Post your "political past"?

I was born an anarchist.

It would be cool if some folks would explain what it was they actually changed their minds about. Did their underlying philosophy change or just their perceptions of the effectiveness of state interventions? Did you come to believe state action was "just wrong" in some moral sense? Or did you just come to believe that they rarely achieved their stated goals (that they were not, on the whole, welfare enhancing)?

Personally, I grew much more liberal (in a classical sense) between 2002 and 2006 (though kind of without realizing it), even though my underling utilitarian philosophy did not change. I started college as a member of the campus greens, but gradually drifted away after 1) reading Friedman, Hayek, and Buchanan 2) seeing how poorly the Bush administration operated. Both factors combined led me to doubt the effectiveness of state action as a practical matter in most (but not all) cases (even though I had no principled objection to state action per se). Of course, my politics and philosophy have changed a bit since then as well (e.g. I wouldn't label myself a utilitarian anymore). 

Republican,

Conservative Republican,

Milton Friedman-follower (which I defined as limited government to carry out police, courts, national defense - i was undecided about Freidman's role for a central bank),

Anarcho-capitalist (very recently) - reading some pieces by Hans Hoppe has convinced me that the arguments in support of free markets hold true regardless of the industry/good/service in question

 

@Student,

The main thing that changed my mind was to ask myself: "under what circumstances is it OK to take property from someone (who rightfully owned it) against his or her will?"  My honest answer to that question is that there are no circumstances making it OK.  And further, whenever someone tries to tell me that the end-goals of X, Y, Z (police force, education, healthcare, etc) are the ONLY ones that make it ok to take property from someone, I then realize that anywhere someone draws the line is arbitrary and the arguments supporting expropriation for one end-goal vs. another are never any stronger or weaker than each other (in fact, they are typically backwards - to support government funded schools but not government funded grocery stores is illogical).

So, like you said, I have come to believe that state action is "just wrong" in the moral sense. 

To quote a recent Forbes article: "Why are forced labor and slavery wrong? It is not because they are costly, or because they are economically inefficient. They would be wrong even if they were inexpensive and efficient. No: They are wrong because other people's time, talents, and treasure do not belong to you. You do not own other people. Neither, therefore, do you own the fruits of their labor. They do."

Another way of looking at this was to try and explain to myself how expropriation/taxation follow the golden rule of "do to other as you would do to them."  I couldn't do it.  I now come to the conclusion that anything other than voluntarism is in violation of the golden rule. How could anyone claim that our current system of forced taxation for public school (or public anything) is in accordance with the golden rule?  Taxation involves the use of force, and the use of force breaks the golden rule.

 

It would be cool if some folks would explain what it was they actually changed their minds about. Did their underlying philosophy change or just their perceptions of the effectiveness of state interventions? Did you come to believe state action was "just wrong" in some moral sense? Or did you just come to believe that they rarely achieved their stated goals (that they were not, on the whole, welfare enhancing)?

It's kind of a two-pronged thing for me. To my utter shame, I was at one time a FOX-watching, baby-eating neocon. I thought that since the US was the most powerful country in the world, we had a duty to be "good stewards" of our position and exercise a kind of benevolent imperialism over the rest of the world. I cringe even as I write this. Anyway, Bush definitely was the catalyst for my repudiation of mainstream conservatism.

What started me on the journey out of conservatism was when I started reading Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. His book primarily focuses on showing how government projects rarely achieve what they set out to achieve. In fact, they often achieve the very opposite (e.g. rent control). But this fact itself belies a bigger question... why are governments so bad at achieving their goals? After all, a government is just an organization. Corporations are also organizations and they tend to be very good at achieving their goals. You could argue it's just how they are organized but this doesn't make sense because all governments are pretty bad at achieving their own goals, however they are organized. And governments copy organizational ideas from the private sector but to no avail.

The answer to the problem is enlightening. First, governments aren't spending their own money. So, they have very little incentive to be efficient. Second, (Sowell didn't address this) governments are self-interested just like anybody else. Wal-Mart doesn't stock its shelves out of love for me. Wal-Mart stocks its shelves to make its board of directors and other shareholders richer. So why should I believe the government polices the roads or regulates electricity out of love for me? It just doesn't make any sense. And if the government isn't doing it out of a love for me, then why are they doing it? Well, for pretty much the same reason that Wal-Mart is doing it... to make the politicians and their financial backers richer. So, that explains why government is so poor at achieving its goals... we haven't rightly assessed what the government's goals are to begin with! The government doesn't care about keeping the roads safe. It cares about collecting tolls and fines. The government doesn't care about my electrical safety. It cares about regulating the electrical monopolies and collecting taxes on every kilowatt-hour of electricity I use. Looked at in this light, the government is stunningly adept at achieving its goals. The key is to rightly assess what its goals are.

