Given the recent election I thought I’d get a bit political in this post. Traditionally, I’ve been ‘politically agnostic’ – mainly because I did not find myself to be a strong supporter of either the Republicans or the Democrats (it was the same when I lived in Australia – Liberal Party vs Labour Party). While I would classify myself as more Democrat than Republican, I think that’s due to the actions of the current Republican regime rather than the Democrat/Republican ideals themselves.

I find that when it comes to personal freedoms, I tend to side with the Democrats. However, when it comes to business/economics, I tend to side with the Republicans.

I thought I must have just been a ‘fence sitter’ – siding with neither the left or the right and therefore largely ignored the goings on in Washington. However, a year or two ago a friend of mind introduced me to the political philosophy of Libertarianism. I am now happy to say that I no longer consider myself agnostic, but a Libertarian.

In my opinion, Libertarianism combines the best elements of the left and right, as shown in the diagram below:

Nolan Chart

The broad philosophy of Libertarians is that one should have the freedom to do whatever one wishes, up to the point that one’s behavior begins to interfere with or endanger another’s person or property. Unlike Anarchists, Libertarians consider government necessary for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of the people. This includes protecting people and their property from the criminal acts of others, as well as providing for national defense.

It is my observation that Libertarianism is popular amongst many of the great capitalists of our time. It is this philosophy of the protection of one’s private property that encourages one to work hard to build private wealth – in contrast to the socialistic end of the spectrum.

I thought along these lines when reading about the arguments for and against the recently defeated proposition 87. While I am a huge proponent of innovations in alternative energy (especially projects like the Telsa Roadster), and I would love to see more funding for innovation in this space, I don’t believe that it is the government’s role to get involved. The ‘invisible hand‘ of the free market is enough to encourage entrepreneurs and investors to innovate in this space – government involvement runs the risk of adding overhead (reducing the efficiency of capital flows). It is therefore quite surprising to me that business luminaries of Silicon Valley such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin, John Doerr and Vinod Khsola supported proposition 87 by contributing in the ballpark of $1M each to the campaign. I don’t want to speculate on their motives, but it does strike me as a bit of a philosophical contradiction.

Well, I just thought I’d share these thoughts with readers out there, in the hope that the ideas of Libertarianism may resonate with some other ‘agnostics’.