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I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. One thing about social media (Twitter especially, but Mastodon, too, partly because of a

I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. One thing about social media (Twitter especially, but Mastodon, too, partly because of a concentration of people from Twitter) is the exaggeration of positions and the conflation of markers for actual beliefs. Like someone will agree with a Republican on leftist overreach and be branded a fascist, meanwhile maintaining a consistent opposition to far right political elements or figures. The latter is not ever retweeted by folks you follow, and folks who point this out are often mocked (and acknowledging it is avoided because we now see social media as platforms for meting out mob justice by calling out perceived wrongs via quote-tweets to our followers instead of trying to arrive at the truth), so a distorted view develops, and the same kind of ideological tribal epistemic closure that has existed among many on the right starts infecting the left and center-left because of the algorithmic and social dynamics of social media.

zozbot234 4y ago
> I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. You don't really see this on HN though. Economic illiteracy is rife here as is, more generally, social-science illiteracy about how politically-driven decision making works in large real-world organizations (Including but not limited to governments). These are the insights that the core of libertarianism is based on. Of course if you mean the rather more self-serving, "I'd rather not pay taxes" Sovereign Citizens' kind of libertarianism you may well be correct.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  > > I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. > You don't really see this on HN though. Spot on! I have a weird interest in the old-times, when geek were actually libertarian? (well, based on my readings and what people told me, they seemed to be different from now) And it's not just the people: instead of "safe" languages like rust, people liked "unsafe" perl that let you do about everything! I really wish there was some time travel, to get the chance to live and work in the 1990s-early 2000s where there seemed to be both optimism AND libertarianism in the tech world, instead of the current pro-big-government/social conformity trend. But since tech is now mostly fueled by advertising $$, it is difficult to get techies to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    In the early 90's we thought the net would change the world, but what actually happened is the world changed the net.
    - csdvrx 4y ago
      > In the early 90's we thought the net would change the world, but what actually happened is the world changed the net. To me it seems to be a bit of both? BTW having read a bit of your other comments, I find your analyses both insightful and introspective. You seem to be from the EU and to have worked in tech during the 1990s. Have you lived in the US too? Can you tell me more about how you saw things change in the US and the EU from then to know? I have some weird interest in old tech: hardware like Thinkpads, software like Perl... but the culture is also very foreign and interesting. I just watched a documentary about "Dinosaurs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series) and it seems so modern yet quaint? I want to know more from the viewpoint of someone who lived in that era!
      - 082349872349872 4y ago
        Well, that's a big question; hope you don't mind if I reflect a bit before attempting to answer! (any specific qs, go ahead and I'll do my best) I was living in the US in the 80s and 90s (among which, both in Silicon Valley and in "flyover" country, with non-domicile tours in Boston, Seattle, and the DC Beltway) Have you read Microserfs yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs It's a pretty good capture of our Zeitgeist. In fact, I distinctly remember one day when I was at my desk, and two of my colleagues were enjoying the afternoon sun on the balcony of my office. We had started to discuss Microserfs, through the open window next to my desk, and one of them remarked: "it's pretty accurate ... except they're all dating within the company". One year or so later, the company had grown by a factor of two or three, and it turns out Coupland had indeed called it in advance: all three of us were then in intra-company relationships. (which was again, a topic of balcony discussion) (sorry, no idea about Dinosaurs: we were working extreme hours [some days the company was comping us ~$2'000/day (in 2023 USD), which was considered very good money back then for "kids" not many years out of uni], and except for attending watch parties for Simpsons, Beavis & Butthead, and Spike & Mike's when it came through town, I was not getting much pop culture exposure during these years) Another anecdote: our landlord once complained that the janitor had found porno mags in the restrooms, and as the other tenants were law firms, maybe they might have been from us, possibly one of our contractors? My boss, indignant, called them up and she asked them if they knew we were an internet company? With a T1 connection? How could they possibly think any of us would still be paying for porn on dead trees?
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Economic illiteracy is rife everywhere, because it's been deliberately seeded. In the UK workers who haven't had a significant pay rise for more than a decade are being told they can't have one now because it would be inflationary. Meanwhile the real drivers of inflation are an energy price shock - again - and corporate profiteering. But that's not the official narrative. So perhaps if you want to think about politically-driven decision making you might want to include the network of funded think-tanks and both covert and overt influencers in the media who invent and push these narratives. And maybe even consider why they're so dominant, and why their definitions of "freedom" and "economics" are so consistently and exclusively pro-oligarch.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    The real driver of inflation and low workers' wages is lack of attention to long-term growth potential. This is not a partisan issue, least of all in the UK; both sides have done things that hurt long-term growth. By way of example, we're still waiting for those billions that the Brexit folks once promised as increased NHS funding.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  Everyone is ideologically google- or twitter-deep today. Back in the day, people actually read Road to Serfdom or A People’s History and picked an ideology. College libertarians were middle or upper-class economic conservatives who were athiests, trekkies, gay or wanted to smoke weed. Now that that’s all fashionable and they’re not at risk of getting beat up or jailed they don’t have anything to get riled about except Corporate 1st Amendment reimaginings, digital privacy or why one of “those” people kept them from their slot at Stanford.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > Everyone is ideologically google- or twitter-deep today. Yes, this handily explains how populist figures like Trump, AOC or MTG have managed to become so popular as of late. Twitter is a place where the most outrage-inducing and simplistic soundbites get all the attention. Subtlety and nuance are dead in that medium.