But realizing that Santa Claus and fairies don't exist leads naturally to the final question - if government is just another rapaciously self-interested organization imbued with the power to club anyone over the head that gets in its way, how in the hell can this be good? Isn't that just evil? It is evil. There's no redeeming value in government whatsoever. It is naught but organized crime dressed in a judge's robe. So, that's how I ended up anti-State.

Clayton -

I went from Savage (haha) to Conspiracy to Paul to Rothbard, then back to Paul. I don't like political labels. I'm a person who wants to rid the world of central banking.

filler

From freedom to fascism woke me up to the FED and i went straight to Ron Paul where i found mises.org. Got Rothbard and Boetie, then Bastiat, then Hayek and Nock, etc.

filler

'08 crash: I asked my poly sci professor what happened. He had no idea. Ron Paul seemed to make sense since he was saying that the opposite of what everyone else was saying is true. Turns out that was pretty close.

The main thing that changed my mind was to ask myself: "under what circumstances is it OK to take property from someone (who rightfully owned it) against his or her will?"  

JH2011, 

I'm not questioning your personal political path (as I think those sorts of discussions would turn this thread sour). But might I recommend checking out David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. He is also an anarcho-capitalist, but he openly questions whether those sorts of simple arguments in favor of libertarianism are all that convincing. Specifically, see this chapter:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether his arguments are all that convincing.  I just wanted to make sure you, as someone fresh to the anarcho-capitalist space, were aware of this work.  

 

The biggest spur in motivating me to change over to anarcho-capitalism was the Mises daily article "Ten Reasons Not to Abolish Slavery."  I highly recommend it if you haven't read it: http://mises.org/daily/5076/Ten-Reasons-Not-to-Abolish-Slavery

I realized that when I pushed statists on why the government should be able to use violence to extort money like the mafia (the youtube video "George Ought to Help" was really useful too), they always ended up resorting to one of the ten reasons in the article that were used to defend slavery.  I realized I needed to stand up for liberty and what is right regardless of my reservations.  After a bit of reading I began (and still am) becoming more and more confident with how an anarchist society would work.

Student:

It would be cool if some folks would explain what it was they actually changed their minds about. Did their underlying philosophy change or just their perceptions of the effectiveness of state interventions? Did you come to believe state action was "just wrong" in some moral sense? Or did you just come to believe that they rarely achieved their stated goals (that they were not, on the whole, welfare enhancing)?

I was originally convinced by both the utilitarian and moral arguments against statism. Both of these were slowly repealed. Eventually when I came to the realization that morality was subjective I dropped this reason and my utilitarian arguments started to wain. I fell into Nietzscheanism for a while and passed it by. Since this I've pretty much accepted that there are certain services which are unlikely to be provided by the market in the current situation and there are some government programs which can outperform free market services in just about any situation that's likely to occur in our day (though I believe that there are currently states of affairs which would result in the government being outperformed by the market in these services). A large part of what helped me to determine this was by looking, not only more deeply into non-austrian schools of thought, but also further into Austrianism itself.

Student:

The main thing that changed my mind was to ask myself: "under what circumstances is it OK to take property from someone (who rightfully owned it) against his or her will?"  

JH2011, 

I'm not questioning your personal political path (as I think those sorts of discussions would turn this thread sour). But might I recommend checking out David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. He is also an anarcho-capitalist, but he openly questions whether those sorts of simple arguments in favor of libertarianism are all that convincing. Specifically, see this chapter:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether his arguments are all that convincing.  I just wanted to make sure you, as someone fresh to the anarcho-capitalist space, were aware of this work.  

