7 ms·

In the last decade or so, there were several times I brought this up on HN (anonymously), and each time my opinion was attacked as not making any sense. Times

In the last decade or so, there were several times I brought this up on HN (anonymously), and each time my opinion was attacked as not making any sense. Times change.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
I'm not sure that they have changed. People brought it up before and people are bringing it up now and they'll continue bringing it up. I think the tech workers are generally still opposed to the idea
- kilgnad 4y ago
  No the thing that has changed is the attacks. The upvotes I'm getting on that post indicates support. Maybe two or three years ago I'd have negative karma.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  It doesn’t make sense to unionize when you are powerful and you can use “merit” to raise your power and compensation. As the economy downturns, more and more software devs on the low end will be pushed to the point where unionization makes sense. They were never really powerful or well paid, but had hope of rising to a higher class. It’s that aspiration that lead to people discounting the ida of unionization.
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    It makes sense to unionize when you're powerful because that's when you actually have the leverage to put things in place in preparation for the inevitable downturn. Waiting until you need the union is too late.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Grasshopper and the ants!
  - screwturner68 4y ago
    Part of unionization is standardization of skillsets. Any journeyman plumber should be able to replace any other journeyman plumber, there's an apprentice program and years of training associated with becoming a journeyman. How's that going to work in IT we have massively diverse skill sets and I don't see anyway we could standardize because technology is moving too fast. We might be able to have a general apprentice program where you qualify for certain programming languages/jobs and can get qualified for other languages/jobs by taking additional training, similar to how a pilot gets qualified for different air craft. That said I don't know how everyone if going to feel about getting paid the same wage as the person next to them, tech is a pretty independent group with huge egos. I do think certain ops jobs could be unionized, helpdesk, networking and the like those are defined skills that can be taught repeatedly.
- Phlarp 4y ago
  The reaction I got from previous pithy comments on unionization in past years vs. the reaction I got today from a pithy comment about unionization is absolutely night and day. The volume and pace of upvotes was eye popping and the comments have actually been discussing the merits of unionization and the realities of big tech as a labor force instead of incoherent screeching about the benevolence of FAANG
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    It’s frustrating because the logic never changed, only the environment has. Some people called it years ago: LarryDarrell on July 8, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizin... My worry is that without premature organization, the next recession is going to make the "tech worker shortage" a permanent thing of the past. We'll never have as much negotiating power as we do now. If say there was a Tech Workers Union/Guild/Association, we might have been able to protect the older workers at IBM, or the outsourced workers at Disney. Maybe there could be a push back against open offices and poorly implemented Agile. As it is, we're just better compensated workers floating from job to better job. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384298
  - tracker1 4y ago
    I do think that a tech union should probably be structured more like a guild than a typical union.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Imagine how terrible it would be to be on a team with subpar engineers with some kind of tenure / union protection so they cannot be fired. I think this is a big reason tech workers are opposed to the idea.
  - nkjnlknlk 4y ago
    1. People in unions are fired all the time with cause. 2. Terrible engineers exist with tenure/some other reason that they are not fired. Tech is not unionized right now and there are plenty of horror stories...
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    I mean which do you prefer. Being on a team with terrible engineers, or getting layed off. Take your pick. It's not really a binary choice either. With unions it just increases the probability of you being on a team of terrible engineers while lowering the probability of you getting layed off. So the real question is which probability metric is more important to you and other engineers?
    - 5560675260 4y ago
      One of this scenarios would leave me without job, another one would push me to quit my job. Outcome is the same, but bad team is likely to cause a lot of frustration first.
      - kilgnad 4y ago
        No, one scenario is slightly better because it gives you the choice to quit. In the other scenario there is no choice. Times constantly change you won't always be in a situation where you have the finances to just quit just because you're frustrated with a job. As a high paid SWE we often forget that A job is more then doing something you "like" to do, it is a means of survival. When times change, when hard times come or when some life changing event happens, being allowed to survive is a good thing.
