What are the beliefs you hold that most strongly deviate from your tribe?

For instance, are you a progressive who enjoys gun ownership, a conservative who's also pro-choice, etc.

I'll start.

Anybody who's ever met me probably finds it pretty clear that I'm a libertarian. However, I deviate more than normal from the mean. A lot of it is just matter of degree, which is the most understandable. Given it runs the gamut from anarchy to minarchy to classical liberalism, I'm more on the moderate/classical liberal end.

I think the state has a definite, proactive role in functions like national defense, policing, courts, fire departments, some infrastructure, and funding adequate education. When it comes to taxation, sure it's theft and should be minimized, but some is necessary and some forms are better than others. I like gas taxes and vehicle registration fees as dedicated funding streams for road maintenance, property taxes seem fine enough to fund local school districts, and fica seems better than income for funding entitlements, if that's gonna be a thing. I don't like mandates in general, but promoting private retirement accounts when funding for ss is so fucked up seems pretty necessary.

But my biggest deviation, by far, is healthcare. Like... look... we used to have a great healthcare system, one in which competition and compassion both had their say in decent balance, and it was the envy of the world. But we're not getting that back. There are advantages to our current system over the system of some other nations in encouraging medical innovations and technological advance in the healthcare field. But on whole?

A free market system may have functioned pretty well in the past here, but returning to that isn't on the table. Believing that is even an option at this point is utopian thinking.

What we have is a system, began and promoted and eventually mandated by government policy, where complicated health insurance has come to mean pre-payment for all health service rather than protection from catastrophic loss.

Insurance has become a monopoly or near-monopoly in healthcare payments and even decisions. There is no meaningful choice or competition in the normal sense for consumers, where price signals dictate procedure and innovation. It's a massive, incomprehensible, monstrous blob divorced from people's understanding who are too busy living their lives to even understand a product they're paying hundreds of dollars a month for, on top of the complications already inherent in medical science.

Libertarians would say a free market in healthcare would be better, and they're absolutely right. But, as they say in New England... "you can't get there from here". Not in any way it could possibly work irl. And, when comparing universal healthcare to what we have now rather than what system we used to have or should have or anything approaching a free market or something? I think universal healthcare is preferable. And, increasingly, those seem to be the two options.

Insurance near monopoly on healthcare payments was a result of government wage and price controls. It was encouraged through subsequent government policy cementing it in place as an expectation. Obamacare essentially mandated the worst feature of our healthcare system into being essentially universal. At the time, conservatives said the ultimate goal was universal healthcare, as it was built to fail intentionally. They were derided as conspiracy theorists or hyperbolic reactionaries, but they were right, at least in term of effects while leaving out motivations as harder to quantify. But we are where we are now.

Universal healthcare is far from the best option. If it were implemented, there's plenty of things it should exclude, even past obvious stuff like elective surgeries, abortions, liposuction, etc. I'm not happy about it even as a necessity, not excited, and I don't bring it up often. But of the options that realistically could actually win in my lifetime in this country?

Well, it'd be better than what we got, because what we got is even worse.

Like... call me "not a real libertarian" for my take here, but I feel I'm right all the same.