For five consecutive weekends, I responded to your “questions of the week.”
That involved queries about my views on when the monetary system will begin to unravel, whether I hated Republicans, what I thought about Senator Jim DeMint moving over to the Heritage Foundation, the degree to which the media is biased, and if my opinions have changed on any issues.
But last weekend, I got too wrapped up in other topics and neglected to answer any of the questions I received. So I’ll try to compensate by answering one question today and another tomorrow.
Today’s query actually is a request, not a question: “Take the Quiz and Tell Us How Libertarian You Are?”
At first I thought this was going to be a request to take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, put together by the Advocates for Self Government.
And that would have been an easy test since it involves only 10 questions. I’ve done if before and I’m a pure libertarian.
But the reader instead sent me the much more detailed test put together by Professor Bryan Caplan of George Mason University.
This means answering 64 questions, though it doesn’t actually take that long to complete.
The good news is that I got a 94, which sounds close to perfect.
The bad news is that the maximum score is 160, so I obviously fell far short of libertarian purity.
But even a 94 makes me a very unusual person. According to Professor Caplan’s grading system, I’ve “entered the heady realm of hard-core libertarianism.
If you want to know why I got what appears to be a modest grade, it’s because the test basically measures whether you’re an anarcho-capitalist. And as I confessed back in 2011, when sharing this funny video poking fun at libertarianism, I’ve never been able to rationalize how to get rid of all government.
From an ideological perspective, I’d like to think that we could privatize courts, police, and national defense. But I just don’t see how the market would fill those roles.
So, yes, I’m a squish. But whenever anarcho-capitalists give me a hard time, I tell them that we should work together to get rid of 90 percent of government. Then we can squabble about what to do with the remaining 10 percent.
P.S. Since I shared the funny anti-libertarian video, I may as well share these other examples of humor targeting me and my fellow travelers.
- Two cartoons, one on libertarian ice fishing and the other showing libertarian lifeguards.
- A montage showing 24 types of libertarians.
- Six different perceptions of libertarians.
And since sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander, here’s some libertarian-produced humor mocking statists.
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Guy with an 85 again. I agree with many libertarian ideas. I think a lot of libertarians shoot themselves in the foot in the public relations game by harping on extreme cases, on elements of society where libertarian solutions are difficult to imagine, or where the ones imagined are impractical.
I mean, if libertarians would talk about cutting taxes, abolishing the most absurd government programs, privatizing health care and social security, and scaling back welfare, for example, I think a large majority of Americans would agree with them and support them.
But so often, when libertarians speak they insist on talking about hard cases or unpopular positions. Legalizing drugs. Gay rights. Abolishing the police. Privatizing local roads. I’ve heard a lot of libertarian suggestions about private police forces and local roads and none of them sound very practical or realistic to me. Maybe there’s a way to really make it work. But it’s so far from where we are now, why even bring it up? When half the country thinks that government-run health care is a good idea, do we really need to be debating how to privatize local roads?
Here’s a PR tip, which I offer to libertarians free of charge: Spend your time talking about the stupidest, most evil, most wasteful government policies and programs. When you succeed in getting those eliminated, then move on to the worst of what’s left. Lots of Americans agree with you about many issues. Pursue the things where a majority or strong minority are on your side before going off on the extreme fringe issues.
When you’re talking in private among yourselves, if someone says, “Hey, in a perfect libertarian society, how would we deal with this difficult case that no society in the world has ever handled with a pure free market solution?”, sure, talk about it. But don’t bring it up in public. If you’re asked about it, don’t waste time going into a long explanation about an untested idea. Brush the question often by saying, “Wow, we are so far from that right now, it’s just not worth getting into. Let’s talk about the REAL issues, like ..” etc.
85. Because while I have a lot of sympathy for libertarian ideas, I think libertarians try to carry a good idea too far sometimes.
For example, explain to me how you would abolish police forces. Do you think criminals are going to go away because you abolished the police? The libertarian ideal is that people should interact in mutually voluntary transactions. I think that’s a great and noble ideal. But what happens when someone decides to hit you over the head with a baseball bat and steal your property? In real life, sometimes force has to be met with force.
Okay, we could have private police forces, like security guards. No doubt some private police forces would be paragons of integrity. But police are all about using force to stop criminals. This is not a voluntary transaction. We don’t ask the criminal if he wants to be arrested or shot. So what happens if I create a private police force, and you don’t like the rules that my police try to enforce? You can’t just say “no, sorry, I decline to participate” when they arrest you. What happens if two private police forces try to enforce conflicting rules? How would the result be different from a gang war?
