is to a monopoly on law enforcement, as it seems inevitable that you will always end up with territorial monopolies. Ultimately, having two or three major (that is, viable) competing law enforcement agencies wouldn't be significantly different than having two or three political parties, all of whom want to fuck you over as soon as attain take power. It's just easier to vote out political parties than it would be to dislodged an entrenched, semi-militarized police force. The real problem is that abuses of power will occur under any system as long as people are willing to put up with them, and it seems that people are generally willing to put up with them to varying degrees - usually a depressingly large degree as long as it isn't actively affecting them personally and they are basically able to get along with their lives.

I can see the allure of anarchism, but ultimately it seems to me but an adolescent pipe dream. But you're a smart guy, and I'd be interested to hear any compelling arguments you might have for it.