Where are the judgmental libertarians?

The Correct type of guy is rare?

The “Political Compass” splits people’s political views across 2 axes:

• Economic policy (left–right): do you favor state redistribution, welfare state, socialism, central planning or free markets, capitalism, competition?

• Social policy (authoritarian–libertarian): do you want the state to interfere in people’s personal choices like what substances they consume, who they marry, how they are educated, or do you prioritize freedom and individual choice?

I find that people’s political inclinations are well predicted by their personalities.

• People with a stronger egalitarian / fairness instinct favor left-learning economic policy

• People with a stronger disgust response or lower openness favor authoritarian social policy

An underrated consideration about the authoritarian–libertarian axis is that it’s difficult to selectively move along it for certain issues and not others. Often I speak to people who have certain pet concerns—perhaps they think gambling is bad, or porn, or social media for teens. They want those things to be banned. However, maybe they also support gay marriage, people’s rights to change gender, freedom of religion, and so on. In their mind all these things are compatible—the government should simply adopt the correct values and ban the bad things and allow the not so bad things. But this model is very naive. Banning narrow things has second-order effects—you’re increasing the state’s remit to bad similar things. One day they’ll take the wrong side of one of your pet issues. So there’s a trade-off—if you advocate for the state to ban certain things you disapprove of, you must accept a higher likelihood of things you approve of eventually being banned too.

This is not the only reason to become more libertarian. Another one is if you terminally value people’s individual freedom to make their own life decisions, even when those might be incorrect.

Despite having an incredibly strong disgust response—i.e. I find most people’s life choices and preferences deeply offputting—these two phenomena (the second-order effects of narrow authoritarian policy, and the value of freedom per se) are sufficiently compelling to me that I’m a pretty extreme libertarian. More libertarian than almost anyone I’ve ever met. Sometimes people are surprised by this. For example, I think drinking alcohol or taking any drugs that make you stupider or less conscious is terrible (I can write pages and pages about how disgusting it is). Nevertheless I would never advocate for banning alcohol.

Sometimes I wonder why more people aren’t like me. All the high-disgust types I know end up as conservatives, always calling for things to be banned. All the libertarians I know are also quite laissez faire in their personal lives—they respect a wide variety of people and ways of life, they don’t come across as judgmental personally.

There’s a gap—where are the extremely judgmental libertarians? Surely there are other people who value their own and others’ freedom but nevertheless have strong opinions about what constitutes a beautiful vs. ugly life?

Unfortunately, saying that you consider something very bad is often misunderstood as advocating for intervention in discourse. But it is totally valid to make severe judgments about others while still believing they should be granted the freedom to do as they please.