I should point out you will probably find several points of disagreement between my views and other self-described (and very rare) geolibertarians — my political views are far from a pure political ideology. I just think “geolibertarian” is the closest label.

Of course, there is even greater disagreement with more conventional libertarians, with whom I have fun arguing the benefits of LVT over other taxes. And notice how I’m leaving out minarchists and anarchists. :)

Wow. I wasn’t expecting a dissertation. :)

You’re right. You gave me a bunch of answers I didn’t expect. You’re clearly not a standard issue libertarian.

I know a little about geolibertarianism and have considered its distinction between capital and land to be curious and rather communitarian. I’ll have to study up and understand how your responses above fit into geolibertarianism. I think it’s safe to say they don’t with libertarianism.

Thanks for the trailhead to further education.

Cheers.

I hesitate to use Steve Landsburg’s blog for my personal soapbox (feel free to delete it if you wish, since this gets rather far afield from the topic), and most of these questions cannot be answered with a single word or phrase, but are rather linked to numerous other views — “I really think X, but only if Y and Z were also true.” For example, I think income tax rates should be reduced, but only if the budget is fiscally sustainable. If you won’t cut government spending and can’t raise Pigovian and/or Georgist taxes, then cutting income taxes could be counterproductive.

That having been said, let’s see how accurate your guesses are:

* Cutting back the regulatory authority of the federal govt.?
I believe the current regulatory authority is inefficient. Charging Pigovian taxes to correct for negative externalities would in many cases be a better way of handling the problem. For example, if you wish to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, a carbon tax is an efficient way to do it, while saying “You can only pump out a million tons of CO2″ is inefficient. Likewise, raising taxes on gasoline is an efficient way to reduce consumption, while mandating mpg standards on cars is inefficient.

* States rights vs a strong central govt.?
Rights should be held at the lowest level possible. I believe in individual rights, except where those rights come in conflict (the right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins). Individuals should have the right to freely associate on the neighborhood, city, and state level, with appropriate powers transferred by the will of the people. Federal power should be reserved for protecting individual rights and national sovereignty, rather than imposing the will of one group of people on another. I do think that individual states function as laboratories of democracy, and we really should ask if imposing a solution on the entire country is better than letting individuals, communities, and states make certain decisions for themselves. Yes, this is consistent with the federal government forcing public schools to integrate and removing Jim Crow laws, since in both cases individual rights were being abridged.

(Do you see how long this will get? This isn’t even a complete answer, just a crude outline, and one that most people could poke holes in because of exceptions and interrelations.)

* Gun control?
Well, the general public should not have access to weapons of mass destruction, because there aren’t appropriate safeguards to protect the lives of innocents. (I just thought I’d get this out of the way, since these arguments tend to degenerate to “So you think third-graders should have access to nukes.”). I think law-abiding citizens should be allowed personal firearms. Some combination of taxes and insurance related to the level of risk might be appropriate in certain cases — someone might buy a machine gun, but they’d have to have a background check and insure it, with rates determined by actuarial analysis, or some such thing.

* Affirmative action?
The government should only care about a person’s qualifications for a particular job, and it’s perfectly appropriate to restrict government purchases and contracts to companies with the same criteria. If an individual suffered past discrimination from the government and the companies it contracts to, it is also appropriate to hire them for the job they are qualified for and/or pay damages. However, hiring someone because they share certain physical characteristics or belong to the same group as a victim of past discrimination does not resolve the problem of discrimination, it merely punishes the innocent.

* the stimulus?
Spent unwisely. If you take the $787 billion number, it would be better (IMO) to give every working American an extra $2.50/hour, and reduce the minimum wage by the same amount. Extended over one year for the entire labor force (155 million) would cost about the same amount, and do more to encourage productive work.

* Cutting taxes?
I’m for shifting taxes, from tariffs and income to negative externalities (Pigovian taxes) and land (Georgist taxes). I do believe government spending is too large as a percentage of GDP.

* Deficit spending?
It only makes sense if the return from the expenditure is higher than the cost of interest.

* Govt. spending?
Necessary, but often wasteful.

* Social Security?
Flawed program. Should have been designed to track life expectancy, and more defined contribution than defined benefit.

* Medicare?
* Medicaid?
Same argument as Social Security, plus it really should do more to encourage wise use of resources.

* Welfare programs?
If work is a positive externality, a Pigovian subsidy is appropriate. The government can pay a certain amount for every hour worked, up to 40 hours per week, with an appropriate reduction in minimum wage. There will be some point where you get essentially full employment (though who knows if this is the most efficient level), which would make the truly unemployable a rather small group.

