A while ago I came across a political test called 12 Axes on X and took it out of curiosity.
The results were interesting. On the economic and technology dimensions I ended up near the outer edge of the chart: over 90% for private ownership, more than 80% on free markets, free trade and individual liberty, and a full 92.5% on technological acceleration. On the social and ethical dimensions, though, I landed on the traditionalist side (traditional morality took two thirds), and on the religion axis, secular and faith split almost exactly down the middle.
In today’s highly polarized politics, an algorithm would probably have a hard time giving this result a ready-made camp label. Neoliberals would find my attachment to morality and tradition too conservative. Old-school conservatives wouldn’t like how radical I am on global free trade and new technology. And committed secular progressives would probably understand even less why someone who writes code and builds products every day, and believes in market competition, holds religion in such deep reverence.
To me, though, these twelve dimensions are not contradictions stitched together. They point to one coherent philosophy of life: I believe human beings have enormous creative power, but in the end we are not God.
The limits of power and the cost of monopoly
Not long ago I had to correct a company’s registration information in Quebec. It was a simple change, yet the government system required me to print a paper form, send it by registered mail from the post office, and then spend weeks checking again and again whether it had actually arrived. The registered-mail tracking showed it had been signed for, but when I called the office, they still told me they had no record of it.
All the time, effort and cost of fixing the error fell on the ordinary applicant.
I don’t deny that the public sector has legitimate functions. Courts, property rights, contract enforcement and public safety are the minimum a civilized society needs to function. But administrative power has something no private company will ever have: it is compulsory and exclusive. If a courier company or a software vendor gives me terrible service, I can replace it the next day. If a government department is rigid and has made red tape its reason for existing, I have no alternative at all.
Max Weber defined the state by its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Precisely because it holds that monopoly, its power, more than that of any other institution, needs to be kept in a cage.
Most regulations start from goals that sound beyond reproach: protecting jobs, preserving fairness, reducing market risk. But good intentions never guarantee results. Every new approval requirement quietly raises the bar for ordinary people trying to get something done, and every administrative licence eliminates potential competitors on some group’s behalf. What calls for the most vigilance is the bureaucracy’s built-in tendency to grow. When an intervention fails, the failure is seldom treated as evidence that power overstepped. Instead it becomes the excuse to create a new department and pass more regulations to “fix the previous problem.”
Government should stay within its limits. It should mind its own business and do well the few things it really ought to do.
Wealth comes from trial and error, not privilege
I support the market economy not because business people are naturally virtuous, but because human society is too complex for any central committee to be smart enough to hold all the information needed to run an entire economy. This is the knowledge problem that Hayek identified.
How many people a company should hire, what a product is worth, whether a new technology is worth investing in: these judgments require countless people to keep trying and failing in response to price, profit and loss signals. The great achievement of the price mechanism is that it pools the intuitions scattered across millions of minds and makes blind decisions bear their own costs.
But protecting the market does not mean shielding vested interests.
A company that wins with better technology and lower costs deserves everyone’s respect. If instead it lobbies politicians to push out rivals, or relies on government subsidies to keep an inefficient business alive, then however private it is on paper, at bottom it is the well-connected dividing up the spoils.
Money and trade follow the same logic. A person’s savings are the fruit of a lifetime of work and should not be left to a single central bank to dilute at will behind closed doors. Competition among private currencies, crypto-assets and the existing payment systems should have room to exist legally.
The same goes for tariffs and trade protection. Politicians like to package them as “protecting domestic industry,” but in the end the tariff bill is paid by consumers and downstream businesses across society. Forcing everyone to put up with poorer, pricier goods for years will not, by itself, make a lagging industry competitive. A country’s prosperity depends, in the end, on how much value it creates, not on how high its politicians build tariff walls.
Democracy means checks on power, not winner-take-all
Watching elections in Quebec, what struck me most is how often the share of votes and the share of seats come apart. A party that wins hundreds of thousands of votes and has broad public support can end up without a single seat in the legislature, while a governing party that barely reaches 40% of the popular vote can hold an outright majority.
This is not healthy. If a system distorts voters’ real political choices, it is unfair, even when the party I support happens to benefit in the short term.
Winning an election is not a blank cheque to do as one pleases. Independent judges, news media willing to ask hard questions, the opposition’s right to question the government, and local self-government are not obstacles to administrative efficiency. They are the brakes that stop the tyranny of the majority.
I also support pushing power down to the local level as far as possible. People who live in Montreal or Quebec City usually understand the problems in their own neighbourhoods better than federal bureaucrats in Ottawa. If Quebecers one day decide their political future through a clear and transparent democratic process, that choice should be respected. But the same principle can’t be brought out only when it works in one’s own favour. The First Nations who live on the same land must also have a real voice, a right to self-determination, on major matters that concern their lands and their future.
The real test of democracy has never been cheering when you are on top. It is choosing to hold the line when your principles may cut against your own interests.
A community thrives by attracting people, not by building walls
In a North America where English is overwhelmingly dominant, the cultural anxiety of a French-speaking society is not made up.
Living in Montreal, I feel first-hand the urgency with which Quebec wants to protect its language and traditions. When immigrants come to a new country, making the effort to learn the local language, understand its institutions and norms, and take on responsibilities in their community is the good faith that joining a society calls for.
But how a culture is protected matters a great deal. A thriving French-speaking society should draw people to speak French through excellent films, competitive businesses and open universities, not through ever stricter administrative laws that take away young people’s option of pursuing higher education in English. Sustaining your own existence by steadily cutting back other people’s choices tends to buy only an illusory sense of security.
