ninefruits asked: What is your own political philosophy? You seem to have a dislike for everything.

Clearly I’m a crotchety old man who spends his days holed up in his apartment complaining and listening to Taylor Swift.

Dude, I’m basically a liberal. Also a republican. Those two sentences were capitalized correctly. 

Um. My political beliefs probably best spring from the idea that no one should be bound by circumstance, which may also explain why I have such affinity for America. (America has spent a lot of its history binding people with circumstance, but it’s always really believed that’s a bad thing to do. We hold these truths to be self-evident…, etc.) We should seek to maximize individual liberty. Governments have no business in the personal lives of individuals, and should not prohibit free speech, free assembly, free practice of religion, must offer a fair trial, and must offer citizens equal treatment under the law. Governments should not discriminate against their citizens. Not only should governments not constrain individual freedom, society is better when discourse is robust, pluralistic, and fearless. I’m suspicious of tradition and I like a bit of mess.

Free markets are the greatest means we have devised to lift people out of poverty, and governments should support free markets. (Note: Free markets aren’t like wild mushrooms; you don’t just venture out into the woods and find them. Free markets have certain features, and sometimes governments must involve themselves in creating those features. One example is the enforcement of contracts. Another is the addressing of knowledge problems, overcoming collective action problems, or removing barriers to entry.) The system of mixed market capitalism used throughout the west is a decent approximation of how this works in practice, but there’s a lot of variation within that, and none is my ideal.

I support free transition of goods and people across national borders, though I understand cultural and political realities will not permit the absolute free movement of either. 

I am suspicious of accreted power and think individuals should oppose it whereever it exists, with what tools they have. That can mean with a government against a business, in one instance, with the federal government against a state government in another, or with private enterprise against a government in a third.

We should think idealistically and act pragmatically.

Recap: We must none of us be bound by circumstance. Individual liberty should not be constrained Governments must stay out of our personal lives, and since governments are inextricably involved in markets through enforcement of contracts, they should involve themselves in support of free markets.

How’s that to start?