Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians? 1565
BrendanMcGrail writes "Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views, but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"
More than just "left" and "right" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:that's quite a leading question. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:source? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:source? (Score:2, Informative)
I am guessing the reason for more libertarians amongst the geek is due to a higher then average IQ. It has probably been observed how how corrupt the parties become. Nazism started off in socialism name, but really was a far right-wing party (called fascism in Italy). "Communist" countries has never been communistic. Red china and USSR were pure totalitarianisms with command economies. Even now, red china remains totalitaianstic but with a capitalism mixed in. EU is a weak federal gov, with a libertarian bent, while nearly all the underling nations are very socialistic. And in America, we are heading towards a totalitarian. I know that many will argue against this. The republicans will run around and mod this down and say that our spying is needed to preserve our bill of rights and our deficit to balance the budget, and of course, the occuptation of Iraq to preserve peace. Likewise the dems will say that republicans are to blame and will then back W's request to stay in Iraq, all MORE spying, and then balance the budget by increasing spending (to their credit, they are trying to increase taxs to offset that; i.e. same deficit, not increased).
The simple fact is that I LIKED the idea of communism, but it will NEVER work. Man (not mankind) is still to barbaric and will strive to dominate over each other. The original bill of rights need to be expanded, and our constitution to be changed slightly. In particular, we need to punish more of our leaders who do illegal actions. For example, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and now W. ALL BELONG in prison. Nixon for the cover-up, reagan for many things but just the Iran-COntra and october surprise are enough, Clinton for perjury(though I believe that we should never have asked him about that; but he did perjure himself), and W, well, just his illegal spying should be enough (but there are PLENTY of other illegal actions from him). The only real choice that we have is Libertarianism.
Re:Because we all know (Score:3, Informative)
Look, you want to understand quantum field theory, then no child left behind ain't gonna work for you. It's not about making sure everyone feels like a winner.
Re:The same reason so many are socialists (Score:4, Informative)
There are no socialist governments left in Europe.
Re:Correlation, not causation (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, the solutions they come up with are often very pragmatic and direct, with very concrete proposals like "getting rid of farm subsidies", "striking down laws forbidding the creation of competing currencies", "selling all the public schools". Some of them even have gradual solutions that involve pragmatic changes in current institutions.
It's just that they don't come to it pragmatically: they don't start by thinking "let's see what kind of powers the President has, or what amount of budget this agency can save, etc.", but instead by thinking "how does the whole mess works, and where is the problem", taking a global view from above, seeing the source of the problem, and only then trying to find something that could realistically act upon it.
"I always thought that whole MBTI thing was just a convenient way to poo-poo rational thought as "just another way of thinking", as though solving problems though emotions could possibly be as successful as solving problems though sound rationality and careful observation."
I don't think you understand the untold principle behind "solving problems through emotions": it's not about actually solving the problem, in the general sense of "solve", but rather to feel better about there being a problem. See for example the immigrants problem in the US, or how people pour vast amounts of money into foreign aid schemes that hardly help the third-world. It's not about the solution, but how you feel about it.
They don't (Score:3, Informative)
Very few of anyone, nerds or not, lean towards the Libertarian end of the spectrum. This may be due to most people catching onto the inherent contradiction in thinking that (a) many people think like they do and (b) many people ought to think like they do. A CATO article about the 2004 and 2006 elections makes lots of noise about numbers like 10% and 20% for all kinds of reasons they seem to enjoy, before finally admitting a Rassmusen poll showed the real numbers to be about 2%. If the numbers varied as widely as CATO claimed for the various reasons given, the error bar would be so large as to make it all meaningless. I think this is the case.
The CATO article even tried to claim Jon Stewart for their own: "In a revealing exchange, Jon Stewart recently hosted neoconservative Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard on the Daily Show, often considered the de facto television news program for younger viewers. Kristol called Stewart an "Upper West Side liberal." To which Stewart quickly responded, "No, I'm a downtown libertarian."
I am reminded of Jon Stewart's commercial of a few years back, talking about people getting their news from The Daily Show. He ended the commercial by yelling "DON'T DO THAT. WE MAKE IT UP." He's a comedian. His show is on Comedy Central. File this as an example under the "they think people think like they do" part of the problem, along with CATO's over-confidence in badly done statistics.
