10 ms·

“That Deep Romantic Chasm”: Libertarianism, Neoliberalism, & Computer Culture

71 points by geekamongus 3y ago

geekamongus 3y ago
The more things change…?
- yankput 3y ago
  Yes and no. The libertarianism the article speaks of at the end gave way to right-wing populism, while Silicon Valley moved into mixture of hard capitalism and social justice (dodging taxes and monopolizing while showing pride flags) I think this utopian techno-libertarian is more like a relic from the 90s nowadays. edit: on the other hand… it gave rise to bitcoin/cryptocurrency, which is like the culmination of both techno-utopianism and libertarianism. So, maybe you are right
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    I miss the "utopian techno-libertarian". There was a time in the 90's where I think a lot of people did believe they would change the world for the better. Who knew the old paradigms would still win in the end, the rich took the spoils, and the technology was subverted.
    - flir 3y ago
      I always think of grunge. Counter culture in a Seattle basement to Milan catwalks in about 15 minutes flat. It seems the system co-opts everything, including rejection of the system.
      - sharemywin 3y ago
        The One, also known as the Prime Program, is a systemic feature of the Matrix wherein a special code is carried by a randomly selected human being. This person is then gifted vast superhuman abilities as an avatar within the Matrix, which sometimes manifests as extraordinary powers in the real world. The special code has the function to collectively attach, to the person that carries it, all of the anomalies which emanate from the few humans who continue to reject the Matrix. This essentially makes The One an "Integral Anomaly" or the SUM of all anomalies. The mechanisms by which The One appears are rather simple and arranged in the Prime Program process: when the anomalies in the Matrix reach a certain threshold and begin to pose serious problems, a random human is selected by the machines to be born with a special code (the Integral Anomaly) that, as said before, ties and attaches all of the anomalies within the Matrix to the programming of this human. The Oracle, who is aware of The One's existence and purpose because it is her duty to guide humanity to find The One, will enlighten him to his true nature and lead him towards the Source where he fulfills his purpose of reinserting the Prime Program and resetting the Matrix. She does this by predicting the return of The One to the people of Zion to aid them in freeing humanity from the Machines' grip. The Architect, as creator of the Matrix, is also well aware of The One's existence and purpose, referring to The One as an "eventuality".
        JuanPosadas 3y ago
        I just use a cronjob to restart my nodejs apps at 4am to prevent memory leaks.
      - giraffe_lady 3y ago
        Yes that is exactly how it works, there's a lot of literature on the subject. Any genuinely transgressive movement has its aesthetics, but not necessarily its values, repackaged as a consumer identification and subsumed into the mainstream of the culture. Grunge is a good example but the same thing happened to punk a generation earlier. Consciousness-raising sessions and second wave feminism quickly became unilever marketing cosmetic products using the language of empowerment. Pride was originally the first anniversary of a riot but now JP Morgan and the cops themselves are comfortable putting out a rainbow float. etc etc etc there are thousands of examples. Anything that's visually recognizable as transgression will be commoditized until it's no longer transgressive. Many many cultural and art phenomena are downstream of and in response to this mechanic of consumer capitalism.
        flir 3y ago
        I'm gonna say punk's the odd one out there, because Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were there at the heart of it with SEX right from the get-go. So the time-to-commercialization on that one might actually be zero, or possibly negative, which gives it a slightly different character. (I can see the other point of view, which is that Westwood was a nobody until consumerism took her and her designs to its bosom).
      - tomjen3 3y ago
        Its was always hilarious to me that you could get communists tee shirts very easily - as long as you where willing to pay for them. I guess I never really thought that commodification also worked for the values I grew into.
    - kognate 3y ago
      Everyone knew the old paradigms would still win in the end. The master’s tools will not destroy the master’s house, after all. But the people made (more) wealthy and powerful by the old paradigms had a lot of incentive to pretend otherwise.
      - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Not everyone knew. I was young and naive and bought into it. I was so doe-eyed innocent I didn't even realize there were old masters to watch out for. Of course we're going to change the world. - Guess this plays out in every generation, you need a big population of young and innocent that can be taken advantage of to keep the system running. Moloch marches on.
