Why?
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Slashdot: Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians?
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Because smart people ask “why?” and that’s the most lethal question for the Powers that be, in all of human history…
I would suggest that information technology folks tend toward libertarianism since they recognize that no simple solution exists for any complex system. And, no central planner can ever hope to understand all that is inherent in even one complex system, let alone the universe of systems.
I would say that “nerds” have been bullied their whole life for being a minority type of person, the worst of it coming inside the mandatory attendance government indoctrination factories.
When someone tries to convince them that the government protects the weak, what can they do but mock them?
Because nerds recognize their only hope of getting hot women is to become unusually successful and they realize their chances of becoming successful are greater the freer the economy.
Or is the real fact of life is that Libertarianism is mostly known over the Internet and therefore nerds are more likely to stumble across Libertarianism than non-nerds? I said before I hadn’t heard of Libertarianism outside of the Internet, well except for Civil Libertarians.
LOL. Poindexter has it. It’s a kind of sexual Darwinism. All the nerds who didn’t realize the necessity of a free market to attract the female of the species failed to pass on their genes and became extinct.
Poindexter and Justin:
Women who make a career out of finding a husband with a prestigious job and fat bank balance frequently find themselves at age 50 being replaced with younger versions of themselves.
They aren’t. Nerds are intellectuals, the people who brought us socialism. They typically think they know the right way to do things, if only people would listen to them.
Your average Joe, on the other hand, just wants to mind his own business, and respects other people’s property. IMO, more average people are libertarians than any other group, although very few of them know it.
In my experience, there are no more “nerd” libertarians than there are of any other type. But then, I don’t work in IT, so maybe I just don’t know.
However, I would argue that someone of above-average intelligence and imagination would be capable not only of seeing Big Government for the massive failure it is, but also envisioning an alternative. In addition, people who work in IT likely have experience with how a market functions before government intervention–that is to say, just fine.
I think it’s because Libertarian ideals are very basic and uncomplicated. Most nerds and IT people believe in the KISS Principle (keep it simple stupid). What could be less complicated than you and I creating laws that protect our Lives, our Liberties, and our Property? Nothing less and nothing more.
Daniel, I’d say it’s more a matter of libertarian principles having been simplified to be more easily communicated to the populace at large. For anyone interested in discussing them in-depth, they are anything but simple.
Probably because “nerds” rebelled as teenagers/young adults against the prevailing norm (being socialism-lite) to its opposite, being libertarianism.
Not dissimilar to the 60′s, except opposite in ideology.
Who is more libertarian, Lisa or Bart Simpson? Which one is the nerd? On the show, you’ll notice Lisa’s consistent reverence toward authority figures, especially “civic” ones, which derives directly from the attention she gets from her public-school teachers as a high-performing student. This is basically the crux of Robert Nozick’s article “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism.” We might as well call it The Lisa Simpson Syndrome.
I mean, look at the NPR crowd; they’re all nerds, yet hardly libertarian.
Not to mention in ‘prohibition’ episode Lisa Simpson is shown to be a Legalist. (Which I’m taking to mean that she believes in the law even though she is uncertain as to whether the law is good or not)
I work for a defense contractor in radar engineering. The politics of my co-workers are either full tilt Republican or Democrat. Generally as the education goes up, the left lean is steeper. Nearly all the Ph.D.s are Dems. I have not met anyone here who is a self-aware libertarian, though I’ve ‘converted’ a few by introducing them to this site, explaining my non-voter status and lending them books like “the incredible bread machine” and “economics in one lesson”.
I don’t think I’ve met any post-graduate libertarian. I’ve also worked in the military, broadcasting and telecommunications and, industry-wise, broadcasting is where I ran into the most libertarians, including a few celebrity surprises.
This may come as a shock to you, but the Simpsons is a work of fiction and no information about the nature of nerds may be gleaned from it.
I have been employed as a software engineer in the highly technical e-commerce consulting field for the last 3-4 years. Since then, I’ve known maybe one or two other libertarians or libertarian leaning people. So from my experience, I definitely can’t say this premise is correct. Generally I abstain from discussing politics with coworkers, so there may be more people than I am aware.
@Rob:
I am studying language teaching at a university in Quebec and you are correct in asserting that the higher the education a person has, the highest are the chances this person will lean to the “left” and/or lean more to the “left”.
I feel the reason for this is the false assumption that if you studied that much you just know how society works and how to make people happy more than they would themselves. I am the living proof that libertarians can and will make it to this education level, even in gross far-left and high governmental intervention states, but I would not count on the number of libertarians nor our attempts at using logic to persuade socialists. Although socialists say that they debate using logic and ideas what they really use are feelings, especially envy. While the benefits of socialism are self-evident to a mother on welfare benefiting from the use of force on others through the government, its going to take much more than logic to persuade the masses that freedom is worth more than the money from your neighbor’s pockets because most people do not deal in terms of logic but feelings and the immediate.
Moreover, I had a link to an article from a man who believed he found a link between software engineers and libertarianism. Have a pleasent read:
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/whatmakes.html
-Yan Grenier (Not an intellectual- I hate this term- call me a curious man ‘stead)
I find the opposition I get to libertarian ideals is always about the need for “moderation”.
I may be able to persuade someone that some isolated policy, like the minimum wage, is hurtful to all parties affected, and boy is that an uphill battle. But if you try to argue a consistent approach of nonaggression, you get glassy eyed mantras: “no, you need someone to make laws”, or “no, we need to help the needy”, or ultimately, “your ideas are just too extreme, there have to be limits.”
To be honest, this impenetrable wall of social brinwashing is depressing. Literally, clinically, depressing. Sometimes its hard to believe the cause is anything but hopeless, that evil has won and is here to stay.
From what I’ve observed:
-Individuals involved in humanities and certain social sciences (e.g. sociology) tend to be more socialist. This is especially so with philosophy, in spite of its strong contingent of libertarian philosophers.
-Individuals involved in finance, economics, psychology, law etc. tend to be more likely to accept libertarian ideals. Individuals involved in industries such as fashion, IT etc. also may have libertarian proclivities, though I am very suspicious of the “more nerds are libertarians” argument.
-Individuals in the hard sciences and mathematics tend to be more neutral, but also likely to accept libertarian principles. Funnily enough, many mathematicians I’ve met tend to agree with Austrians on method.
This is based on personal experience, so I am sure I might be wrong on some things (except with regard to economists/finance experts.)
I tend to think that average Joe is better potential libertarian material because he might have escaped the heavy indoctrination that intellectuals undergo at modern universities.
Here is a page showing tables from studies on the political leanings in academia.
Interesting, but it’d be good to see how those figures change if independents are added in.
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