Libertarians And Bloomberg

From a Reason magazine perspective, it seems to me that a Bloomberg Administration is likely to be substantially more libertarian than either a Democratic or a Republican one would be. Bloomberg, however, is specifically identified with a brand of trivial nanny-stating — indoor smoking ban, trans fat ban — that seems to be to aggravate libertarians in a manner that’s out of proportion to the actual significance of the policy issues. ~Matt Yglesias

Don’t underestimate the power of libertarian pettiness.  These are the sorts of people who found Rick Santorum deeply offensive not because he was one of the most ridiculous warmongers in America, but because he actually took sexual morality seriously and spoke publicly about these things.  Nothing generates so much spontaneous, incandescent libertarian anger as someone decrying licentiousness.  War may irritate them, intrusive government may offend them, and economic regulation may worry them, but when someone questions their idea of what constitutes personal liberty all bets are off.

I can’t say that I have delved deeply into the policy preferences of Bloomberg (you can only keep track of so many bad non-candidate candidates at a time), but it occurs to me that aside from their common love of importing poor labourers Bloomberg and libertarians would have very little in common.  I suppose his social liberalism would match up well with libertarian indifference to the usual social issues, but my impression is that he is about as libertarian as Giuliani but not as fond of tax cuts.  Of course, if Ryan Sager can hallucinate and see libertarianism in Giuliani, anything’s possible.