    - Blackthorn 3y ago
      All those people who proudly and loudly went to Burning Man were all too happy to become The Man when money became involved.
OO000oo 3y ago
I have noticed that people on HN tend to equate neoliberalism with classical liberalism, being clueless about the difference. Classical liberalism was a naturalistic belief in market supremacy, understood to be a colossal failure by the middle of the 20th century. It was associated with the Gilded Age, which spawned the so-called Progressive Era, the ideological camps that followed, and the catastrophe that was the world wars. Neoliberalism is what the capitalist class have insisted is a reformed liberalism, invincible to the problems that classical liberalism motivated. It is a far more centralized, 'managed' market supremacy without the naturalistic perspective. Neoliberalism claims to acknowledge that markets are not natural and must be tightly managed by experts.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  I don't understand the classical liberalism part. How do a bunch of empires, that don't operate on market principles, going to war with each other show that classical liberalism is a 'colossal failure'?
  - jowea 3y ago
    I believe the case against classical liberal economics has more to do with the economic crises of the late 19th century and specially the Great Depression than with the wars.
    - churchill 3y ago
      Nope. The Great Depression doesn't indict classical liberal economics - the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. When the bankers started calling in their loans, everyone went bust. That'd be equivalent to grow America's M2 ($20 trillion) by 12 trillion in just 4 years. 2019 to 2022 wasn't even that intense and, well, we can see how ugly things have gotten.
      - derstander 3y ago
        > the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. I’m not an economist so I’m speaking from a position of ignorance here. But I thought the US was on gold standard during this time period. How was the Fed able to increase money supply by such a large % without e.g. the country mining a lot more gold? I tried a cursory search but was unable to find any answers.
ttctciyf 3y ago
From 1999, the linked article seems an interesting read on the intersection between 'hacker culture' and the libertarian project; dry and a little quaint. Readers might like to compare the more journalistic (and entertaining, IMO) 2014 piece on 'San Francisco’s tech-libertarian “Reboot” conference' from sadly defunct Pando, for example: > At first glance it makes no sense to front a rabidly anti-gay candidate like McMorris Rodgers to sell the Kochs’ and the Paul family’s scrubland libertarianism to a Bay Area audience full of hip disruptors and “anarchist” practitioners of bohemia grooming fads. > But that’s because what Silicon Valley folks think of when they hear the word “libertarianism” actually has very little connection to what the libertarian movement actually stands for, and has stood for since the 1970s. ... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20141118174216/http://pando.com/2014/07/18/homophobia-racism-and-the-kochs-san-franciscos-tech-libertarian-reboot-conference-is-a-cesspool/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141118174216/http://pando.com/...
boffinAudio 3y ago
All culture is a lie that only persists in the re-telling. There is no such thing as America or Russia - these things exist merely as a facsimile created in the minds of humans, who must perpetuate the concept by re-telling the lie, lest it fade out of human consciousness into the oblivion of history. Computers merely allow us to lie - and forget the lies - at light speed. This will eventually replace all other cultures - neoliberalism especially ...
- svara 3y ago
  We do speak of dynamic phenomena as "existing" all the time. A river is made up of different water molecules every day, yet it's the same river over millennia. In the same way, countries (and other abstract entities such as companies) exist in the dynamics of human interactions. So yes, humans must perpetuate the concept by re-telling it, but somewhat paradoxically it's not a lie as long as they do so.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    > A river is made up of different water molecules every day, yet it's the same river over millennia. Heraclitus would like a word with you.
    - didericis 3y ago
      And Parmenides would like a word with you. It’s amazing to me people agree on definitions for anything, given people have been having the same basic abstract arguments for what makes thing A thing A and distinct from thing B for thousands of years.
      - svara 3y ago
        My argument was in some sense more shallow, I just made a point about how we talk about things. You can open a map and find that a river has a name, that's true no matter your stance on what it "really is".
- 3y ago

