Ignoring the outright troll questions..
Q3: Have you always been a libertarian? If not, what saw you move towards it?
I had political beliefs before I even knew what a libertarian was, so no, I wasn't. I think it'd be hard for someone to "always have been a libertarian" in Australia unless they were completely apolitical until later in life or had a libertarian parent or something like that, because it's such a small movement that it's not something people are exposed to. I used to be pretty much a card-carrying member of the 'right', but even then I had more liberal views on social issues than most others who'd consider themselves such. I became gradually more libertarian initially by getting in some arguments with leftists, but moreso just by doing lots of reading. These days I probably care slightly more about personal liberty issues than economic liberty issues -- I think there are less grey areas in personal freedoms than the distribution of wealth -- which I suppose relates to the trolly questions above about becoming a 'communist'.
Q7: If you were European, would your political views have more influence towards sporting regulation?
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Rephrase?
Q8. a. Generally a steadfast and strong adherence to any political philosophy means a person hasn't lived much in the real world, because people who have know if the real world was run in accordance with any one philosophy it would blow so hard it could comfortably accommodate John Holmes. Do you believe your self-confessed fixation with Tyranny and Freedom in an age where more people now have more freedom than ever before demonstrates a certain naivety on your part, and if not, can you please provide examples to show why not?
Your first statement presupposes a belief in utilitarian ethics, ie.
the greatest good for the greatest number. I think it's very likely true that a lack of real-world experience may make people more dogmatic in believing that one overarching philosophy was the best way of achieving utilitarian goals; utilitarianism is such that there is no silver bullet. However, a significant faction of libertarians outright reject utilitarian ethics and are much more deontological, holding to a doctrine of natural rights. No amount of real world experience would change their minds as they aren't concerned with the greater good; they're concerned with protecting individual rights and adhering to natural law. Evidence to suggest government force or compulsion may improve people's lives that they may gain through more life experience wouldn't deter them as improving people's lives isn't their goal; respecting and upholding their rights is. This kind of rights-based ethics system has always had a small foothold in the US but is comparatively much rarer in Australia. There was a
good article about this in the Guardian (the author is by no means a libertarian but she has a good understanding of why she's not; it's a good read if you find libertarian arguments infuriating sometimes).
I disagree with those deontological libertarians in that I think natural rights are unprovable at best, but my beef with utilitarianism is that it's built on the foundations of objective value. One man's
good is another man's
disastrous, so the
greatest good can't be measured or even approximated. As such I believe all value is subjective, and that the best way to establish some sort of subjective value society is to enable people the freedom to value things as they wish. I apply a deontological view of subjective value to a utilitarianish justification of state force in limited circumstances and come out with
the greatest freedom for the greatest number. This makes me more of a small-government classical liberal than a real libertarian in many ways, but the libertarian movement isn't big enough for them to call me a heretic and kick me out.
I think the only thing that could waiver me from this position would be exposure to new
ideas rather than new experiences, but I've been wrong before.
As for this:
fixation with Tyranny and Freedom in an age where more people now have more freedom than ever before
I find it deeply regrettable that so many libertarians pine for the days of yore. This is particularly true in the US when you regularly hear libertarians talk about "taking the country back", as if it were once a libertarian paradise but has lost its way in recent times. It is true that the creep of excessive regulation and taxation has worsened as time has gone on, but if you tried to tell an ethnic minority, a homosexual or a woman that you were going to liberate them by taking western society back to the 1920s they'd rightly call you an idiot. Freedom isn't something we once had and then lost; it's something that should be progressively fought for on many fronts. I absolutely agree with you that in an absolute sense, people are freer now than at any other stage in history; the gains have outweighed the losses. I'm not advocating an outright regression; I just don't think that means it's time to pack up our freedom lobbying tents and go home.
b. Why do you believe corporate tyranny is inherently better than government tyranny?
I don't. I just believe the latter is more common and usually enables the former.
c. Looking at the most renowned libertarians, it's pretty obvious they're all ****s of a very high magnitude: cf Tim "I want a small gummint but one just big enough for me to have a high paying job" Wilson, Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, that Roskam **** from the IPA etc. Given this correlation is universal and of such a sample size that it's irrefutable, why don't you give up on the Libertarian nonsense and rejoin the world in a happier, more realistic place?
Ayn Rand, despite writing some books that were easy for libertarians to relate to, was not one. In fact, she openly hated libertarians (called us "the hippies of the right" among other things). Her philosophy was called objectivism, and as you can probably tell from what I said about my believe in subjective value above, not something I'm all that fond of.
