And here I thought this was going to be a debate on whether the libertarian movement's insistence on purity tests is a good idea, and was wondering who on TCS would possibly argue in favor.
The Libertarian Purity Test wrote:Your score is...
37
31-50 points: Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on.
I can't quite tell whether the author is joking. While the test itself is tongue-in-cheek, does the author actually expect me to become more extreme?
I've actually become less extreme compared to where I was at one point. In high school after abandoning socialism, I read
Alongside Night, was impressed and largely adopted
agorist views. That lasted a few months, until I seriously thought through a number of implications that I hadn't. After that, I read Milton Friedman's
Capitalism and Freedom and concluded that the solution to everything was more markets. That lasted almost a year, at which point my views shifted to roughly where they are now: strongly libertarian on social issues and mildly so on economic issues. Since that point, my political beliefs have been fairly stable.
Probably the only way in which I've moved more towards the libertarian view is on environmental issues. While I still consider myself a conservationist, I've become more in favor of domestic exploration for fossil fuels as a reaction to our involvement in the Middle East. I've also become considerably more skeptical of the regulatory powers the Fish and Wildlife Service has under the Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act, on account of them listing non-invasive species and non-native species respectively under those acts for what seems to be political reasons.
I've also become more skeptical of zoning regulations; going from "zoning regulations are absolutely necessary" in high school to "zoning regulations are too strict" in college to "zoning regulations are usually unnecessary," after moving to Texas and seeing lax zoning in action. And I've become more skeptical of foreign aide after a slew of books came out suggesting that foreign aid actually damages the development of poor countries; but I don't have an objection to us giving money to other countries if that money can do good.
However I've also become much more strongly in favor of welfare, going from "welfare should be only available in limited circumstances" to "we need a much stronger safety net." That runs strongly counter to libertarian principles, though at least some libertarians seem to favor a
universal basic income, which is even more radical. Incidentally, basic income is probably something I would probably support; though I haven't considered it too closely because it's not really become part of the national consciousness.
Less strikingly, I've also abandoned the libertarian idea that government recognition of marriage should be ended with marriage replaced by private contracts and religious ceremonies. This is a combination of my realization that we might actually have marriage equality nationally (something I realized sometime towards the end of undergraduate) and my shift from indifference towards other people getting married towards favoring it.
There's probably other ways that I've shifted too that I'm not recalling, but I've broadly favored free trade; progressive taxation; government investment in infrastructure; government regulation for health, safety, and environmental purposes; reduction in regulations generally; reduction in the defense budget; entitlement reform; and an end to corporate welfare and farm subsidies since my senior year of high school. (Some of these things I supported before then; that was the point I supported all of these things at once.)
On domestic social issues, I think it's basically impossible for me to get any more libertarian. At this point basically the only way I could become more libertarian on social issues is by becoming a complete non-interventionist. I've probably shifted to being slightly more interventionist since high school, but my foreign policy views have been remarkably consistent even from the time I identified as a socialist.