Courtesy of Fort Wayne Libertarian Mike Sylvester is the 2D Political Quiz. It rates me as “Moderate Libertarian.” My suspicion is that the quiz is designed such that most folks come out as libertarian — not surprising since the principles undergirding libertarianism (essentially the right to be let alone unless your actions hurt someone else) are fundamental American values. But, I think it probably glosses over stickier questions of communal rights and responsibilities such as how much the individual should be required to sacrifice to protect the country or what actions the community can take to mitigate the effects of an individual’s bad choices on others.
Not much of a political quiz, not a single question on attitudes toward DST!
Funny. Last time I took a quiz like this, I was right on the line between libertarian and conservitive. This time I was on the line between conservitive and authoritarian! And I thought I was becoming more libertarian…
I did get a kick out of this answer to immigration:
“Open the gates! Just require that they pay their own way”
Umm…If by pay their own way, do you mean taxes? If you’re just opening the gates, and you do not want any check to make sure they are legal, then how do they pay for anything?
Re: paying their own way, two ways occur to me, I suppose. First is to deny any social services to anyone who can’t prove they are a citizen. The second would be to move to rely heavily on taxes like the sales tax which might be less dependent on an individual being properly documented and integrated into the bureaucracy.
Though, it bears mentioning that many illegal immigrants have taxes withheld from their paycheck without being able to collect a refund for overwithholding at the end of the year. I believe I’ve read that these cases pretty much balance out the cases of illegal immigrants who receive social services without having paid their taxes for whatever reason.
Good points, Doug. That begs the question…why not get rid of income tax and use sales tax alone? Sure, we might start paying 20% tax, but we would keep every dime we earn. It would also lower the cost of employment, that might help slow off-shoring. It is also a way to take more of a cut off of items not made in the US. If it is sold here, we tax it here.
The main problem is the marginal value of a dollar to an individual. 20% of your first dollar hurts a lot more than 20% of your millionth dollar since, presumably, your first dollars are going to be spent on things that are nondiscretionary – food, shelter, that sort of thing. I suppose you could classify those items that are nondiscretionary and exempt them from the tax, but a purely sales tax system is going to be regressive to one extent or another.
I end up not being a very good libertarian in that I think massive amounts of wealth (I’m thinking in terms of 10s or 100s of millions as opposed to your run of the mill millionaire) concentrated in a few hands tends to distort our democracy and our markets and, therefore, should be discouraged.
Regarding choice of taxes, there are more choices than just sales and income, though the other possibilities look a little like those two. Europe relies heavily on so-called value added taxes (VAT), which looks a little like a sales tax but is supposed to be economically neutral. I believe Sen. Lugar proposed a few years ago canning our income tax and replacing it with a VAT. There are also ways of turning the income tax into a consumption tax. Roughly (and grossly simplified) a consumption tax would look something like: (Income + debt assumed during year) less (additions to saving and debt payed off during year) = amount subject to tax. Such a system could keep progression in its brackets.
Doug,
I don’t know if you are a good libertarian, but Adam Smith supported the ‎idea that the wealthier should pay more in taxes. He also warned against letting people obtain monopolies.
My problem with libertarians,as far as I can grasp what they’re all about, is that they believe in indiviudal freedom but dont believe government should intervene to assure rights must be accessible for all. Money buys rights and access and with the libertarian view that ‘just leave us alone’we end up with corporate internationalism in charge with Wal Mart considered the prototype corporation of the future.Then we need China to stock their shelves,because american union wages take away FREEDOM from the corporate plan.(just one example)Cant we have more emphasis on individual civil liberties within the context of both Constitutional and accepted cultural traditional freedoms we in this country have always thought to be ‘american’.
And with public money being siphoned into privately controlled entities by our present administration there is no relative good or bad between private and govt control .
Quiz biased? 31% score libertarian. Many people find out about the quiz through libertarian sites so the sample of people taking the quiz is biased.
See:
http://quiz2d.com/stats/homepage/
Well then perhaps I stand corrected. I’m surprised that only 31% score libertarian, particularly if they’re coming primarily from libertarian referrals. Most of the questions seemed to beg for a libertarian response, but perhaps that has more to do with my world view than anything inherent in the questions.
I think the quiz is very sloppy, ignores some positions on the issues it presents, and lumps together multiple statements in a single option that don’t necessarily go together.
For example, what I believe we have a constitutional right to private firearms ownership, but I don’t believe that gun registration constitutes a slippery slope to anything?
As another example, the defense industry is perhaps the leading example of the phenomenon of massive government subsidies, thanks to the Pentagon. And yet what do we get for examples of unacceptable government intervention in the market? The hoary old examples of steel mills and farms.