A mature citizen can speak fluent French and obey Quebec’s laws while keeping the memory of their mother tongue and their family traditions. A living community rests on shared responsibilities and hopes for the future, not on checking people’s bloodlines or requiring everyone to think in lockstep.
Mortals must not overstep: reverence for morality and a ceiling on power
While many people my age have drifted into outright nihilism or consumerism, I have, over the past few years, become more and more interested in the Catholic tradition.
This doesn’t mean I want to impose any religious doctrine on anyone, and I have honest respect and tolerance for other faiths too. But I have come to see more and more clearly that human beings can’t live by calculation alone; we also need reverence. The human world can’t consist only of power and efficiency. It needs a moral ceiling that stands above any earthly government.
The most painful lesson in the whole history of civilization is that people keep imagining they can play God with their limited reason.
Ever since the ancient Tower of Babel, whenever people have set their hearts on building “a tower with its top in the heavens” to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4), whenever they have tried to build an all-knowing, all-powerful perfect order on earth, it has ended, almost without exception, in a hell on earth soaked in blood. Hölderlin gave the same warning in Hyperion: those who set out to make the state a heaven end up making it a hell. Which of the twentieth century’s utopian fevers, pursued in the name of “scientific socialism” or a “paradise on earth,” did not start with a perfect design for human nature and end with secret police and concentration camps?
Human beings are finite creatures, born with blind spots and weaknesses. Once we admit that, we have to admit that every earthly power has limits it cannot cross.
The Book of Ecclesiastes has a very sober line: “for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few” (Eccl 5:2). The Book of Micah also reminds us of what is required of us: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8). In secular politics, this is the strongest line of defence against totalitarianism: no leader, party or state machine can be allowed to take God’s place. Mortals must not overstep; there is no all-knowing, all-powerful saviour on earth. Once we let the state reach into people’s consciences and souls, totalitarianism is already knocking at the door.
This reverence for moral authority also sets my bottom line on specific social issues.
On abortion, I know my conservative position conflicts with the absolute bodily autonomy that many people champion. But precisely because life is sacred and not an appendage of power, I cannot see an unborn fetus as merely tissue to be disposed of at will. The law should place strict limits on abortion, with clear exceptions, of course, for the heartbreaking extremes of rape, incest and a direct threat to the mother’s life. This is a heavy ethical choice. We have to face the moral tension honestly instead of pretending that the cost to life doesn’t exist.
The same logic applies to the right to bear arms. Public safety is vital, but preventing crime cannot rest on presuming every law-abiding citizen to be a potential criminal. Owning a weapon is a free person’s exercise of the right to self-defence, and it comes with serious adult responsibility. A free society is built on trust in the self-discipline of law-abiding citizens, not on disarming everyone and keeping them like overgrown infants under the state’s lifelong guardianship.
Strength is armour for defence, not a drug for expansion
On foreign policy and defence, I subscribe to the philosophy of armed neutrality.
A country must have credible armed forces to defend its territory and the safety of its people. Pacifism without the means to defend yourself is a fantasy that leaves you at others’ mercy. In the face of naked aggression and the atrocities of despots, it is both legitimate and necessary for the international community to give those who resist weapons and economic aid.
But the military is a shield, not a bargaining chip for politicians’ grand imperial dreams. A country should do everything it can to stay out of foreign conflicts that have nothing to do with its own survival. It must not, for the sake of vague geopolitical ambitions, throw young people’s lives and taxpayers’ hard-earned money into the quagmire of wars whose purpose no one can explain and whose cost no one can estimate.
The dignity of sovereignty lies in being able to decide your own fate, not in becoming the vassal of some hegemonic system.
Technology should free individuals, not enslave ordinary people
If anything in my views looks especially radical, it is my optimism about technology.
I use artificial intelligence myself to write code and build products. In the past, developing a finished piece of software meant putting together a full team with a product manager, front-end and back-end developers, and testers. Today an independent developer sitting in a home office in Montreal can, with AI as leverage, turn out on their own what a small start-up used to produce.
This tears down the barriers of power and organization completely. Technology is handing the creative capacity once monopolized by big companies, academic credentials and huge amounts of capital back to ordinary individuals.
Disruptive technology does bring painful transitions, of course. It wipes out old jobs and may even widen information inequality. But the right response to that shock is to draw clear lines of conduct through specific laws and institutions, not to stop the gears from turning out of fear of the unknown.
On the environment and energy, I particularly dislike the “degrowth” environmental narrative that asks humanity to tighten its belt and go back to material scarcity. Whale-oil lamps weren’t phased out because a law banned them. Cheaper kerosene replaced them, and electric light later replaced kerosene. More abundant nuclear power, more advanced materials and more efficient computing are the only answer to resource constraints and climate problems.
The real mission of technology is to expand material abundance and freedom of choice, not to leave people suspicious of one another in scarcity.
Conclusion
Looking back at the 12 Axes chart, I’m actually quite at peace with the “doesn’t fit in” verdict it gave me.
In this black-and-white era, people are too used to lining up in preset camps. Those who talk about markets and technology often look down on tradition and faith, while those who cherish family and morality are often afraid of freedom and progress.
But the two never had to be at odds.
I want government to show humility and restraint, and to take its hands off the market and people’s private lives. I value traditional moral anchors and reverence for the sacred, because I know that reason with no bottom line only leads people to arrogance and destruction. And I embrace technological acceleration, because I believe it can give ordinary people more tools to change their lives.
A healthy society has no need for the state to lay out the same life template for everyone, and it certainly cannot let any earthly power try to build a so-called “kingdom of heaven on earth.” All it needs is to uphold just laws, draw clear lines around power, and then step back, handing the right to shape their own life, faith and future, whole and intact, back to every humble and free person.
Note: Bible quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.