zozbot234 4y ago

> I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. You don't really see this on HN though. Economic illiteracy is rife here as is, more generally, social-science illiteracy about how politically-driven decision making works in large real-world organizations (Including but not limited to governments). These are the insights that the core of libertarianism is based on. Of course if you mean the rather more self-serving, "I'd rather not pay taxes" Sovereign Citizens' kind of libertarianism you may well be correct.

csdvrx 4y ago
> > I think a lot of the libertarian techies are still pretty libertarian. > You don't really see this on HN though. Spot on! I have a weird interest in the old-times, when geek were actually libertarian? (well, based on my readings and what people told me, they seemed to be different from now) And it's not just the people: instead of "safe" languages like rust, people liked "unsafe" perl that let you do about everything! I really wish there was some time travel, to get the chance to live and work in the 1990s-early 2000s where there seemed to be both optimism AND libertarianism in the tech world, instead of the current pro-big-government/social conformity trend. But since tech is now mostly fueled by advertising $$, it is difficult to get techies to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  In the early 90's we thought the net would change the world, but what actually happened is the world changed the net.
  - csdvrx 4y ago
    > In the early 90's we thought the net would change the world, but what actually happened is the world changed the net. To me it seems to be a bit of both? BTW having read a bit of your other comments, I find your analyses both insightful and introspective. You seem to be from the EU and to have worked in tech during the 1990s. Have you lived in the US too? Can you tell me more about how you saw things change in the US and the EU from then to know? I have some weird interest in old tech: hardware like Thinkpads, software like Perl... but the culture is also very foreign and interesting. I just watched a documentary about "Dinosaurs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series) and it seems so modern yet quaint? I want to know more from the viewpoint of someone who lived in that era!
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Well, that's a big question; hope you don't mind if I reflect a bit before attempting to answer! (any specific qs, go ahead and I'll do my best) I was living in the US in the 80s and 90s (among which, both in Silicon Valley and in "flyover" country, with non-domicile tours in Boston, Seattle, and the DC Beltway) Have you read Microserfs yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs It's a pretty good capture of our Zeitgeist. In fact, I distinctly remember one day when I was at my desk, and two of my colleagues were enjoying the afternoon sun on the balcony of my office. We had started to discuss Microserfs, through the open window next to my desk, and one of them remarked: "it's pretty accurate ... except they're all dating within the company". One year or so later, the company had grown by a factor of two or three, and it turns out Coupland had indeed called it in advance: all three of us were then in intra-company relationships. (which was again, a topic of balcony discussion) (sorry, no idea about Dinosaurs: we were working extreme hours [some days the company was comping us ~$2'000/day (in 2023 USD), which was considered very good money back then for "kids" not many years out of uni], and except for attending watch parties for Simpsons, Beavis & Butthead, and Spike & Mike's when it came through town, I was not getting much pop culture exposure during these years) Another anecdote: our landlord once complained that the janitor had found porno mags in the restrooms, and as the other tenants were law firms, maybe they might have been from us, possibly one of our contractors? My boss, indignant, called them up and she asked them if they knew we were an internet company? With a T1 connection? How could they possibly think any of us would still be paying for porn on dead trees?
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Economic illiteracy is rife everywhere, because it's been deliberately seeded. In the UK workers who haven't had a significant pay rise for more than a decade are being told they can't have one now because it would be inflationary. Meanwhile the real drivers of inflation are an energy price shock - again - and corporate profiteering. But that's not the official narrative. So perhaps if you want to think about politically-driven decision making you might want to include the network of funded think-tanks and both covert and overt influencers in the media who invent and push these narratives. And maybe even consider why they're so dominant, and why their definitions of "freedom" and "economics" are so consistently and exclusively pro-oligarch.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  The real driver of inflation and low workers' wages is lack of attention to long-term growth potential. This is not a partisan issue, least of all in the UK; both sides have done things that hurt long-term growth. By way of example, we're still waiting for those billions that the Brexit folks once promised as increased NHS funding.
hindsightbias 4y ago
Everyone is ideologically google- or twitter-deep today. Back in the day, people actually read Road to Serfdom or A People’s History and picked an ideology. College libertarians were middle or upper-class economic conservatives who were athiests, trekkies, gay or wanted to smoke weed. Now that that’s all fashionable and they’re not at risk of getting beat up or jailed they don’t have anything to get riled about except Corporate 1st Amendment reimaginings, digital privacy or why one of “those” people kept them from their slot at Stanford.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > Everyone is ideologically google- or twitter-deep today. Yes, this handily explains how populist figures like Trump, AOC or MTG have managed to become so popular as of late. Twitter is a place where the most outrage-inducing and simplistic soundbites get all the attention. Subtlety and nuance are dead in that medium.