I suspect another error in thinking, that of "if you criticize, you must disagree" has kicked in by now. Nothing I've said indicates my own political position. I've found many Libertarians to be particularly susceptible to this problem despite their claim to individualism in thinking. It makes Libertarianism look for all the world like a dogma of open mindedness. Still, that's way more fun than the dogma of narrow mindedness most others seem to fall into.
Not many, just loud... (Score:4, Informative)
You're probably right about the affluence argument though, a disproportionate number seem to be the "I got mine" crowd, who know that they will be on the top of the pyramid, benefiting rather than suffering from the vast inequality that libertarianism will cause.
Re:Rigidly defined areas of Doubt and Uncertainity (Score:2, Informative)
That means no welfare, social security, free/reduced lunch programs, universal health care, special programs for minorities, etc. That's what prevents Libertarians from joining up with the Left. I think the drum circle thing was a joke.
Re:Since when are libertarians left wing? (Score:5, Informative)
"To put it succinctly, the libertarian believes in the freedom of individuals to pursue their lives as they see fit, as long as they cause no harm to others, with minimal governmental interference."
Quoted from
Re:Because we all know (Score:3, Informative)
You're right. You're not only throwing away your vote, you're ceeding responsibility to select the next elected official, and encouraging said official to simply ignore you.
Especially if you only vote every four years.
Americans who belong to third parties are exercising their Constitutional right of free association. Americans who vote for a third party's luck-to-get-one-percent candidates, though, are just being fools.
Quick Point (Score:5, Informative)
So Mod Parent Down, Mod Grand Parent Up.
I don't agree with everything that the Grandparent said, however he was well spoken and backed up his statements with evidence (however anecdotal).
Re:Because we all know (Score:4, Informative)
I would vote Republican every time if people like Tom Coburn or Ron Paul typified a Republican. Unfortunately, they do not.
In fact, I think those two would be quite at home in the Libertarian party, except that they'd never get elected.
Re:The same reason so many are capitalists (Score:3, Informative)
But I'll explain/demonstrate/illustrate/etc. anyway, 'cause I'm nice: The idielistic philosophy of capitalism is 'The market will fix EVERYTHING!'
Pollution? The market will fix that, don't bother looking at the entire history of the market to see that it systematically doesn't, just believe! Healthcare? The market! Racism? The market! It's like god, but it lets you buy your way into heaven [wikipedia.org].
Re:Because we all know (Score:4, Informative)
>
> I have just spent way too much time googling for a comic that someone once linked in a
>
>It was hilarious, and an extremely to-the-point comment on the shortcomings of Rand's "philosophy".
You're after Bob the Angry Flower [angryflower.com].
BTAF is one of the funniest web comics I've ever read, but Stephen Notley mustn't have read the book too closely. The cartoon's still funny, but you have to ignore the fact that he got it precisely wrong.
*** spoiler warning ***
One of the key plot points in Atlas Shrugged is how John Galt (and other characters) managed to hide themselves when recruiting followers from the rest of society. They did so by working precisely the sorts of menial jobs that the BTAF cartoon implies they couldn't. They gave society what it wanted: their labor. They withheld from society what it needed: their mind.
Atlas Shrugged is about what happens when genius goes on strike. You can pass laws that force a man to work, but you can't pass laws that force him to invent. Suppose you're a nuclear researcher. If you're a capitalist (in the Randroid, "never take a dime from the government, and never owe it a dime in taxes" sense), a nuclear power plant provides you a much better return on investment. A nuclear bomb, by contrast, is only useful to a non-profit operation. To a capitalist, nuking a city is a terrible waste of potential (or actual!) customers, employees, and factories. To a government, it's just a policy decision to be made for the greater good.
Would WW2 have been lost (apart from a few million more casualties in the invasion of Japan) had the nuclear scientists of the day simply gone on strike, working at burger joints, riveting aircraft together, or casting bullets and turning shell casings on lathes, and passing on the really interesting jobs until after the war was over?
(Where Rand fails is that although she's half-right -- you can't compel genius to invent -- she's just as half-wrong, in that one of the hallmarks of genius is that not even the genius can compel himself not to invent. People like Teller had to invent the H-Bomb, even though WW2 was over, and the Cold War had barely begun. Open source developers had to invent Linux, GCC, and so on, and would have invented something much like it even in the absence of non-Free UNIXes and Microsoft.)
