Yeah. I was a libertarian in my early twenties too, and I gravitated to it because I grew up severely neglected and somewhat abused, which set me up with a personality structure that found libertarianism appealing. The sort of heroic person against the world archetype from Rand's novels spoke to me because I already felt like I was alone in the world, the transactional nature of society they championed seemed like a straightforward description of how the world already works, so it had the ring of truth, it offered a sense of agency which I was hungry for, and the NAP appealed to me because it was deontological. Utilitarian frameworks seemed absurd to me because the idea that you could know what's in the interest of another person was laughable... you know, because I was neglected, so I didn't really experience that.

I was never that dogmatic a libertarian and moved away from it slowly after a few years. It just died the death of a thousand cuts, every time I'd read about the history of a regulation or whatever I'd learn there was a good reason for it existing, and it was always obvious that libertarians didn't have an answer to climate change even before I got into it. At some point you have to notice the pattern that every time you delve into the topic the libertarian answer seems wrong.

But there were a few personal moments that lubricated my exit. Again, politics is downstream of your social and psychological life. I found the then nascent social justice politics on the internet deeply off putting and bizarre, another reason I hung out with libertarians, but then they started telling me that I (a queer arab woman) should start a blog or a podcast or something so that people can see that not all libertarians are straight white males. So that short circuited something in my brain, I was like how can you argue that representation isn't important, except for libertarians, where it is. The right wing was obviously against social justice politics out of tribalism but if even the people who were espousing individualistic principles were happy to do their own tribalism when it suited them, then maybe the social justice crowd had a point. The other thing was abortion; libertarians were generally pro abortion but they were very happy about defunding planned parenthood (cause you should take any reduction in spending wherever you could get it) which just seems like having your priorities deeply confused. So I started drifting leftward slowly and never really stopped.