You can listen to his talk at Cato.
In some respects, he sounds conservative. He seems to me to take a civilization vs. barbarism view of recent controversies regarding police, in that he believes that in a civilized society citizens must not threaten police. He insists that moral significance attaches to people as individuals, not as members of oppressed classes.
However, he breaks with conservatives in that he views religion as barbaric. He insists instead on science and reason. And in general, I think he would be happier earning the approval of progressives than earning that of conservatives. His main theme, that human beings are making moral progress (he speaks of a moral Flynn Effect), is one that sits more easily with progressives than with conservatives.
To the extent that he is libertarian, he sounds more like Rand than like Rothbard. He believes that the institution of the state is needed to keep individuals from using violence to solve disputes.
On economic issues, he offered thumbs-up for free trade and economic growth. But he said nothing about what I see as the most fundamental issue in economic philosophy today: how much can the emergent order of a little-regulated economy be improved by technocratic management? Clearly there are those who think that the answer is very much, while there are those of us who disagree. I suspect that Shermer is not on the libertarian side of this issue.
There’s a lot of room for less tribally inclined folks to come to non-tribal conclusions with axis-driven goals.
For instance…I know a reasonable number of folks with strongly leftist (oppression is the interesting axis) sensibilities who simply don’t believe that government ameliorates much of anything…thus the left-libertarian movement. Will Wilkinson is a public figure who has drifted into this category, I think, over the past 15 years, and Megan McArdle, while less extremely left, might also fall in this category. Leftist by axis, libertarian by implementation.
A reasonable number of solid conservatives (Hoppe, for instance) end up libertarian in implementation, even if basically anti-barbarian by core principles.
Now I’m distracted thinking about Moldbug … who seems to be libertarian in goals/axis (if you read him long enough) while arguing for conservative methods.
This seems to be the same issue. Goal/method divergence.
I like AK’s attempt to formulate the “fundamental issue”, but I don’t think it quite hits the nail on the head. A lot is hidden in the “little”-regulation of the emergent economy — everything that establishes the rule of law, and what kind of property rights exist. Technocratic management, has to be compared to some specific libertarian idea of what rules control the little-regulated emergent order, even if we have to make that idea up as we go along.
The state is initiating a lot of violence these, maybe not on a large numerical scale, but the insignificance of the rewards, the lack of decisiveness, and the inanity of the marketing of its violence are troubling. We don’t need plain-clothesed police jumping in front of the cars of minor crime suspects so they can feel their lives are in danger (so as to justify deadly force) by the terrified suspect who sees a man pointing a gun at them and is shot attempting to flee. That isn’t civilized. Violence and the threat of violence to prevent violence are different and based on the absurdity of its priorities state seems to prefer violence qua violence. I think it may be a form of dysregulation as state agents are insulated from normal incentives.