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I find it really hard to classify myself. I've always called myself a "libertarian" - I believe the best strategy to Civilization is to maximise freedom for anyone. As freedom enables enlightenment an enlightenment drives progress. To actually achieve that, in the real world, means that you have to distribute and limit power. That means limiting not only government power but also corporate power. That means regulation, strong regulators (breaking monopolies), policies to keep prices down (including rent/housing!) and to enable free market competition and innovation. And provide an economic system where risks can be taken, enabled by a social let (and social healthcare).

I felt that that was more common here 15 years ago before Big Tech pivoted into the cynical extractive and, in the case of the socials, net economic drag industry that it is now.

The really weird thing is that my views are considered both very right-wing (free markets, globalisation are great, maximal freedom, maximal responsibility, freedom of religion) and very left wing (strong regulation, policy to minimise rent/house prices, strong social net, progressive taxation and wealth limits, freedom to be LGBTQ+ etc).



This isn't actually unusual in the grand scheme of things, just at the moment. "Libertarian" was originally a word that anarchists came up with to describe themselves for a good reason. Lysander Spooner is famous in right-wing libertarian circles, but the guy also promoted mutualism and was the member of the First International. Today, what you describe goes under the label of "libertarian free-market socialism".

Regarding regulation, I do have to note that in many cases when you try to root-cause corporate power, it turns out that it hinges on active government regulation in practice. For example, consider the fundamentals of capitalism, namely, accumulation of capital. Why do we get those huge monopolies in the first place? Well, because more capital means more way to generate wealth (or, more precisely, to appropriate wealth generated by your workers), which can be invested into more capital etc - there is a natural positive feedback loop here. So at a first glance it feels like you need government to actively do something to prevent companies from becoming too large. But consider: what does it mean for a company to own something? It's not a person, so it can't really have physical possession of things. It's all abstract property rights, and the only reason why that works is because the society as a whole acknowledges those rights and legitimate, and, crucially, because there is a state providing infrastructure (police, courts etc) to enforce them. Now imagine what would happen if, for example, the state simply refused to acknowledge property rights past a certain limit and simply wouldn't enforce them on behalf of the property owners.




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