 

If there was a rep button on this forum I'd give you some for this. It's really refreshing to see people help others to develop their views even if they don't agree with them... I turned an anarcho-communist onto Emma Goldman the other day :P

"

I'm not questioning your personal political path (as I think those sorts of discussions would turn this thread sour). But might I recommend checking out David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. He is also an anarcho-capitalist, but he openly questions whether those sorts of simple arguments in favor of libertarianism are all that convincing. Specifically, see this chapter:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether his arguments are all that convincing.  I just wanted to make sure you, as someone fresh to the anarcho-capitalist space, were aware of this work.  

 "

That chapter wasn't anything that isn't regularly discussed already. In fact, I feel as though I became dumber just for having read it.

Phaedros:

"

That chapter wasn't anything that isn't regularly discussed already. In fact, I feel as though I became dumber just for having read it.

 

 

I have to agree here. I haven't yet gotten around to reading anything by David Friedman, but I've always wanted to. Now having read that chapter I feel like it's a lot less likely that I ever will.

I have to apologize for being a little harsh, sorry.

I turned an anarcho-communist onto Emma Goldman the other day :P

haha too cool. 

PS*

oth of these were slowly repealed. Eventually when I came to the realization that morality was subjective I dropped this reason and my utilitarian arguments started to wain. I fell into Nietzscheanism for a while and passed it by.

Ha! This sounds very similar to my experiences, post-2006, grappling with moral philosophy. I flirted with ethical naturalism when questioning utilitarianism, but I have come to accept Hume's idea that ethical statements do not contain meaningful propositions and instead express emotional responses. Which for a while made me very skeptical of prevailing moral schemes, which is prob why i was attracted to nietzche. Now,  I am struggling with the work of simon blackburn's quasi-realism. *sigh* but who knows where that will take me.

really, i don't know what the heck i "believe". i think i have only learned one big lesson. and not so much learned a lesson but picked up a useful attitude that applies to both politics and philosophy: distrust certainty both in yourself and others. there's almost always a reason to doubt what you think is the Truth, if you're willing to look for it.

It would be cool if some folks would explain what it was they actually changed their minds about. Did their underlying philosophy change or just their perceptions of the effectiveness of state interventions? Did you come to believe state action was "just wrong" in some moral sense? Or did you just come to believe that they rarely achieved their stated goals (that they were not, on the whole, welfare enhancing)?

My answer might be quite interesting. After I lost to libertarians in economic debates (I were leftist and they showed me statistics of how Third World-countries rose from starvation to their current development, like China, India and South Korea) I became quite 'moderate' free trade supporter, who liked public education etc. But maybe because I were teenager (15 or 16), more radical political positions started to interest me. I saw minarchism and especially anarcho-capitalism as a really radical and started to sympathize them. Their radicalism was quite addictive for a youngster and finally I was dragged in. Maybe this is something useful? Radicalism for the youth!

I was a common right wing guy all my life (until i was 23 or so) with emphasis in economic freedom. Then I learnt enough english to listen to english youtube videos of Milton Friedman's Free to choose series and Ron Paul videos. When the crisis came i listened much to what Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers and Marc Faber had to say. From that I began a journey to Mises and austrian economics which led my to Huerta de Soto and Hoppe. More than anything else I am now a Hoppean.

 

Social Democratic with nationalist leanings-> miniarchist-> libertarian/voluntarist  (this transformation spans about 20 years)

 

 

 

 

Student:

I'm not questioning your personal political path (as I think those sorts of discussions would turn this thread sour). But might I recommend checking out David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. He is also an anarcho-capitalist, but he openly questions whether those sorts of simple arguments in favor of libertarianism are all that convincing. Specifically, see this chapter:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether his arguments are all that convincing.  I just wanted to make sure you, as someone fresh to the anarcho-capitalist space, were aware of this work.  

Student,

Thanks Student, I appreciate you sending this.  I have not read it yet, but will do so soon and I'll use my own judgment as to the strength of his arguments.  Even if I don't find these particularly convincing, I hope I can make it a point to be aware of when I am relying on very simple arguments to defend libertarianism, and more importantly, determine if i've put the simple arguments through enough questioning.  But I must admit, I think it is arguments like this that can be most convinving.  And i don't want to start thinking that because an argument is simple, then that is enough to not believe it.  

As for my own personal (and recent) attractive to libertarianism/anarcho capitalism, I haven't read a lot of the major works by Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, etc which appear to be widely read by users here.  I have spent more of my past reading Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Peter Schiff, and Milton Friedman, plus his Free to Choose series.  I recently read Rothbard's What Has Govt Done to Our Money and a few articles/speeches by Hans Hoppe.  As I start to read more things by Rothbard and Hoppe, I am finding they are even more convincing than Sowell or Friedman.  

