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Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno libertarians.
- johnbender 17y agodisappointed when this was not an article about Warhammer 40k. +5 to your nerdosity
- unalone 17y agoI was disappointed by the backlash against Squashed on this site. Partly it's because he writes a personal blog, doesn't go out of his way to promote himself, and so probably wasn't writing for the Hacker News crowd; partly because as a former Tumblr user, he was one of the bloggers in the "in" crowd that wasn't snooty or irritating, and he spent a lot of time crafting his ideas to display online. Also, the phrase "Lodwickian UberMensch" is worth a hundred upvotes. I'm a fan of Jake Lodwick's work, met him once in NYC at a concert, but his attitude towards other people is at least somewhat off-putting.
- grandalf 17y agoAre you serious? The guy's whole post is one massive trollbait designed to make people angry.
- unalone 17y agoNo, it's not. Again: I've read Squashed for a long time. He goes back to the very beginning of Tumblr. Usually, he writes for himself and, perhaps, for a small core of readers who like his opinions. You need to understand that Tumblr's different from most blogging platforms in that it has a built-in community, so that the people who use it frequently feel a lot more freedom to express their opinions in a more personal way. Marco Arment, who's on Tumblr's staff, just wrote this week about how he never tries to write for news aggregators anymore. So Squashed disagrees with the people who flamed out against him, and I'm certain he believes what he's writing, but don't see it as him trolling. Rather, it's him writing how he feels without thinking about who's going to read it. I'm certain he didn't expect Hacker News picking on him, and so didn't make an attempt to round out his writing and make his ideas balanced. He has that right. Since when do bloggers have to write for any audience other than themselves?
- calcnerd256 17y agosince the 'net made the world small enough that you have to deal with the opinions of those you've offended
- unalone 17y agoHe doesn't, really. If things got bad enough, he could disable comments and ignore us all. I think we're a mature enough community, however, to learn not to get ourselves enraged over one man's personal blog, and to let him keep to his own circle. We can just not upvote the things he writes that we decide offend us. It would be a shame if the shrinking world led to alienation and hatred rather than to communities selective enough not to start flamewars with all the other ones.
- squashed 17y agoI think grandalf is right on this one. That last article was pretty dickish. I hadn't actually expected a whole lot of people to read it. (No, I'm not doing anything to promote the site. Some of the ... less gracious than usual comments tipped me off that something was up, and Google Analytics suggested I look at ycombinator to figure out why the heck it had increased my monthly traffic by 900%.) The big regret? I was reworking the layout. Because I suck at CSS, this takes a few days. Normally it's not a big deal. There may be forty or fifty non-Dashboard visitors. When traffic spikes at the same time as the layout is unprecedentedly ugly, that's something to be ashamed of. I'm surprised anybody even read the article. I would have been tempted to comment, "D00d, ur site is uglier than ur m0m. tl/dr."
- calcnerd256 17y agoThere are other ways to express one's opinion besides a comment section on the blog post itself. Granted, he can choose to ignore those too, but it's harder. HN and e-mail are two examples of places feedback can go.
- CodeMage 17y agoI was disappointed by the backlash against Squashed on this site. Worse, it's astonishing to see how many people here haven't bothered to read his post on entitlement, the one that "angered techno-libertarians", before flaming him on HN.
- Dilpil 17y agoA few of his arguements rest on the idea that "techno libertarians" all got rich from the tech bubble, but I know plenty of them getting rich right now sans bubble. Indeed, one of my most succesful friends got a job right out of college, and the offer came in august of 2008. The author points out that many people do not have the luxury of enjoying computers. Well there are plenty of other careers that are high paying and intellectually stimulating (sales, actuary, contracting all come to mind). All of them require several years of practice and hard work before they result in a middle class income however.
- jsankey 17y agoThis is pretty much what I didn't get: only a very small percentage of those critical of the original post would have "made their fortune", only some subset of them during a bubble, and a further subset because of the bubble. Attacking a tiny fraction of your audience that are easiest to criticise is convenient, but not particularly compelling. What about the other 20-somethings that joined the criticism? The ramen-subsisting founders using a flat as home and office?