71 points by geekamongus 3y ago

geekamongus 3y ago

The more things change…?

yankput 3y ago
Yes and no. The libertarianism the article speaks of at the end gave way to right-wing populism, while Silicon Valley moved into mixture of hard capitalism and social justice (dodging taxes and monopolizing while showing pride flags) I think this utopian techno-libertarian is more like a relic from the 90s nowadays. edit: on the other hand… it gave rise to bitcoin/cryptocurrency, which is like the culmination of both techno-utopianism and libertarianism. So, maybe you are right
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  I miss the "utopian techno-libertarian". There was a time in the 90's where I think a lot of people did believe they would change the world for the better. Who knew the old paradigms would still win in the end, the rich took the spoils, and the technology was subverted.
  - flir 3y ago
    I always think of grunge. Counter culture in a Seattle basement to Milan catwalks in about 15 minutes flat. It seems the system co-opts everything, including rejection of the system.
    - sharemywin 3y ago
      The One, also known as the Prime Program, is a systemic feature of the Matrix wherein a special code is carried by a randomly selected human being. This person is then gifted vast superhuman abilities as an avatar within the Matrix, which sometimes manifests as extraordinary powers in the real world. The special code has the function to collectively attach, to the person that carries it, all of the anomalies which emanate from the few humans who continue to reject the Matrix. This essentially makes The One an "Integral Anomaly" or the SUM of all anomalies. The mechanisms by which The One appears are rather simple and arranged in the Prime Program process: when the anomalies in the Matrix reach a certain threshold and begin to pose serious problems, a random human is selected by the machines to be born with a special code (the Integral Anomaly) that, as said before, ties and attaches all of the anomalies within the Matrix to the programming of this human. The Oracle, who is aware of The One's existence and purpose because it is her duty to guide humanity to find The One, will enlighten him to his true nature and lead him towards the Source where he fulfills his purpose of reinserting the Prime Program and resetting the Matrix. She does this by predicting the return of The One to the people of Zion to aid them in freeing humanity from the Machines' grip. The Architect, as creator of the Matrix, is also well aware of The One's existence and purpose, referring to The One as an "eventuality".
      - JuanPosadas 3y ago
        I just use a cronjob to restart my nodejs apps at 4am to prevent memory leaks.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      Yes that is exactly how it works, there's a lot of literature on the subject. Any genuinely transgressive movement has its aesthetics, but not necessarily its values, repackaged as a consumer identification and subsumed into the mainstream of the culture. Grunge is a good example but the same thing happened to punk a generation earlier. Consciousness-raising sessions and second wave feminism quickly became unilever marketing cosmetic products using the language of empowerment. Pride was originally the first anniversary of a riot but now JP Morgan and the cops themselves are comfortable putting out a rainbow float. etc etc etc there are thousands of examples. Anything that's visually recognizable as transgression will be commoditized until it's no longer transgressive. Many many cultural and art phenomena are downstream of and in response to this mechanic of consumer capitalism.
      - flir 3y ago
        I'm gonna say punk's the odd one out there, because Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were there at the heart of it with SEX right from the get-go. So the time-to-commercialization on that one might actually be zero, or possibly negative, which gives it a slightly different character. (I can see the other point of view, which is that Westwood was a nobody until consumerism took her and her designs to its bosom).
    - tomjen3 3y ago
      Its was always hilarious to me that you could get communists tee shirts very easily - as long as you where willing to pay for them. I guess I never really thought that commodification also worked for the values I grew into.
  - kognate 3y ago
    Everyone knew the old paradigms would still win in the end. The master’s tools will not destroy the master’s house, after all. But the people made (more) wealthy and powerful by the old paradigms had a lot of incentive to pretend otherwise.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Not everyone knew. I was young and naive and bought into it. I was so doe-eyed innocent I didn't even realize there were old masters to watch out for. Of course we're going to change the world. - Guess this plays out in every generation, you need a big population of young and innocent that can be taken advantage of to keep the system running. Moloch marches on.
  - Blackthorn 3y ago
    All those people who proudly and loudly went to Burning Man were all too happy to become The Man when money became involved.