JH2011:

As for my own personal (and recent) attractive to libertarianism/anarcho capitalism, I haven't read a lot of the major works by Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, etc which appear to be widely read by users here.  I have spent more of my past reading Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Peter Schiff, and Milton Friedman, plus his Free to Choose series.  I recently read Rothbard's What Has Govt Done to Our Money and a few articles/speeches by Hans Hoppe.  As I start to read more things by Rothbard and Hoppe, I am finding they are even more convincing than Sowell or Friedman.  

Those authors you mentioned are good as a primer, but to me they can be a little watered down. Honestly a guy llke Sowell is just writing for a different audience than Hoppe or Rothbard. I remember For a New Liberty being a huge turning point in my thinking, and if I remember correctly I had just read Basic Economics and Free to Choose not long before.

Student:

JH2011, 

I'm not questioning your personal political path (as I think those sorts of discussions would turn this thread sour). But might I recommend checking out David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. He is also an anarcho-capitalist, but he openly questions whether those sorts of simple arguments in favor of libertarianism are all that convincing. Specifically, see this chapter:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_41.html

Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether his arguments are all that convincing.  I just wanted to make sure you, as someone fresh to the anarcho-capitalist space, were aware of this work.  

 

Student, I've now read this chapter.  I think his arguments on the military draft and his arguments about doing anything which results in some probability of injuring another person requiring his/her are weak.  However, I'm having a tough time dealing with his scenarios about shining a laser at someone's door vs. turning on a lamp in your window.  Or the scenario with the madman and the rifle.  How do you address these?

Phaedros and Stephen Adkins, how do you address these?

Grew up on a farm.  Individualism and the family unit was all there was in my world in northern NH.  Rooted for the Quebecois.  We all hated government, it was a dirty word.

Then in JR High I found Emerson and Thoreau in some books at a library book sale and found myself agreeing with them, life was good.

Then I went to college for Zoology and while the science courses were good, the GENERIC education classes made me feel like either I was evil or the rest of the world was insane.  This largely lead me further down the individualistic path philosophically and I've always tried to avoid the state.

Finally, I got XM radio and heard this voice, this clear, clarion voice that I kept agreeing with much like Emerson or Thoreau... Mr. Tom Woods.  This lead me to Mises.Org and MisesMedia (the you tube channel).

I have finally found a home here, snuggling up every night with Bastiat or Mises or Hayek or Rothbard.

Here was my path explained, Student.

 

Basically I was raised on right-wing talking points.  My dad always listened to Michael Savage (although now he prefers Levin) and he made sure that he taught me the glories of the military, the United States, etc.  When I became an atheist in 10th grade or so after watching Richard Dawkins appear on the O'Reilly Factor (it made me question religion after never analyzing theistic arguments and I just decided later that week that, 'huh, I'm not a theist anymore'), I dropped my judgmental attitude about personal behavior.  I figured it was pretty rational to stop going around caring about personal habits when it doesn't affect me in any meaningful sense.  It was obvious to me that things that deserve judgment are things that hinder other people who didn't ask for such hindrances.  So I kept the economic ideas and discarded the "cultural values" ideas.

 

So my atheism was basically dormant for two years or so, and then I started to really get annoyed with theism.  It's a distaste I still have to this day, although it isn't quite as immature as it was then.  So I really became one of those obnoxious Youtube anti-theists that think they are smart and sciency by mere virtue of disowning religion.  Then I came into contact with the more sophisticated arguments for theism and I stumbled across the Moral Argument.  It's not that I think the argument is sound, but I really started questioning moral ontology.  So I did a few Youtube searches for moral nihilism and stumbled across the nihilist/Austrians on Youtube.  I was still a Cato Institutey libertarian at the time, but after watching Fringe Elements and Spawktalk, I was then turned on to the Mises Institute and Rothbard and all of that.  I had heard of the Austrians in passing and through Ron Paul, but was surprised to see that these nihilists on Youtube I happened to stumble across were also libertarians.  For the record, I'm not quite a nihilist right now, although I lean somewhat their way.

Phaedros and Stephen Adkins, how do you address these?

