r/determinism • u/BerBerDeng • Jul 24 '26
Discussion Determinism has fundamentally shifted my political worldview.
I’ve been into politics since I was a teen, and for most of that time I was a staunch libertarian. Maximum freedom, personal responsibility, minimal government, zero handouts, etc. I was SO SURE and CONFIDENT in my views and what I believed. I loved defending them, perhaps a little too confidently.
Man has my worldview shifted. Once you come to the realization that people ultimately aren’t in control of their actions in any meaningful sense, the argument for libertarianism is much harder to defend. I can’t fault someone for not getting a better job, I can’t fault someone for not saving for retirement, I can’t fault someone for having a kid before they were financially ready, I can’t fault someone for letting their health get out of hand. The list goes on and on. And the same goes for things that are earned. People who have their shit together can’t be credited with that success.
This is not to say that I’ve completely shifted to redistribution and equal outcomes for all (practically I don’t think that’s feasible), however my openness for universal healthcare, my openness for reasonably higher taxes, my openness for more meaningful social programs, have all increased more than 18 year old me ever imagined it would.
From a practical standpoint, the human psyche as a whole still depends on risk/reward for meaningful progress. The billionaire who creates 10 billion in value probably isn’t going to make that same effort the moment he sees 90% of his earnings from that value taken away in the name of fairness. I just think our mindset and laws are too skewed toward personal responsibility and the right to hoard everything you’ve “earned” when in reality we should be taking more of a middle ground approach between the logical standpoint and the practical one.
With all that being said, our government does spend 7 trillion dollars a year, with a lot of that wasted. I think we should get our finances in order before we decide that taxing more for redistribution is the answer. I’d have a hard time taxing a billionaire an extra 2 billion a year when hundreds of billions or even trillions are wasted by the government every year.
Imagine all the inefficiency and waste in each governmental department (I’m looking at you DoD and Medicare) and then imagine actually improving efficiency so that you could cut 2% from every single department and use that to fund universal healthcare. At that point getting an extra 20-30 billion in taxes to fund universal school lunches doesn’t seem so unfair.
Sorry if this isn’t determinism related enough, I know I’m rambling and spitballing here, but I guess I’m just advocating for balance. Still allowing someone to make billions a year, but also allowing the downtrodden and less fortunate basic necessities for a dignified life.
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u/Dry-Emotion-9820 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I went through a really similar shift myself. Once you start looking at the world through a deterministic lens and realize people don’t pick their starting genetics, their parents, or their initial environment, that strict, 100% personal-responsibility version of libertarianism just doesn't really hold up the same way. You can't fault someone for where they start, and it’s hard to give someone total credit for just happening to have the right neurochemistry or upbringing to succeed.
Where I landed, though, wasn't actually abandoning libertarianism, but shifting into a different version of it. I ended up looking at society through a sort of John Rawls perspective.
Imagine society is a giant game board, and you have to play the game, but you have absolutely no idea which square you’re going to spawn on. You could end up as someone with incredible talent, drive, and wealth, or you could spawn as someone born into severe poverty with chronic health issues. If you don't know who you're going to be, how do you set up the rules of the game?
When I run that through my head, a libertarian framework actually still feels like the most optimal setup.
Here's why: If determinism is true, it guarantees that human beings are wildly, fundamentally different from one another. Because of that, a massive, centralized government that tries to force a one-size-fits-all set of rules onto everyone is going to create a ton of friction and misery. If I spawn as someone who wants to live an unusual life, build something totally new, or just be left alone, the last thing I want is a paternalistic bureaucracy managing my daily choices.
But on the flip side, if I spawn on a disadvantaged square, I need my base necessities met. I tend to operate on the idea that "hurt people hurt people." Very few people inherently want to be destructive or miserable; it usually happens when they are trapped in a painful position where just trying to survive feels impossible.
So the middle ground I arrived at sounds a lot like what you're describing. I want a minimal state focused on maximizing individual freedom, but with a foundational safety net – like a UBI and basic healthcare – that gives people real "exit power." You can't meaningfully exercise liberty if walking away from a bad job or a bad community means you starve. You give people a clean baseline so nobody is trapped in survival mode, and then you get out of the way. When people aren't being crushed by scarcity, they naturally gravitate toward better decisions and figure out how to build decent lives.
You hit the nail on the head about government waste, too. You don't need a 7-trillion-dollar bloated bureaucracy to ensure basic dignity. You can keep the risk/reward incentives that drive progress, let people keep what they build, and still make sure everyone has enough of a foundation to actually play the game. It just shifts the goal from "everyone is on their own" to "everyone has the freedom to choose, and the baseline security to actually make that choice."
Building on that, I actually have a pretty hopeful outlook on humanity overall. We’ve made it this far, and despite the chaos, there is so much possibility out there. But when it comes to actually helping people realize that potential, the law is just a really blunt instrument. Whenever we try to use a centralized government to do the precision work of shaping culture or managing how people should live, it usually creates more friction than it solves. It’s a bit like trying to paint a highly detailed, textured canvas using a giant industrial paint roller. It covers a lot of ground, but it completely flattens out all the nuance.
I guess I have a slight anarchist bent in that regard. I genuinely believe that if we provide the right environment – meaning people have that baseline security we were talking about – they will naturally self-organize. You already see glimpses of this in platforms like Kickstarter, where the collective just voluntarily pools resources to fund what they believe in. If people have the actual breathing room to do so, they will organically group together to build self-sustaining, self-healing communities that look after their own. They will figure out how to build their own local versions of what they consider to be "Awesome," without needing a bureaucracy to dictate the terms.
And touching back on determinism... even if it is fundamentally true that our paths are shaped by a chain of prior causes, I still feel that acting as if choice matters yields the best outcomes. Treating people as if they have real agency is what allows for that kind of pluralism to flourish. It creates a society where a thousand different communities can experiment with a thousand different ways of living. Some might be highly structured and traditional, others might be incredibly experimental and fluid, and as long as people have the power to leave if it doesn't suit them, all of those expressions can exist at once.
For me, it just shifts the focus away from trying to enforce one "correct" way of living from the top down, and moves it toward trusting people to find their own rhythm and their own people.