OO000oo 3y ago

I have noticed that people on HN tend to equate neoliberalism with classical liberalism, being clueless about the difference. Classical liberalism was a naturalistic belief in market supremacy, understood to be a colossal failure by the middle of the 20th century. It was associated with the Gilded Age, which spawned the so-called Progressive Era, the ideological camps that followed, and the catastrophe that was the world wars. Neoliberalism is what the capitalist class have insisted is a reformed liberalism, invincible to the problems that classical liberalism motivated. It is a far more centralized, 'managed' market supremacy without the naturalistic perspective. Neoliberalism claims to acknowledge that markets are not natural and must be tightly managed by experts.

Aerroon 3y ago
I don't understand the classical liberalism part. How do a bunch of empires, that don't operate on market principles, going to war with each other show that classical liberalism is a 'colossal failure'?
- jowea 3y ago
  I believe the case against classical liberal economics has more to do with the economic crises of the late 19th century and specially the Great Depression than with the wars.
  - churchill 3y ago
    Nope. The Great Depression doesn't indict classical liberal economics - the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. When the bankers started calling in their loans, everyone went bust. That'd be equivalent to grow America's M2 ($20 trillion) by 12 trillion in just 4 years. 2019 to 2022 wasn't even that intense and, well, we can see how ugly things have gotten.
    - derstander 3y ago
      > the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. I’m not an economist so I’m speaking from a position of ignorance here. But I thought the US was on gold standard during this time period. How was the Fed able to increase money supply by such a large % without e.g. the country mining a lot more gold? I tried a cursory search but was unable to find any answers.

ttctciyf 3y ago

From 1999, the linked article seems an interesting read on the intersection between 'hacker culture' and the libertarian project; dry and a little quaint. Readers might like to compare the more journalistic (and entertaining, IMO) 2014 piece on 'San Francisco’s tech-libertarian “Reboot” conference' from sadly defunct Pando, for example: > At first glance it makes no sense to front a rabidly anti-gay candidate like McMorris Rodgers to sell the Kochs’ and the Paul family’s scrubland libertarianism to a Bay Area audience full of hip disruptors and “anarchist” practitioners of bohemia grooming fads. > But that’s because what Silicon Valley folks think of when they hear the word “libertarianism” actually has very little connection to what the libertarian movement actually stands for, and has stood for since the 1970s. ... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20141118174216/http://pando.com/2014/07/18/homophobia-racism-and-the-kochs-san-franciscos-tech-libertarian-reboot-conference-is-a-cesspool/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141118174216/http://pando.com/...

boffinAudio 3y ago

All culture is a lie that only persists in the re-telling. There is no such thing as America or Russia - these things exist merely as a facsimile created in the minds of humans, who must perpetuate the concept by re-telling the lie, lest it fade out of human consciousness into the oblivion of history. Computers merely allow us to lie - and forget the lies - at light speed. This will eventually replace all other cultures - neoliberalism especially ...

svara 3y ago
We do speak of dynamic phenomena as "existing" all the time. A river is made up of different water molecules every day, yet it's the same river over millennia. In the same way, countries (and other abstract entities such as companies) exist in the dynamics of human interactions. So yes, humans must perpetuate the concept by re-telling it, but somewhat paradoxically it's not a lie as long as they do so.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > A river is made up of different water molecules every day, yet it's the same river over millennia. Heraclitus would like a word with you.
  - didericis 3y ago
    And Parmenides would like a word with you. It’s amazing to me people agree on definitions for anything, given people have been having the same basic abstract arguments for what makes thing A thing A and distinct from thing B for thousands of years.
    - svara 3y ago
      My argument was in some sense more shallow, I just made a point about how we talk about things. You can open a map and find that a river has a name, that's true no matter your stance on what it "really is".
3y ago