  - vkou 4y ago
Fedtoo 4y ago
Less than we might like to think: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-of-workers-is-a-big-factor-in-fed-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...
echelon 4y ago
Short term is still good for engineers: - The economics of supply and demand will swing back to software engineers in the short term, because there aren't enough of us to power every tech company's product roadmap on their desired timeline. - Laid off workers will start new companies that will threaten the companies that laid them off. - The macro environment will swing back eventually to favor fast growth. Long term is bad [1], though: - Tech is going global. Europe, Latin America, India, the rest of Asia, and emerging economies all over the world are raising venture capital and hiring substantially cheaper local talent. These companies will put downwards economic pressures on US companies' unlimited growth stories, worldwide monopoly statuses, and thus their ability to pay lavish salaries. - Also, a broader global talent pool will put downward pressures on salaries. - Much more hypothetical, but the emergence of AI tools could put additional pressure on engineers. It's unclear how much or to what extent, but it could be a big impact. [1] Tech going worldwide is fantastic for workers in growing economies. They'll quickly move up the socioeconomic ladder, and that's a good thing. As long as AI doesn't eat their lunch first.
- adra 4y ago
  This has been happening for decades. The only maybe novel side of the story is that post COVID, there may be a hope that remote workers are paid at least respectable wages vs their head office peers living in extraordinarily expensive cities. That hurts the developed cities and countries more than the individuals though. Expect a lot of heat out of civic conferences the next few years as they start to re-assess their budgets/roles. Some equalization is only fair in the end. Your output / cost should be the same as any other. Not all developing economies have talent that can fit these companies today, but there's no reason that can't change tomorrow. The major gap from my perspective is fair and equitable ways of gauging performance (tech specifically but in general).
- glass3 4y ago
  The broader global talent pool could kick in the Jevons paradox [1]. Software eats everything and even more talent could be needed to maintain a lead. When more value is derived from software in the value chain, the market leaders can then hand out even more resources as salaries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Phlarp 4y ago
I've been making pithy comments about tech bro unionization on the orange site for years now and I know exactly what you're talking about. Anything that even smelled like worker solidarity was shot down with vacuous logic about how the 10x engineers in big tech can't possibly be asked to associate with a lowly web master in a fly-over state. Then suddenly today I said something and instantly got 100 upvotes...
- tmpz22 4y ago
  Vacuous: "having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless."
- tracker1 4y ago
  It's a mixed bag... when your near the ceiling for a given area, it's harder to think about scaling back. These past few months in tech have been really reminding me of the .com bust in 2000-2002, where a lot of the big tech companies scaled back, others fell over (mostly coastal areas) and about a year later it hit secondary cities (Phoenix, SLC, Houston, etc)... I was pretty much unable to find anything for about 6-8 months, and others for a year. In the end, wound up staying in a room at a friend's house that was being renovated... working small project work at barely enough to feed myself on... By the end, my truck was reposessed and I was driving a junker. All I can say is for now, keep your head down, and hit your goals. The up side is during the down time I managed to enhance my skills, learn a new programming language (offline, with the command line compiler is so much fun /sarc). It's cyclical... I would expect many jobs at the higher end to shift down about 30-50% in terms of base compensation. Working C2H right now, and really hoping I'm able to come in perm. Fortunately in a market not going away.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    >It's a mixed bag... when your near the ceiling for a given area, it's harder to think about scaling back. A union doesn't necessarily have to negotiate maximum ceiling salaries. It doesn't have to negotiate salaries at all. It can just be an entity to prevent the company from letting you go just because the numbers look 2% better. I think the best of both worlds is when the union only negotiates a minimum salary.
paulcole 4y ago
Many people on HN think of themselves as "top talent" (a barf phrase if there ever was one) and convinced themselves that they would be the ones held back by a union.
- traverseda 4y ago
  As a developer without any formal education (I dropped out of high school) my worry is that unions will be used to enforce credentialism.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    I wouldn't worry about that. There are literally too many people with your background for this too matter. I think there will be a form of credential-ism and it will continue to be similar to the tech interview.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Outright credentialism—of the right sort—would be so very much better than the FAANG tech interview, provided anyone could attempt to gain the credential through e.g. a one-off test maybe with refreshers every 5 or 10 years, without some required formal educational background. So, so much better. It'd take a union to force FAANG into that, though, because it'd make job mobility much easier, so tend to increase wages.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    How has this shaken out w/ unions in other industries? Do they push this sort of credentialism?