* Roe v Wade?
Settled law.

* Strict constructionist reading of the Constitution?
The Constitution is the foundation of our entire legal system, so I’m fairly constructionist. However, I do agree it isn’t perfect, which is why I support amending it in certain cases.

* the income tax?
Inefficient as currently designed.

* that the New Deal alleviated the Great Depression?
The New Deal was incredibly complex. It helped in places, and harmed in others, and it’s impossible to compress several books’ worth of material into a paragraph.

* that WWII ended the Great Depression?
No. It reduced measured unemployment, but building bombs is not the same as building cars and roads. I would argue that the Great Depression ended in the United States when the soldiers came home and started working in private industry building infrastructure and consumer goods.

* free trade vs fair trade?
I could answer if you would give your definition of each.

* whether Democrats are really Socialists in disguise?
* whether Democrats are really “communitarians” (i.e., communists) in disguise?
* whether Deomcrats are really fascists in disquise?
The same answer for all three questions: Some are, the vast majority are not. I’m curious why you didn’t mention Republicans, since the same answer would also apply. (Most people would like to see their ideas implemented because they think they are good, not because they want to be evil. The problem comes when they want to replace the marketplace of ideas with the command economy of ideas.)

* aggressively stopping illegal immigration?
Unnecessary, except to prevent criminals from entering the country. Notice the Pigovian subsidy for wages mentioned above. If restricted to American citizens, the only ones coming across the border would be for jobs that Americans wouldn’t or couldn’t do despite the subsidy.

* the FED?
I’m for more transparency and efficiency, but I don’t have strong feelings either way.

* returning to the gold standard?
A gold standard would raise the cost of gold for electronics and jewelry and whatnot. Gold is nice because it doesn’t decay and the supply is hard to counterfeit, but I think it’s too useful to use as money. Intricately designed pieces of paper is fine, as long as the government restrains the printing presses.

* whether slavery was the root cause of the Civil War?
There were many causes of the Civil War, and both sides focused on the ones that made them look more honorable. Again, many books have been written, and it’s hard to condense into a single paragraph. I will say, though, that I wish more of our Founding Fathers were like John Jay.

* Global warming?
Very likely, and best addressed via taxes on greenhouse gases, rather than cap-and-trade or regulation.

* the role of international law?
Nice for relations between nations. If you are asking whether it should supercede U.S. law on U.S. soil, no. (Treaties are a complicating factor which I will ignore for brevity’s sake.)

* the UN
A nice idea, inefficiently designed.

*If you’re a libertarian, I bet I can guess where you stand on 90% of these questions.If not, I probably can’t hit 90%.

I consider myself a geolibertarian. So what score did you get?

Note: political views subject to change as more information is incorperated into my political philosophy. It’s happened before, and will undoubtedly continue until I start chasing young whippersnappers off my lawn.

(Apologies to Steve Landsburg, and he may replace it with “Michael gave a long, boring answer.” )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse

I’m not sure what good it does to pretend this was some kind of college hijinks hazing incident. Homicide is pretty permanent. We need to square on face what happened.

Weenie. You can’t be nice to these people. If you start something. You better be prepared to finish it. I say make the weasels life miserable. She needs to learn about the temperature in the kitchen.

OK, let’s test your proposition. Where do you stand on:

* Cutting back the regulatory authority of the federal govt.?
* States rights vs a strong central govt.?
* Gun control?
* Affirmative action?
* the stimulus?
* Cutting taxes?
* Deficit spending?
* Govt. spending?
* Social Security?
* Medicare?
* Medicaid?
* Welfare programs?
* Roe v Wade?
* Strict constructionist reading of the Constitution?
* the income tax?
* that the New Deal alleviated the Great Depression?
* that WWII ended the Great Depression?
* free trade vs fair trade?
* whether Democrats are really Socialists in disguise?
* whether Democrats are really “communitarians” (i.e., communists) in disguise?
* whether Deomcrats are really fascists in disquise?
* aggressively stopping illegal immigration?
* the FED?
* returning to the gold standard?
* whether slavery was the root cause of the Civil War?
* Global warming?
* the role of international law?
* the UN

I could go on.

If you’re a libertarian, I bet I can guess where you stand on 90% of these questions.If not, I probably can’t hit 90%.

I’ve noticed that libertarian political support in the United States is in the low single digits, and that their outrage tends to be drowned out by Republicans and Democrats. I’ve also noticed that libertarians do not have a monolithic viewpoint, and making sweeping statements about their political philosophy runs the risk of terminological inexactitude.