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Too radical even for the Libertarian Party!

01.01.08
at 22:09

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Too radical even for the Libertarian Party!

Over at Peter Dunphy's place (following similar from Jo Anglezarke ) there's been some discussion about the "Political Compass" quiz that also now has an application at Facebook you can add to your profile and see how your friends have scored.

There were some suggestions for other political profile sites, including one called "The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz - in 2d " which goes slightly further than "The World's Smallest Political Quiz" (also available on Facebook ) and produces a position on a chart similar to that one. The "World's Smallest..." one is created by The Advocates for Small Government, a US Libertarian organization and I presume by the questions and format of the results the "Enhanced Precision..." one is similarly created by and/or for libertarians.

But what made me smile was my result - way up in the top of the diamond shaped chart at 100% personal libertarian and 91.5% economic libertarian. In the comments it tells me:

"You like your government very, very small—or none at all. You are a hardcore
libertarian...Approximately 9% of the takers of this quiz scored in this area, 31% for all libertarians outside
the centrist circle...

If you want the Libertarian Party to win elections, then the
LP needs to be less radical than you are."

Tee, hee!

(I have trouble with all of these quizes as you might imagine, as none of them properly understand "geo-libertarianism")

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Comments

Me too... Naturally all such

On 02.01.08 at 10:36 Tristan Mills (not verified) said:

Me too...

Naturally all such quizzes are simplistic and can't really gauge you opinions, I've never taken one which takes into account the problem of land and non-market originating problems.

Perhaps there's scope to design another quiz...

Your radicalness

On 02.01.08 at 19:36 Carl (not verified) said:

Slight misinterpretation: The U.S. Libertarian Party is as radical as you are. That is why it wins very few partisan elections. A party intended to win elections would have people at your level of radicalism as part of its radical wing, vs. being the core. I agree with you about the geo-libertarianism. I wrote the quiz before I understood Geoism. One of these days I intend to write a quiz to place people on a more useful political map, the one on the front page of http://www.holisticpolitics.org

Yeah I got that from the

On 03.01.08 at 00:58 Jock said:

Yeah I got that from the bit in bold in the post - "if it's going to win eletcions..."

I don't follow their fortunes, but I gather from the info on the quiz page that some are making moves within the LP (US I suppose we have to qualify it now as there's just a new LPUK started) to make it an electoral machine rather than a pressure/education focussed body.

It doesn't make such a good headline though - "Too radical even for the Libertarian Party (if it wants to win elections)!"

I suppose it might help people like you trying to compile such things if people like me trying to answer them gave more information about why they answered in a particular way, especially if they felt for some reason that what they were answering was somehow "wrong" in the spirit of the quiz.

I could say that it would be easy to fund nearly any sized government entirely with "user fees" for example by asserting that land rent collection is a user fee for the state's protection of your right to occupy that property. But it wouldn't neessarily lead to a "small state" just an arguably fairer way of paying for a big state.

And actually I know well that there are areas where I am not so radical. I do not yet really understand all the arguments for allowing people to carry lethal weapons or whether that's really likely to lead to lower or higher crime and in particular death associated with crime. It seems to me that it is possible to argue as a libertarian that the response to someone's attack on your property still has to be proportionate and that the risk of shooting someone dead for looting a loaf of bread is not proportionate.

Pretty comprehensive looking

On 03.01.08 at 01:16 Jock said:

Pretty comprehensive looking site by the way. It will take me some time to have a look throughit but it looks like my sort of stuff!

Much agreement here

On 03.01.08 at 19:04 Carl (not verified) said:

We're largely on the same page. I concur that wealth taxes -- especially land taxes, but also taxes on copyrights, patents, etc. -- do a pretty good job of approximating user fees. Alas, broach that idea at a U.S. Libertarian Party convention and many will beg to differ quite vociferously.

LPUS is still torn between being a purist protest organization and a broad party for pro-liberty electoral politics. Too many members think it is possible to be both at the same time. I am the one who spearheaded the most recent overt move to get the LP to opt for electoral politics. It was partially successful, but not enough to justify my staying in the party. To my mind, the cost of completing the conversion is higher than starting from scratch. This is why I replaced "Moderate Libertarian" with "Left Leaning Freedom Lover" and "Right Leaning Freedom Lover" on the quiz.

Good luck with the LPUK. If it attempts to do real electoral politics, I may have to adjust the quiz yet again...

---

As for guns, the best argument for private ownership is that it reduces the need for police surveillance. To have police available everywhere requires something of a police state. I hear your country is going that way with the video cameras everywhere. I found the scenes in "Hot Fuzz" with the video room to be quite chilling. That said, you don't need private assault weapons to accomplish this end. Private revolvers and shotguns suffice. (I believe in private semi-automatic weapons as well, but I could accept some form of licensing to keep the emotionally unstable from getting them.)

The U.S. is heading in this direction at airports. Would have made more sense to simply arm the pilots. Most of them are ex-military anyway.

And thank you for the link!