    - Phlarp 4y ago
      It's as varied as the work-- Lawyers and Doctors have professional organizations that enforce very strict credentialism, Screen actors have a loose org that enforces a firm "floor" for work conditions without hindering the ability for top talent to negotiate eye popping compensation packages. Pro sports players associations are another good example of low touch organizations that get results for everyone without holding back the super stars. We can have a setup where everyone benefits, people who think they are top talent are free to capitalize on that fact if they truly are top talent, while also being protected from predatory employment practices if/when they aren't top talent. Even if we recognize the existence of 10x or 100x engineers surely we must also recognize that they are humans that will have family issues, mental health concerns or struggle with burnout / purpose / direction during a multi-decade career. No shortage of evidence that tech companies are working together to suppress engineering wages, why wouldn't engineers respond by working together to invigorate wages?
bee_rider 4y ago
Some fields reduce worker infighting with unions. Some reduce it with licensing. Management insists, though, that Software Engineers are too prestigious for the former, and well, the latter is just gatekeeping. Weird, that!
- screwturner68 4y ago
  Doctors are licensed, Plumbers, barbers, Lawyers, what's the issue with people in IT having a standard base of knowledge? One of the big pluses of IT is we supposedly hire people for what they know and not just some bullshit piece of paper but how do we know what they know? Maybe having something like a bar exam or your PE exam, I not saying not to hire people with out a professional license but it could be used as a standard.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Yeah I’m in favor of either one or both (IMO some IT jobs are more like factory work that you’d hope to be unionized, some are more like jobs that you’d expect to be licensed; the border is fuzzy but this is the sort of thing that other fields manage to work out).
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    >Doctors are licensed, Plumbers, barbers, Lawyers, what's the issue with people in IT having a standard base of knowledge? It's hard to establish hard standards in an industry that moves as quickly as tech can, but virtually anything would be an improvement over the frat house hazing ritual that technical interviews have become.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    This type of thing is questionable. It can be viewed from the other angle. If software engineers aren't licensed why do lawyers and plumbers have to be? The pros of being licensed are obvious. The cons are less so. One thing licensing does is lower supply. It can be used to artificially lower supply so that prices and wages remain high. Are you sure barbers are licensed?
braingenious 4y ago
There has always been a large (or very vocal) part of the HN userbase that’s very anti-union. I can’t say why with certainty, but I suspect it’s the veneration of the idea of the mythical “10x zero to one founder” that single-handedly props up the sky and produces billions of dollars of value for their (equally venerable) VC “partners”. It’s kind of a “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” phenomenon that I love to watch on here.
- typon 4y ago
  It's not very surprising though. Most of Silicon Valley and HN royalty is staunchly libertarian. VCs doing zero labour and getting rich off the backs of workers is a phenomena that cant easily be defended unless you buy into this ideology.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > Most of Silicon Valley and HN royalty is staunchly libertarian. Unions are a libertarian concept. Freedom of association is the fundamental underpinning of libertarianism. Those at the other end of the spectrum stand for supply management instead.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      I've been very libertarian (increasingly so over the decades) for a while and pretty pro union. My issues come from govt forced union jobs in some places, and likewise when govt interferes with planned strikes etc... as much as a railway strike would literally hurt for most of the country, as an example.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Would you say you’re a left-libertarian?
        tracker1 4y ago
        God no... I think communal leftist libertarianism is just wacky and doesn't make any sense at all. I think most of the left-libertarian movement is disenfranchised left-authoritarians who realize forcing things isn't ok, but haven't dealt with the fact that an idealistic communal utopia isn't really possible. Aside, I tend to get along with most conservatives okay, I'm just far more in favor of more limited govt than they tend to be, and more personal liberty, which tends to collide when they want to make religious views law.
ylou 4y ago
The handcuffs became a lot less golden.