- ynniv 17y agoHis argument is more durable than requiring a "bubble" (plus, people keep talking about a new bubble, but maybe thats over already?). Ask yourself, is it possible for everyone in the country to do what your friends did. Unless they are farmers, the answer is basically "no". More generally, are your friends doing something which actually makes the world more wealthy? Manufacturing, construction, cleaning, and public transportation are good examples of non-zero-sum (and non-derivative) industries. If not, it would still be impossible to suggest that everyone could be like them. Not everyone can be CEO of a major corporation (who would work in this companies?). Not everyone can be an investment banker (there is only so much investment money out there), or a salesman (you have to sell someone else's product to a customer). Simply put, not everyone can have a desk job, or even a well paying job in the modern economy, because these are necessarily a subset of the total economy. By itself, thats okay. It has always been, and will always be the case. The problem arising is that we are encouraging the population as a whole to put themselves into great debt under the pretense that they will be part this well paying economy. On top of this employee creation force, we have senior people not retiring, so there are a lot of additional employees looking for jobs. Which would be okay, except that the economy is contracting a little, and there is fewer demand for the growing supply. This is a large, complicated issue. Its a bit naive to say that people just have to work harder.
- TomOfTTB 17y agoMaybe I'm crazy but this seems like an argument for communism. Basically he's saying success is due to luck and that the playing field will never be equal when some people can be lucky and others can't. Take this quote… "This can lead to some awkward philosophical conclusions. If you have succeeded by doing something relatively simple, you have to ask yourself why everybody else hasn't done the same thing. You could tell yourself that they simply value different things and thus chose their lives. You sacrificed and worked hard-and even if somebody else looks like they've worked hard without the same results, they must be secretly lazy." He's basically putting forth two premises: (a) 2 people can work equally hard and get vastly different results and (b) that there's something inherently wrong with that. But if both those are true than there's really only one solution which is communism. That's the very definition of communism in fact. Government is the only entity that has enough power over people to make things fair so it should control all the resources because it will act fairly and distribute rewards evenly. I don't mean to accuse him of holding a belief he doesn't hold but how else could the world create the environment he desires?
- unalone 17y ago* Communism isn't inherently bad. * There's a wide swatch of gray between the market and the government, and it's acceptable that society should fall between the two.
- TomOfTTB 17y agoI didn't say communism was inherently bad. Admittedly I think it is. But I went out of my way not to make a value judgment so as to not cloud the point I was trying to make which is that the stated philosophy is communism. My intent was just to state the facts as I saw them and let others judge. As for your other point there certainly is a wide swath between the two but if you want complete fairness than you have to go all the way to the Government side.
- unalone 17y agoThat depends on your definition of complete fairness. I see "fair" as including the opportunity for success; fairness becomes a matter of never letting somebody sink into a pit they can't rise from. That can be achieved without much of a socialist bent at all: All you need are nets. Out of curiosity, why do you think communism is inherently bad? Do you take the angle of "Man is entitled to the fruits of his labor", or is there something else to it?
- araneae 17y agoI suspect the reason that technology and libertarianism go hand and hand are very different from those presented here. People who are technological are generally more engaged by machines than people, and have less of an appreciation of social norms. They also are more likely to appreciate the Austrian school of economics which is very mathematical in nature, and be less susceptible to emotional appeals in favor of certain policies (i.e. "oh how the poor kittens are starving, let's spend 1 billion on animal shelters this year").
- thomaspaine 17y agoAustrian economics is the antithesis of mathematical economics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School#Analytical_framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School#Analytical_fram... Many libertarians latch on to austrian economics because they already agree with the conclusions austrian economists come to, and it's easy for lay people to understand. Conversely, it takes quite a bit more effort to understand a neoclassical dynamic partial equilibrium model.
- araneae 17y agoI perhaps should have explained a bit more clearly. The Austrian school relies on mathematical proof, as opposed to experimentation and the resulting analysis with statistics. Yes, statistics is math, but hardly anyone who finds logical rigor psychologically satisfying gets the same enjoyment out of a p-value of .082.