I had it all laid out (brilliantly i promise). Then I accidentally clicked on refresh and lost it all. It would've blown your mind :) . If I feel like it later I'll retype it up.

Student, I've now read this chapter.  I think his arguments on the military draft and his arguments about doing anything which results in some probability of injuring another person requiring his/her are weak.  However, I'm having a tough time dealing with his scenarios about shining a laser at someone's door vs. turning on a lamp in your window.  Or the scenario with the madman and the rifle.  How do you address these?

JH,

Those little thought experiments are my favorite portion of that chapter. The way I tended to address them in the past was to take them to heart and abandon all hope of building any defense for libertarianism based on simple slogans or Natural Rights Theory. 

What's the alternative? Friedman offers one alternative to consider in a subsequent chapter of the same book: utilitarianism. 
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter%2043.html

One attractive thing about the utilitarian approach, as Friedman notes, is that it actually provides you a way of answering questions of what the law ought to be. You simply can't do that with simple principles like "everyone has the absolute right to control his own property, provided that he does not use it to violate the corresponding rights of others" as I think his laser example illustrates.

Of course, utilitarianism has its own problems. And even though I no longer consider myself a utilitarian, I think there are worse ways of determining political courses of action. But that's just all my opinion. 

I was an implicit (social) liberal.

Became heavily involved in atheology (I run asktheatheists.com). Through this I got a taste for logical rigour, and the necessity of applying critical thought to all assumptions.

A subscriber to my youtube channel pointed me to a video entitled 'the state is a death threat' (no longer online as far as I can see, created by youtube user called fringeelements) which simply laid out how law, and thus the power of the state, ultimately depends on the threat of deadly force. After that, I sought out and read a whole bunch of anti-statist material, much of it hosted by mises.org.

In 2010 I made the pro-liberty propaganda animation George Ought to Help, hoping to encourage others down a similar path. I currently self-identify as a market anarchist.

Over a decade or so;

Lib-Dem (I think because it fit in with my Church of England upbringing - i.e. everything to everyone)

'Distributist' - Binary Economics (The idea of a non-coercive worker-ownership appealed to both my de-centralist and small-s socialist tendencies)

Mutualism ala Kevin Carson (An Austrian critique of Binary Economics led me away from BE, and 'left-libertarianism' was a comfortable fall-back position that allowed me to retain some of the same values but without an uncomfortable degree of cognitive dissonance. Also, I read a book by Ricardo Semler that convinced me that industrial demoacracy could occur within a free-market).

I am now toying with Post-Keynesian ideas such as Steve Keen writes about. His critique of neo-classical economics has had a big impact on me, and (although this will be denied by followers of the Austrian School) I think that some of these criticisms apply to particular aspects of AE. As a result I am beginning to doubt left-libertarian ideas.

Alongside this I am also heavily interested in Complexity and Systems Theory, and whilst I do not have any fully formed opinions, I think this interest is going to influence my economic beliefs.

Essentially I am always open to new knowledge and understanding but I still have an emotional attatchment to worker-ownership and workplace democracy.

 

I was born an anarchist.

Yes, so was I, and I remained one until I was about seven, when they sent me to school...  I was very, very confused for a long time, until I started reading the books that I should have read in the first place, and I was able to become much more consistent in my views.  I've always had a libertarian streak, though.  Even if it was very, very inconsistent at times, not to mention ignorant of economic realities.  Party politics is largely an ethnic thing in this country, so it's not like I ever identified with a local politician very strongly.  I remember being very impressed when I first heard about Dr Ron Paul in America, about five or six years ago, even though I wasn't really very aware of libertarianism in America back then.

I always had the impression that the "extremes" of left and right were both utterly mad and that the truth must lie elsewhere...  It was only quite recently that I realised it was a completely false dichotomy, and that the truth isn't anywhere near that particular spectrum at all.

I remember being about seven years old, at the grocery store, convinced I had come up with a revolutionary thought: "money is weird." I couldn't wrap my head around why people use it. Why couldn't I just take what I need from the grocery store, and promise not to take more? Wouldn't that work? Why do we exchange little pieces of paper? I guess that means I had socialist leanings, but I'm not ashamed - I was just a kid. What are adult socialists' excuses?

I also remember being endlessly baffled trying to figure out whether the price of seasonal items (say pumpkins) would be higher or lower in season. After all, more people want them, but then again, there are more of them. "Hmm, I wonder if there is a field of study dedicated to these questions. Probably not, I'm a genius."