In the last decade or so, there were several times I brought this up on HN (anonymously), and each time my opinion was attacked as not making any sense. Times change.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

I'm not sure that they have changed. People brought it up before and people are bringing it up now and they'll continue bringing it up. I think the tech workers are generally still opposed to the idea

kilgnad 4y ago
No the thing that has changed is the attacks. The upvotes I'm getting on that post indicates support. Maybe two or three years ago I'd have negative karma.
dismantlethesun 4y ago
It doesn’t make sense to unionize when you are powerful and you can use “merit” to raise your power and compensation. As the economy downturns, more and more software devs on the low end will be pushed to the point where unionization makes sense. They were never really powerful or well paid, but had hope of rising to a higher class. It’s that aspiration that lead to people discounting the ida of unionization.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  It makes sense to unionize when you're powerful because that's when you actually have the leverage to put things in place in preparation for the inevitable downturn. Waiting until you need the union is too late.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Grasshopper and the ants!
- screwturner68 4y ago
  Part of unionization is standardization of skillsets. Any journeyman plumber should be able to replace any other journeyman plumber, there's an apprentice program and years of training associated with becoming a journeyman. How's that going to work in IT we have massively diverse skill sets and I don't see anyway we could standardize because technology is moving too fast. We might be able to have a general apprentice program where you qualify for certain programming languages/jobs and can get qualified for other languages/jobs by taking additional training, similar to how a pilot gets qualified for different air craft. That said I don't know how everyone if going to feel about getting paid the same wage as the person next to them, tech is a pretty independent group with huge egos. I do think certain ops jobs could be unionized, helpdesk, networking and the like those are defined skills that can be taught repeatedly.
Phlarp 4y ago
The reaction I got from previous pithy comments on unionization in past years vs. the reaction I got today from a pithy comment about unionization is absolutely night and day. The volume and pace of upvotes was eye popping and the comments have actually been discussing the merits of unionization and the realities of big tech as a labor force instead of incoherent screeching about the benevolence of FAANG
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  It’s frustrating because the logic never changed, only the environment has. Some people called it years ago: LarryDarrell on July 8, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizin... My worry is that without premature organization, the next recession is going to make the "tech worker shortage" a permanent thing of the past. We'll never have as much negotiating power as we do now. If say there was a Tech Workers Union/Guild/Association, we might have been able to protect the older workers at IBM, or the outsourced workers at Disney. Maybe there could be a push back against open offices and poorly implemented Agile. As it is, we're just better compensated workers floating from job to better job. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384298
- tracker1 4y ago
  I do think that a tech union should probably be structured more like a guild than a typical union.
aeternum 4y ago
Imagine how terrible it would be to be on a team with subpar engineers with some kind of tenure / union protection so they cannot be fired. I think this is a big reason tech workers are opposed to the idea.
- nkjnlknlk 4y ago
  1. People in unions are fired all the time with cause. 2. Terrible engineers exist with tenure/some other reason that they are not fired. Tech is not unionized right now and there are plenty of horror stories...
- kilgnad 4y ago
  I mean which do you prefer. Being on a team with terrible engineers, or getting layed off. Take your pick. It's not really a binary choice either. With unions it just increases the probability of you being on a team of terrible engineers while lowering the probability of you getting layed off. So the real question is which probability metric is more important to you and other engineers?
  - 5560675260 4y ago
    One of this scenarios would leave me without job, another one would push me to quit my job. Outcome is the same, but bad team is likely to cause a lot of frustration first.
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      No, one scenario is slightly better because it gives you the choice to quit. In the other scenario there is no choice. Times constantly change you won't always be in a situation where you have the finances to just quit just because you're frustrated with a job. As a high paid SWE we often forget that A job is more then doing something you "like" to do, it is a means of survival. When times change, when hard times come or when some life changing event happens, being allowed to survive is a good thing.
- vkou 4y ago

Fedtoo 4y ago

Less than we might like to think: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-of-workers-is-a-big-factor-in-fed-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...

