Who am I and what is the point of this blog?

I am a Canadian Libertarian. I was born and raised in Hungary and I lived the first 27 years of my life there, but I am NOT a hyphenated Canadian, my loyalties are 100% here, with the nation I chose as a conscious adult.

I define myself as a “social libertarian”.
What this means is that although I agree with the arguments of the purest forms if libertarianism, they are not my reasons to believe and act the way I do. My main driver is not the yearning for personal freedom, but the concern about the harm done by anything that is not based on it.

Let me illustrate.

I do agree that it is nobody’s business what substance I put into my body, but I oppose the war on drugs for the harm it does, for how it makes the problem much worse than it otherwise would be.

I oppose the nanny state not because taking away our personal freedoms deprives us from the exercise of our natural rights but because diminishes us as people.

I oppose state provided services because they kill civil society. I believe that the greatest enemy of the state is not the individual, but civil society, which is why that is the state’s primary target, NOT the individual.

I believe that socialism is a self-destructive political ideology, as it destroys the very foundation of the morality that made the ideology possible in the first place. (I am in the process of writing a whole book to elaborate on this point)

I advocate for property rights not only because they are the natural extension of our right to self-ownership and are the foundation of civilization, but for the economic benefits they provide, because they invariably produce better outcomes than socialized enterprises.

I oppose the welfare state not because I do not want to pay for it, but because it is harmful to its recipients. To quote the closing sentence of Charles Murray’s “Losing ground”:
“When reforms finally do occur, they will happen not because stingy people have won, but because generous people have stopped kidding themselves”

I have fundamental concerns about justice and fairness. I agree with the hard-core libertarians’ focus on the principles and I sympathize with the socialists feelings about good intentions, but in the end, what should matter is the outcome. I am a libertarian because I believe that only individual freedom working on a free market can produce truly just and fair outcomes.

I hope I managed to give you a general idea on where I stand. My practical aim with this blog is to illustrate the above points (and similar ones I did not spell out in detail) through very personal experiences. If you wish to find out more, you will just have to keep reading it.

Freedom and the lack of it is a very personal, every day experience to me.  I hope that my stories can and will bring the principles closer to your everyday life as well.

I have problems too:

I am a terrible procrastinator. Typically, I deliver above people’s expectations the moment they gave up on their expectations. I spent most of my life trying to change that, it is still a work in progress.

What this means in practical terms is that I should not commit myself to a regular schedule working on this blog.
The best you can do is to subscribe, so that you can get alerts when I post something new.

I am writing this on the 22^nd of April 2012 (My goodness!!! This is the birthday of Vladimir Ilyich!)
The first few weeks I will spend posting existing writings from my drawer but I will slow down after.
Again, subscribing is the way to go. You definitely will not be overwhelmed by quantity.

Please DO comment on anything you consider worthy to comment on, and if you like anything, PROPAGATE it. The tools are all here.

Zork Hun