- ewjordan 17y agoThey also happen to lack any sense of balance. Most of their arguments can (and should be, if we accept them at all) be taken to the extreme, coming up with conclusions such as 100% tax rates for the poor and 0% for the rich and similar ridiculousness. Of course this is not what the arguers are pushing for, but since they are arguing that things should be changed in a certain direction away from what they are now, they usually don't bother to even consider the counter-balancing factors that would let things settle in to an equilibrium. As the other poster mentioned, the Austrians explicitly reject statistical or modeling methods, and usually argue with words, dressing them up as if they are "pure logic". The problem with arguing with words is that it is far easier to decide your conclusion and then grope towards a justification in words than it is to start with some assumptions and figure out what the conclusion should be. When I read the Austrians, I never get the same feeling of dispassionate honest investigation that I do when I read any other science (or even soft "science", like econ). I just feel like they've always already decided the answer before they started working on the problem, and that rubs me seriously wrong. Not that I think most other economists are much better, to be fair. And the Austrians may be right in some of their claims. But I get the distinct feeling that they are so committed to their conclusions that even if they found evidence against them they would pay it no attention.
- billswift 17y ago"Nor do they have any monopoly on a distorted view of reality." Libertarians' views of reality are almost always less distorted than the downright wacko views held by most Democrats and Republicans, socialists and conservatives. Nor are all, or even most, libertarians particularly successful, much less the money worshipping conservatives the socialistic "social responsibility" whiners like this essay like to criticize.
- gloob 17y agoLibertarians' views of reality are almost always less distorted than the downright wacko views held by most Democrats and Republicans, socialists and conservatives. From the perspective of a libertarian, perhaps.
- billswift 17y agoThere are two kinds of people in the world, libertarians (whether or not they call themselves that) and evil scumbags who want to control other people. It makes no difference what excuses you make for your evil; you all still have to twist reality to justify it to each other and to yourselves.
- gloob 17y agoI'm fairly sure you missed my point.
- unalone 17y agoThere are many kinds of people in the world. One similar dichotomy I could draw is between people who appreciate the nuance and complexity of being alive and having to make millions of decisions as you grow up, and people who think it's possible to draw a line and declare some people as evil and other people as good based on a single part of their existence.
- billswift 17y agoPeople are extremely multidimensional; but the fundamental political division is willingness or unwillingness to coerce others, that is to use force to make others do what you want them to, which is THE fundamental feature of gov't.
- Tichy 17y agoWhat is his point? Either you grow rich in a bubble by sheer luck, or being a worker drone is your only option? Seems to me he misses a few grey areas in between. Also, if you are not a Computer whizkid, there are other areas where you can succeed. Some people even got rich with a multitrack. (Not that getting rich is the only meaningful measurement for success). What is the more cynical attitude: to assume people are miserable because they are sheep and just too scared to try anything, or that they are miserable because they are hopeless?
- tom_rath 17y agoIt looks like somebody should ask Santa for a thicker skin next Christmas. The advice I read here was of the tone: "Hey, we were once where you are now. Take it from us: It gets better, but your current mindset is set for failure." The author should spend a day picking through the youth-directed angsty tunes and movies of the early 90s. He's not the first to go through crap like this, even in recent history. Suck it up and take on a McJob to pay the bills until things recover. The experience in social survival will do you a load of good the next time things get rough.
- unalone 17y agoSo you see a problem, which is, "The way that modern society works puts a lot of people in soul-killing menial jobs and wastes their childhood", and your solution is "It's okay, other people have gone through it, stop complaining"? That's both cruel and obtuse.
- tom_rath 17y agoHardly! I'm saying "we're not strangers to what you're experiencing, but your conclusions are incorrect". You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do what you can to adapt to and correct it. That's what I've done. Bitching about it without action is going to do squat.
- unalone 17y agoI agree, but I also think that there's great value in trying to change the environment entirely.