echelon 4y ago

Short term is still good for engineers: - The economics of supply and demand will swing back to software engineers in the short term, because there aren't enough of us to power every tech company's product roadmap on their desired timeline. - Laid off workers will start new companies that will threaten the companies that laid them off. - The macro environment will swing back eventually to favor fast growth. Long term is bad [1], though: - Tech is going global. Europe, Latin America, India, the rest of Asia, and emerging economies all over the world are raising venture capital and hiring substantially cheaper local talent. These companies will put downwards economic pressures on US companies' unlimited growth stories, worldwide monopoly statuses, and thus their ability to pay lavish salaries. - Also, a broader global talent pool will put downward pressures on salaries. - Much more hypothetical, but the emergence of AI tools could put additional pressure on engineers. It's unclear how much or to what extent, but it could be a big impact. [1] Tech going worldwide is fantastic for workers in growing economies. They'll quickly move up the socioeconomic ladder, and that's a good thing. As long as AI doesn't eat their lunch first.

adra 4y ago
This has been happening for decades. The only maybe novel side of the story is that post COVID, there may be a hope that remote workers are paid at least respectable wages vs their head office peers living in extraordinarily expensive cities. That hurts the developed cities and countries more than the individuals though. Expect a lot of heat out of civic conferences the next few years as they start to re-assess their budgets/roles. Some equalization is only fair in the end. Your output / cost should be the same as any other. Not all developing economies have talent that can fit these companies today, but there's no reason that can't change tomorrow. The major gap from my perspective is fair and equitable ways of gauging performance (tech specifically but in general).
glass3 4y ago
The broader global talent pool could kick in the Jevons paradox [1]. Software eats everything and even more talent could be needed to maintain a lead. When more value is derived from software in the value chain, the market leaders can then hand out even more resources as salaries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Phlarp 4y ago

I've been making pithy comments about tech bro unionization on the orange site for years now and I know exactly what you're talking about. Anything that even smelled like worker solidarity was shot down with vacuous logic about how the 10x engineers in big tech can't possibly be asked to associate with a lowly web master in a fly-over state. Then suddenly today I said something and instantly got 100 upvotes...

tmpz22 4y ago
Vacuous: "having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless."
tracker1 4y ago
It's a mixed bag... when your near the ceiling for a given area, it's harder to think about scaling back. These past few months in tech have been really reminding me of the .com bust in 2000-2002, where a lot of the big tech companies scaled back, others fell over (mostly coastal areas) and about a year later it hit secondary cities (Phoenix, SLC, Houston, etc)... I was pretty much unable to find anything for about 6-8 months, and others for a year. In the end, wound up staying in a room at a friend's house that was being renovated... working small project work at barely enough to feed myself on... By the end, my truck was reposessed and I was driving a junker. All I can say is for now, keep your head down, and hit your goals. The up side is during the down time I managed to enhance my skills, learn a new programming language (offline, with the command line compiler is so much fun /sarc). It's cyclical... I would expect many jobs at the higher end to shift down about 30-50% in terms of base compensation. Working C2H right now, and really hoping I'm able to come in perm. Fortunately in a market not going away.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  >It's a mixed bag... when your near the ceiling for a given area, it's harder to think about scaling back. A union doesn't necessarily have to negotiate maximum ceiling salaries. It doesn't have to negotiate salaries at all. It can just be an entity to prevent the company from letting you go just because the numbers look 2% better. I think the best of both worlds is when the union only negotiates a minimum salary.

paulcole 4y ago

Many people on HN think of themselves as "top talent" (a barf phrase if there ever was one) and convinced themselves that they would be the ones held back by a union.

