It's not an either/or. In his own words, Calvin says God wills sin to come to pass for his own purposes. And he also favourably quotes Augustine (Enchiridion 26.100) saying God permits sin (Institutes I.18.3). It's clear enough that Calvin regards God's will as both decretive and permissive.
So when you say permit, do you believe that people could have ACTUALLY made a different choice in matters regarding their salvation?
Regarding Calvin’s teaching: So if God wills sin to come to pass, then people really have no choice but to sin, for who can resist God’s decree?
Then people are punished for doing what God made (created, decreed, forced) them to do, and in which they have no libertarian choice (free will or ACTUAL choice).
So God is pleased and glorified by the sins of His creatures if Calvin is to be believed, and to challenge (cavil at) his view is to be impious.
Calvin says ALL ARE NOT CREATED ON EQUAL TERMS. From below: This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world, and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.
What kind of God needs evil to be glorified, or kind of people need eternal suffering in others to cause them to rejoice in that they are not likewise afflicted by God’s decree?
Institutes III:21:5. OF THE ETERNAL ELECTION, BY WHICH GOD HAS PREDESTINATED SOME TO SALVATION, AND OTHERS TO DESTRUCTION. The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny; but it is greatly caviled at, especially by those who make prescience its cause. We, indeed, ascribe both prescience and predestination to God; but we say, that it is absurd to make the latter subordinate to the former (see chap. 22 sec. 1). When we attribute prescience to God, we mean that all things always were, and ever continue, under his eye; that to his knowledge there is no past or future, but all things are present, and indeed so present, that it is not merely the idea of them that is before him (as those objects are which we retain in our memory), but that he truly sees and contemplates them as actually under his immediate inspection. This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world, and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/calvin-institutes-christianity/book3/chapter-21.html