That's pretty fascinating. My own ideological path went from - Republican conservatism (raised in a Republican household) to - pseudo-communism (some crazy id

That's pretty fascinating. My own ideological path went from - Republican conservatism (raised in a Republican household) to - pseudo-communism (some crazy idea I had in high school without reading Marx) to - Objectivism (a friend gave me The Fountainhead while in college, picked up Atlas Shrugged shortly after, then Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Peikoff's book on Objectivism) to - utilitarian liberal (introduced to Mill in a course on political philosophy (along with Nozick, who is unconvincing), studied more utilitarianism in other courses) Note that I'm a utilitarian first, and liberal by implication of (my) utilitarian logic. I'm also aware of the bevy of criticisms that have been leveled at utilitarianism, some of which are persuasive (the Greatest Happiness Principle does not adequately address the complexity of moral psychology), while others are simply demanding a precision of calculation that's not attainable. In practice, one can successfully apply utilitarian reasoning in a great many situations. The problem that I have with libertarianism is that I don't buy the "negative rights only" stance (at all), and believe that social interventions backed by force of law are necessary to overcome historically and sociologically entrenched inequalities of opportunity (positive feedback loops of discrimination and decay). That we haven't done it as effectively or efficiently as we would like doesn't mean that it shouldn't be attempted at all. There's room for experimentation, and we're getting better at experimenting. Many of the recently developed entrepreneurial practices (fail early) can be fruitfully applied in this area.