traverseda 4y ago
As a developer without any formal education (I dropped out of high school) my worry is that unions will be used to enforce credentialism.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  I wouldn't worry about that. There are literally too many people with your background for this too matter. I think there will be a form of credential-ism and it will continue to be similar to the tech interview.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Outright credentialism—of the right sort—would be so very much better than the FAANG tech interview, provided anyone could attempt to gain the credential through e.g. a one-off test maybe with refreshers every 5 or 10 years, without some required formal educational background. So, so much better. It'd take a union to force FAANG into that, though, because it'd make job mobility much easier, so tend to increase wages.
- paulcole 4y ago
  How has this shaken out w/ unions in other industries? Do they push this sort of credentialism?
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    It's as varied as the work-- Lawyers and Doctors have professional organizations that enforce very strict credentialism, Screen actors have a loose org that enforces a firm "floor" for work conditions without hindering the ability for top talent to negotiate eye popping compensation packages. Pro sports players associations are another good example of low touch organizations that get results for everyone without holding back the super stars. We can have a setup where everyone benefits, people who think they are top talent are free to capitalize on that fact if they truly are top talent, while also being protected from predatory employment practices if/when they aren't top talent. Even if we recognize the existence of 10x or 100x engineers surely we must also recognize that they are humans that will have family issues, mental health concerns or struggle with burnout / purpose / direction during a multi-decade career. No shortage of evidence that tech companies are working together to suppress engineering wages, why wouldn't engineers respond by working together to invigorate wages?

bee_rider 4y ago

Some fields reduce worker infighting with unions. Some reduce it with licensing. Management insists, though, that Software Engineers are too prestigious for the former, and well, the latter is just gatekeeping. Weird, that!

screwturner68 4y ago
Doctors are licensed, Plumbers, barbers, Lawyers, what's the issue with people in IT having a standard base of knowledge? One of the big pluses of IT is we supposedly hire people for what they know and not just some bullshit piece of paper but how do we know what they know? Maybe having something like a bar exam or your PE exam, I not saying not to hire people with out a professional license but it could be used as a standard.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Yeah I’m in favor of either one or both (IMO some IT jobs are more like factory work that you’d hope to be unionized, some are more like jobs that you’d expect to be licensed; the border is fuzzy but this is the sort of thing that other fields manage to work out).
- Phlarp 4y ago
  >Doctors are licensed, Plumbers, barbers, Lawyers, what's the issue with people in IT having a standard base of knowledge? It's hard to establish hard standards in an industry that moves as quickly as tech can, but virtually anything would be an improvement over the frat house hazing ritual that technical interviews have become.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  This type of thing is questionable. It can be viewed from the other angle. If software engineers aren't licensed why do lawyers and plumbers have to be? The pros of being licensed are obvious. The cons are less so. One thing licensing does is lower supply. It can be used to artificially lower supply so that prices and wages remain high. Are you sure barbers are licensed?

braingenious 4y ago

There has always been a large (or very vocal) part of the HN userbase that’s very anti-union. I can’t say why with certainty, but I suspect it’s the veneration of the idea of the mythical “10x zero to one founder” that single-handedly props up the sky and produces billions of dollars of value for their (equally venerable) VC “partners”. It’s kind of a “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” phenomenon that I love to watch on here.

typon 4y ago
It's not very surprising though. Most of Silicon Valley and HN royalty is staunchly libertarian. VCs doing zero labour and getting rich off the backs of workers is a phenomena that cant easily be defended unless you buy into this ideology.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > Most of Silicon Valley and HN royalty is staunchly libertarian. Unions are a libertarian concept. Freedom of association is the fundamental underpinning of libertarianism. Those at the other end of the spectrum stand for supply management instead.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    I've been very libertarian (increasingly so over the decades) for a while and pretty pro union. My issues come from govt forced union jobs in some places, and likewise when govt interferes with planned strikes etc... as much as a railway strike would literally hurt for most of the country, as an example.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Would you say you’re a left-libertarian?
      - tracker1 4y ago
        God no... I think communal leftist libertarianism is just wacky and doesn't make any sense at all. I think most of the left-libertarian movement is disenfranchised left-authoritarians who realize forcing things isn't ok, but haven't dealt with the fact that an idealistic communal utopia isn't really possible. Aside, I tend to get along with most conservatives okay, I'm just far more in favor of more limited govt than they tend to be, and more personal liberty, which tends to collide when they want to make religious views law.

ylou 4y ago

The handcuffs became a lot less golden.