- tom_rath 17y ago...and how's that working out for ya, Bruce Lee? Many, many generations have come before you with exactly the same idea, and all struck out (most notably the "boomers", who went a long way towards giving us the environment we're facing now). It sounds as though you want someone else to fix the problems you're facing rather than pick up your tools and fix them yourself. Learn about the environment you've found yourself in and then try to fix it to the extent you are able. If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted. I faced a load of crappy jobs when I graduated in the early 90s and found myself far, far behind where I thought I'd be. Today, I'm running the kind of company I wanted to work for when I graduated. I've worked at fixing my corner of the world and have succeeded to some small extent -- what have you done?
- gizmo 17y agoSurprisingly well written article. I'm going to check the rest of his blog; let's hope it's all this good. The article is supremely smug (because he doesn't seem to consider for a second that his point of view may be incorrect), and he shamelessly dismisses the counter arguments as delusional Ayn Rand fanaticism. However, it made the rant all the more compelling, so I don't mind. The problem is that he made no real effort to acknowledge any of the counter arguments. Starts strong. Digresses in the middle. Ends abruptly.
- grandalf 17y agoHow can you say that it's well written when it's smugness is over the top? I thought it was one of the worst articles ever linked from HN, both in its annoying tone, its irrelevance, and is lack of actual points.
- unalone 17y agoAgreed. I liked the post, but it is not the sort of post that should be on Hacker News. It wasn't intended to be and it doesn't fit here.
- randallsquared 17y agoI think the part where you say it digresses is what the author would suggest it's about.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoIf you're angering the techno libertarians, that's a pretty decent sign you're doing something right. Also: techno libertarians on the internet == unintentionally hilarious. EDIT: this comment score is a pretty decent sign I'm doing something right. :)
- rincewind 17y agoI paraphrase: He constructs a narrative of a hn user who does not feel "entitled" because he got what he wants. This hn user must be in constant anxiety because he is more successful than he deserves, so he rationalizes his position by explaining why others do not deserve as much success. The phrases "entitled", "deserve" and "dumb luck" are much too overloaded. (PG essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html)
- chasingsparks 17y agoThe author is saying that libertarians are the product of luck, moderate intelligence, and a bad understanding of sociology that limits their perspective to introspection alone. The author's observation is based on a product of his bad luck, moderate intelligence, and a very selective view of the arguments advanced by libertarians.
- Pistos2 17y agoMaybe I'm too much of a geek, or not enough of one, but I got a kick out of the "a dozen or so comments" turning into "71 comments" a second or two after page load.
- rincewind 17y agoOdd. I generally only pull in a few comments a day—and most of those are fairly constructive—even when they are critical. Something was wrong. half of the comments on that post are just stuff like "great post. thank you.". To the other half he replies with snark. Somehow this blog post is the opposite of the ideal HN discussion.
- Semiapies 17y agoSo, let me get this straight: 1) Some young graduate is bitter because he didn't fall into an awesome job right out of college. 2) His blog post about that was somehow worth someone linking it here, and people getting pissy about it. 3) He's followed it up. 4) That follow-up is somehow worth a huge debate here between people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism and people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism. Seriously? "Graduate unhappy about not being given job" is not news. Complaints about the "young generation" are not news. Talk about how the "old system" that handed out jobs has "broken down" is not news. These are stories that are older than many of the people posting here. Maybe a discussion of why anyone in 2009 goes through life with 1950s-vintage ideas of how the world works is in order, but that seems under-examined.
- grellas 17y agoThe truly limiting aspect of this article is the author's assumption that a person can be typed as believing anything philosophically simply because of what he does or what he has or has not achieved. This incorrectly assumes that one's belief in something being true cannot vary from a particular life perspective. Can a student be a libertarian even though he has yet to accomplish much in life? Can a wealthy mogul believe in communism even though he is positively dripping in filthy lucre? Not according to the author's (implied) premise and yet we know that in both cases the answer is yes. It is the premise that is false. Thus, the author basically answers his critics by slipping in, sub silento, an ad hominem attack to the effect that only an unthinking person who happens to have gotten quick financial success in life can possibly be a libertarian. The unexpressed corollary to this is that no one could otherwise possibly be so stupid as to believe in a libertarian philosophy. I am not defending any particular philosophy in saying this; just noting the below-the-belt mode of argumentation. I think this is why it can rub people wrong even if points made along the way might otherwise be interesting to consider.