 

I went to a catholic high school and had to do a report on third party politics, this was in 2005ish, and I was given the Libertarian Party. My presentation went something like this: Libertarians believe that as long as you don't harm anyone you can do whatever you wish, with your life. For example they think it's ok to shot up heroin in your home while not damaging anyone's property or bodies. My teacher interrupted me and called this idea silly; I looked back at her and asked why? She didn't respond. I wouldn't have called myself a libertarian then, but I was. I argued with my History teacher senior year about a detention, I told her she didn't have the authority to tell me what to do with my body, she disagreed. I told her the only reason she has any authority is because I solely gave it to her, and I could easily take it back, she disagreed. All the while I was arguing with my father over invading Iraq, he was a Neo-Con Dubya fan, and called me a bleeding heart liberal, I told him that we don't have the right to invade a country that didn't attack us; he argued they did by default when they wouldn't allow UN nuclear inspectors. About 6 months later I got him turned onto Ron Paul, now he's a libertarian. It wasn't until my 2nd year out of high school that I identified myself as a Libertarian, I was sitting in a Philosophy 101 class and we were talking about political philosophy when it hit me, that I was a libertarian. I found The Law, and the rest was history.

That's a really great story.  How exactly did your neocon father end up supporting Paul?  That sounds more uncommon than most.  What was it that made him come around??

 

My political views over time have not so much been defined by what I thought was right but instead but what I thought was wrong.

I see things I don't want to be and then try to become the opposite.

I've found that I care little for labels nowadays.  I don't really know what to call myself nor do I really care that much anymore.

I'm definitely not a liberal and I'm definitely not a libertarian.

He went and took my views seriously, looked them up and found Paul. Did a little more research on him and found there was more truth in him than Bush. He voted for Bush to limit the government and just didn't relies he expanded it with wars and terrorism, something I feel is common among his generation Republican's. It took about a year, and as I said I wasn't a Paul supporter, I didn't know who he was even.  

That's awesome.  You're lucky to have a father who is that intellectually honest (i.e. is actually a truth seeker).  A couple of books on the subject of the neocon interpretation of "conservatism" are:

The Betrayal of the American Right

And Tom Woods has said Ain’t My America is his first recommendation for anytime he wants to de-program a neocon.

You might offer him those titles as resources he can pass on to any neocon friends he might still have and bring them around to the light side.

Bounced around a lot of obscure 19th century political theories in college before more or less settling on being a liberal. However, I still can't stand being around other liberals.

Grew up in a Fox News watching conservative household. I didn't think much about the foreign policy side ("They hate us for our freedom!!! Spread democracy!") and didnt' have an understanding on economics.  After watchign Bill O'Reilly so many times I grew tired of his attitude towards his guests who disagreed with him, then went on Youtube and stumbled upon The Young Turks. After that I became a left-wing liberal (Tax the rich to pay for public schools, healthcare, roads since they have billions that would not be used anyways, Legalize gay marriage).  I became an atheist since then and ventured from different youtubers until I landed on one channel which happened to have Anti-Statist material with a video called "The Statist Tea Party'". I did not know what the terms were all about or even the context of regulation during a disaster.  Along that time period I stumbled upon Milton Friedman videos from the channel LibertyPen I would not have learned about free market economics.  As for my interest in Ron Paul, it came from an anti-war Moxnews channel where users kept spamming "Ron Paul 2012!". I gained the philosphical arguments against big government and learned of 'individual liberty'. To be honest it was RP's argument of "The federal government shouldn't have a say in marriage, leave it to the consenting of the individuals or the states if they have to" got to me (not at first since I feared theocratic states in the South but after time went on I learned that a marriage license is nothing more than a way of saying "Your union is now valid because the federal government recognized it").  Also I listened to Thomas Sowell who argued against minimum wage and presented arguments which debunk affirmative Action/welfare after watching his segment on Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose".

Eventually I identified as anti-state/an-cap after being convinced that 'taxation is theft' and 'The State is an entity that has a monopoly on violence' all thanks to a fringeelements youtube channel. After reading material from the Mises Institute I became interested in learning economics on how it grows (I read Irwin Schiff's cute comic and listened to podcasts from Peter Schiff). My friends at university call me weird since I have views on how 'democracy is violence' since they feel that problems can be solved by having a majority vote (marriage, wealth re-distribution etc). I still have a lot to learn though, especially on Intellectual Property. I used material from Stephen Kinsella but had trouble during a discussion to address people who feel they have a right to all earnings from intangible material (Digitized music, newspapers etc)  they spent time/money producing whether someone directly copies without paying for the service or permission to use.