As for the literary criticism, it's valid -- but only up to the point. Stop assuming it's a novel, and start assuming it's a philosophical system masquerading as a novel, and the cardboard characters become much more forgivable. Much like the animals in Animal Farm, they're not there to entertain you, they're there to make a point. The scariest thing is that the talking heads on the TV sound more and more like her villains (and Orwell's) every day.
Re:Because we all know (Score:2, Informative)
You can't seem to tell the difference between democratically-legislated protection of a common resource (like clean air and water, which you cannot live without), and widescale political terror.
You write: "So called Communist regimes of our recent past and our current future have not hesitated, what makes you different?"
You may like to note that the people advocating social and environmetal legislation don't seem to be gearing up for a violent revolution and the establishment of a one-party regime (at least in the west). Your attribution of such or willingness to them seems, at least to me, highly arbitary.
Please note that the "communist" dictatorships didn't crop up in societies with a democratic tradition. They rose from the ashes of colonial Vietnam, Tsarist Russia, and Imperial China. In other words, one type of dictatorship was replaced by a different one. As for those democracies that preceded the "communist" regimes in eastern Europe, they were simply conquered by the USSR.
Socialism tends to develop very differently in established democracies, not least because it does not develop under terms of violent repression.
Re:Because we all know (Score:1, Informative)
Fed was created in 1913. I'm not sure if ANYBODY should be grateful for fed for destroying 95% value of the dollar. If you want to know, why majority of internet is libertarian, you should read, what many people did read: http://www.mises.org/money.asp [mises.org] .
As for me: I have read a lot of books about economics and I am damn sure that we would be better of without 95% of the governement. (I'm quite confident our grandchildren would be better of without 100% of government, but the transition period of the last 5% would be probably very long and painful). I would prefer ALL PRIVATE schools for my children, ALL PRIVATE health care for me, private roads. As most libertarians would. They accept, that if you want to have something, you have to pay for it. And that it is immoral to force other people to pay it for you.
Re:The same reason so many are socialists (Score:3, Informative)
You mention one out of SIX exceptions to that - but yes, in general you don't get to be "just like the public school, only more exclusive". Alternative non-religious schools like Steinerskolen (Waldorf-schools in English), Montessori schools etc. are permitted among others and have been for ages.
Unemployment is high, and many find it difficult to get a job.
Right.. because 2.7% is high.
There are lots of problems, but "Norway is the best country in the world" is a truthiness which the people swallow with hook,line and sinker because the state sponsored media tells them so.
No, because the UN says so.
try saying it isn't all Israel's fault and sit back and wait until you're branded "capitalist" , "zionist", "racist" , "republican" or similar.
"republican"? Never ever heard anyone say that in Norway, doesn't exist.
It's almost so I wonder if you actually live here or not. The one thing you're right about though is the daycare centers. Personally I think that's a covert "deprivatization" of the daycare centers. Wouldn't exactly surprise me, since there's a really strong equality line of thinking... everybody from rich to poor is supposed to go to the same daycares, same schools etc. and get the same opportunities. And for the most part, it works out fairly ok. It's not all roses but compared to the cesspool in the US where anything public is for whoever couldn't pay for anything better, well it's actually quite good. Far from perfect, but you got to remember what you're comparing it to.
Re:source? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure you should use Germany as an example of a robust economy. In many ways it's a model of eurosclerosis, and the Germans themselves acknowledge it.
Granted, Germany had very impressive growth during the 1960s. However that was widely acknowledged to be the result of their having adopted a policy of very limited intervention in the economy during the immediate postwar period (Freiburg school etc).
For the last 15 years, Germany has had real growth rates very similar to it's neighbors. None of them could be characterized as "accelerating".
The only successful economy in Western Europe recently has been Ireland, with a real growth rate more than twice that of Germany for over a decade now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Germany's mediocre economic performance can be attributed to socialized medicine. In all likelihood, socialized medicine wouldn't have that much of an impact on the economy, one way or the other. Nevertheless, I don't think Germany is the best example to demonstrate your point.
Re:source? (Score:2, Informative)