Yes, the police can be corrupt and biased and all sorts of bad things. But it’s naïve to suppose that private police would be any different, because the nature of police is that this is not a voluntary transaction.
Similar things could be said about abolishing the army. Who’s going to pay for a private army, and what prevents them from using that army to establish themselves as dictators?
You can, of course, write on a piece of paper that private police will always act justly and that private armies will only be used to defend against foreign invasion. Who is going to enforce these rules, and how?
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Libertarian resolve must be weakening in my old-age. Only 136, today. (February 2013: 151)
89 — I believe in a safety net, strong military, and a government role in ensuring that people don’t violate other’s liberty. These beliefs screw up my score.
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I agree with Buford Pusser except for the Department of Defense. The US should not maintain a standing military. It will eventually bankrupt the country and the becomes a tool for politicians to fight private battles. We need enough military strength to keep the lanes of commerce open. Originally that was thought to be a Navy…http://coldwarwarrior.com/
Where are the sane people. Where are all the Insane Asylums when we need them. Just leave us alone and provide for your own self respect by living a principled life of virtue, value, and self respect. Don’t tread on me and I will not tread upon you. Above all there is only one part f government that is meaningful and needed. That is the Department of Defense. All else should be de-structured and disposed. Destroy the nanny state and thou shall prosper.
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[…] A thorough quiz on libertarian purity. […]
How fun. A bit of belly-button gazing is good for the soul from time to time. The first “test” did have open ended questions so I wan’t surprised my score wasn’t where I expected, though was in range of my expectations the way it’s described at the end. The second one was, I think, surprisingly accurate. A glimpse in the mirror to see what I look like to others, if they are being honest.
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134 – I must be a nutjob. The only ones I wavered on were the “national defense” and immigration ones, but that’s because I think you can’t have free immigration in the presence of a nanny state. More a question of sequencing I would think.
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Your Libertarian Purity Score
Your score is…
151
[…] early January, I shared a “libertarian purity test” based on 64 […]
153
Coupla grumpy commenters in the string, lol. At 75, I’m only a medium core libertarian. Wah! I’m going to have to work on my views regarding the military and drugs to go hard core.
Happy New Year!
Lin
I got 160 and it wasn’t even difficult. (It’s actually quite easy once you realize the correct answer is always “Yes”). 🙂
[…] days, but I neglected to answer a question last week, so I had to catch up and get back on track. Yesterday’s question and answer generated a lot of interest, so I hope this one is equally […]
> Libertarians should have stood on PRINCIPALS in the BEGINNING
Why do you hate school leaders?
Reblogged this on Literature, Mathematics, Science, Etc. and commented:
Currently in US Politics, people are usually divided between more government or less government. Here is a post I found interesting concerning this. By the way, take the quiz to see what your position is. I took it and found myself as a centrist.
So, a “pure libertarian” is a collectivist and tax ideologue. Thanks for that.
It’s by the way that you refuse “to get rid of all government [of the relevant kind]” because you can’t imagine a better way, given conditions in your area, to live at the expense of your neighbors at modest risk to yourself. You refuse to get rid of government because at bottom you’re just another coward who wants cops, courts, and the military do your dirty work under the color of law. Government is your favorite church, and you write about it incessantly because you fear that the costs and risks of it to YOU and your kith and kin will go up more than you’d like them to.
I got a 123, mostly because I differed from pure libertarian on military issues. This puts me in the same category as you guys though on the higher end. I basically agree with “anarcho-capitalism” but don’t consider myself one because I disagree with the libertarian definition of government having to be a monopoly. So did the founders, which is why they attempted to decentralize government through federalism and checks and balances and other means. Really, I think that market provision of government services is the logical conclusion of the founders’ ideas. So I don’t consider that abolishment of government, just a new foundation or institutional arrangement for accomplishing the purpose of government, the securing of our rights.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Damn, I only scored a 91. Just barely hard core. 😦
I scored a 94 as well. Looks like I’m in good company.
You article hit’s exactly how I feel on the matter. Libertarians should have stood on PRINCIPALS in the BEGINNING of Republicans turning RINO. NOT NOW when their country NEEDS THEM to get rid of ANY PERCENT of Government. I’ve picked the GROUP of voters that represent my views & will continue to support & help fight back government. We need to UNITE not divide ourselves, IT’S ABOUT COUNTRY NOW not individuals.