Self-consciously a libertarian since age 15.

Constitutional government > minarchism > my current position which I call "Stateless minarchism" or "pseudo-State minarchism"

("Stateless minarchism is the idea that a non-State organization, which functions very much like an ultra-minimal State sans coercion, could achieve a natural monopoly in the provision of legal services, and thereby assure libertarian law going forward better than could a competitive market in legal services - think of it as an anchor trying to keep a free society from drifting away from libertarian ethics)

My motives were originally aesthetic. I hated public school, the arbitrary authority but especially the sense that the goal of the school was to reduce everyone to a very low common denominator. I read Harrison Bergeron and Anthem and lots of European history. Then I started to rebel, got into French surrealist poetry, beat poetry, Nietzsche and other skeptical philosophy, the Doors, and the "extracurriculars" which one would expect to accompany someone on a trip like this...and that's when I started gradually demolishing all of my assumptions about politics and everything else - and I've never looked back. This attitude was the foundation of my libertarianism, but it was basically philosophical in character, rather than political or economic.

It wasn't until college that I started studying Austrian economics in any depth, or started really thinking about political theory in a systematic way (which, by the way, had nothing to do with actually being in college - I just happened to be there when the interest struck me). It was during this period of time that I became a minarchist, and then eventually a "Stateless minarchist" as described above.

And here I am.

a natural monopoly in the provision of legal services, and thereby assure libertarian law going forward better than could a competitive market in legal services - think of it as an anchor trying to keep a free society from drifting away from libertarian ethics)

I've been batting around the idea that this is one of the (practical) roles that religion plays in society. I think the "religion = violent superstition" canard put forward by the Dawkins/Dennett/Harris crowd is a ridiculous over-simplification.

But I don't think that we need or want a monopoly on law services in order to keep a society from becoming anti-libertarian. I think this is the role of culture. Language, art, music, fiction, theater, religious worship, festivals, and so on are the fabric in which the law exists as a woven strand. I don't want monolithic law for the same reason I don't want monolithic language, art, music, fiction, theater, etc.

Clayton -

But I don't think that we need or want a monopoly on law services in order to keep a society from becoming anti-libertarian. I think this is the role of culture. Language, art, music, fiction, theater, religious worship, festivals, and so on are the fabric in which the law exists as a woven strand. I don't want monolithic law for the same reason I don't want monolithic language, art, music, fiction, theater, etc.

The majority demanding bad art doesn't hurt you - the majority demanding bad law does.

But anyway, I'm not against libertarianism having a cultural basis, that would be silly, I just want it to have in addition an institutional basis, because institutions provide a degree of continuity and stability absent in their absence. There are many kinds of institutions which could potentially fulfill this role. Educational institutions, religious institutions (if you wanted to go the route of creating a libertarian religion)....any number of kinds, including the civic or governmental (but non-State) institution, as I propose. Since law is the issue, since law is what I would like to see tethered somewhat so it cannot drift with ephemeral cultural trends, it seems that the best way to tether the law is with an institution that deals directly in law - but I'd of course encourage organizations which indirectly promoted libertarian law through education or whatever other methods.

All of the above!

My political past is kind of boring:

No real convicitons or concerns, ever (even now); other than  when I was younger I had a deep intuition that much of the left was very annoying, very silly, or ultra- destructive and was always more in control of propaganda than the right ever was, or could be.  

I don't know (or care) if I am an anarchist or not :  but to even consider anarchy takes a bit of a twist in the head if one is not attrcated to bohemian flavors of the week, as the position is almost out of anyone's thought process.  I wonder if my personality may have been suceptible to anarchy due to my love for "anarchic" humor like The Marx Bros, Monty Python, Hard Days Night, Looney Tunes, screwball comedies, The Goons, Animaniacs, etc?

Liberal (animal rights extremist, vegetarian environmental nut) --> (large L) Libertarian --> Conservative Libertarian

Though really I have to say that my political views have been pretty vague in the past, wasn't really involved in politics much.