Many other examples of corporate welfare are also ignored.
No soup for me!
Unfortunately, I find this quiz to represent the sort of woolly thinking I’ve come to expect from conservatives, and to that extend it just reinforces my perception of the Libertarian Party as a bunch of water-carriers for the Right. Ideologically, this does not have to be the case — in theory, the Right as represented by Grover Norquist and his cronies should come under vigorous criticism from the LP.
In fact, the LP should be encouraging its members to vote Democratic in races where the LP itself does not field a candidate. (The LP could disguise this as encouraging people to vote “anti-incumbent”, which amounts to the same thing for the majority of Congressional seats and for the past and forthcoming Presidential race.)
But as far as I can tell, this is not happening. As long as Bush and the Congress don’t raise taxes, the LP is prepared only to offer token mewling about gigantic fines for an exposed breast on broadcast TV, renewed efforts to criminalize all abortion, and above all the autocratization of the office of the President.
Looks to me like the Libertarians don’t have a problem with a monarchial executive as long as they can retain the millions of dollars they’re sure to earn any day now, and pass them along utterly untaxed to their children.
Some “Major Moves” news. Wayne County (Richmond) is starting a $28 million project at the U.S. 27/I-70 interchange to change it from a “modified cloverleaf” to a “single-point interchange”. All funding apparently is courtesy of Major Moves. Overall, Wayne County is slated to receive $156 million over ten years from Major Moves. Courtesy Pal-Item.
It’s been awhile, but I don’t recall the I-70/US 27 interchange being a problem.
I used to think that libertarians were conservatives economically without a restrictive social agenda,but I absolutely cannot see how libertarians would deal with the abuse of private and goverment power that comes from accumulating wealth and gaining power.Some of the worst abuses of power come from the private sector,and only elected government has the authority to referee these unoffical power grabs of wealth and power.
ENRON is one the best examples of the failure of government to protect the individual. People lost everything they had,and they knew what was happening as it happened,but were powerless. No one stepped in.Where’s the authority? What were the libertarians doing?
Lou: see my other site http://www.holisticpolitics.org . It’s more anti-corporate than anything the Democrats have to offer.
Lou,
They were being intensely envious of Lay and Skilling, of course, and railing against the injustice of prosecuting them. Accumulating such absurd personal wealth is the hallmark of the Ãœbermensch, and these men were giants straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
As Homer Simpson would say, “It takes two people to lie. One to lie, and one to listen.” ;)
Carl,
I looked at your site and any new organization of the status quo makes us think to re-evaluate.We’re all so susceptible to ‘spin’.It’s like looking at a Picasso painting and ‘finding the woman’.All women become more in focus as a result.
Yes,freedom and equality are much used and exploited by politicians. We can seek freedom FROM goverment,or freedom BY government.Equality is a goal and we are usually aware only we we DONT feel we have it.
I came of age during the Vietnam War and no group of people were more moral than the true anti-war protestors(hippies),and I maintain that even with the drug excesses by some and the anarchy sought by others.My point is you surely dont have to be ‘conservative’ to be moral and that’s the spin today. Suddenly the conservatives have God as their mascot ( dont mean to be sacriligious)
Environmentalism is just common sense. We all take baths and keep oursleves clean for esthetic and health reasons. Let’s do the same with the environment we live in.
And we had a kind of aristocracy with Jacqueline Kennedy and the Kennedy administration and now we have the aristocracy of Jed Klampettand Ellie Mae.
What seems to happen is that our belief in a system makes us look beyond the situations of the day and not see the plight of the indiviudal.We dont feel we can modify our well-developed belief system just because a few ‘loser people’are falling through the cracks,can we? I’m all for ‘enlightened inconsistancy’ in government.That was also my philosophy as a public school teacher.But of course if a politician can point out INCONSISTENCIES in their opponent, then that’s very bad,but it shouldnt be, necessarily.
On your chart you have a middle where all the concentric circles coincide. There is a place also in each of us which is universally human,so I like that chart. There should be a place for each of us even if we arent in the circle.Each of us needs to respect certain needs of people we dont agree with,and we should seek to form a consensus there.
Thanks for shedding some light on libertarians. I agree that the Democrats don’t offer many solutions ,but at this point they arent the Republicans, and that in itself would be a vast improvement for a couple yrs.
Branden,
I probably should watch the Simpsons more. It’s the only program I can think of that intellectuals and high school students enjoy equally.
Science News recently highlighted “The Simpsons” for the number of computer programmers and mathematicians it has as writers. They apparently enjoy sneaking in abstract mathematics oriented jokes.