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Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Great article, with some glorious lines:

“It’s capitalism shrouded in the fake hippie rhetoric of ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ because it’s uncool to just say ‘Hey, we’re crushing it and making money.’”

“Some of us actually, as naïve as it sounds, came here to make the world a better place. And we did not succeed. We made some things better, we made some things worse, and in the meantime the libertarians took over, and they do not give a damn about right or wrong. They are here to make money.”

“In the real Silicon Valley, as on the show, there is a cohort of people who have a real sense of purpose and actually think they’re going to change the world, and then there’s a cohort of people who say farcical things about their apps that they clearly don’t believe themselves.”

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and in the meantime the libertarians took over, and they do not give a damn about right or wrong. They are here to make money.

What a load of bullshit. First of all, libertarians have hardly "taken over" anything. If anything, the SV scene (as seen from the outside anyway) seems markedly less libertarian now than it did 15 years ago. Back when Slashdot was full of techno-libertarian types, cyberpunks and crypto-anarchists were spending gobs of time planning how to use technology to enable the stateless society, and rich libertarian leaning folks like John Gilmore were suing the government over the right to travel without showing ID... back then, the SV technologist scene felt very libertarian indeed. Now, if anything, it seems that the progressives have taken over. You still hear a little chatter about Internet freedom and the need for strong crypto, and there is the crypto-currency crowd who have actually gotten somewhere... but by and large, the rhetoric you hear out of SV seems to have skewed in a distinctively statist direction the past decade or two.

Heck, just go back through the archives here at HN and compare the talk back at the beginning, to the talk now... you can't help but be struck by the profound shift that's occurred. Now it's commonplace for people to criticize capitalism, denigrate the value of hard work (after all, all success is just "luck"), promote more active government involvement in markets, etc. Heck, I guess you'd almost be hard pressed to find a libertarian on here anymore... or maybe most of us just don't bother saying anything because we know we'll get shouted down (and/or downvoted to oblivion) by the statists.

Beyond that, the essence of libertarianism is absolutely to care about "right and wrong", as expressed by the Zero Aggression Principle. And libertarianism itself doesn't say anything about making money... there are plenty of "hippie libertarians" who don't give a shit about making money. IOW, just because somebody is a Capitalist or is concerned with making money, doesn't automatically mean they are a "libertarian."

How statist are startup empires built around the idea of flouting regulations? How statist are Uber, AirBnB, and the other members of sharing economy?

Granted, perhaps you can label them crony capitalists or some other epithet instead, for using government failings to their advantage instead of trying to do away with government (though some, such as Travis Kalanick, are notoriously big Ayn Rand fans). But when the folk definition for "libertarian" these days usually rests on the side of "-capitalist", and not "anarcho" - more Koch brothers (and Peter Thiel), than Gary Johnson (and Richard Stallman). When people usually talk about civil liberties groups, and Pirate parties, and hacker collectives, they think anarchists. When people talk about "neoliberals", or objectivist billionaires, they think libertarians.

Have a problem with that? Take the label back. Work to fix the public perception.

Last I heard, Richard Stallman is closer to left-anarchism than nightwatchman-state-capitalism.

>What a load of bullshit

It isn't bullshit, just out of touch. That did happen. But it happened 20 years ago. Since then the leftists have taken over the way the libertarians did before. I can hardly fault people who have been away from the tech world for 20 years for basing their ideas on how things were 20 years ago.

> And libertarianism itself doesn't say anything about making money... there are plenty of "hippie libertarians" who don't give a shit about making money.

And yet... there aren't a lot of women or minorities in the libertarian movement, and despite your 'hippie' comment, most of the voices are from people with well-paying jobs.

Libertarianism doesn't mention money per se, but the effect of it is that people who already have money and network effects don't have to share their bounty.

Hell, I remember arguing with one libertarian who was crystal clear on property rights, and that property could never be taken away if you didn't sell it yourself; the government had no right to take land (yadda yadda, Zero Aggression Principle) and any land transfers after that are moot because it would have been taken by force.

Okay, says I, then give your property back to the Native American tribe it was taken from. The rhetoric then changed to 'oh, I could only give it to a person who could show that they owned the exact plot of land that I had'. What, the specific plot of land that is only described by the entity that violently took it? That communal ownership that was tribal lands meant that somehow you could claim individual ownership over it anyway?

This is what libertarianism means to me, and to a lot of what you deride as 'statists'. It's a lot of superficially nice-sounding rhetoric, which boils down to "I get to keep all my stuff, and don't have to share. So what if my bounty is built on the backs of others, my stuff is my stuff".

"I get to keep all my stuff, and don't have to share. So what if my bounty is built on the backs of others, my stuff is my stuff".

OTOH, I'd say it's closer to "I'm happy to share with others, as long as I do it on my own terms, without somebody threatening me into it, and furthermore, even if I don't 'share', I contribute to the overall good simply by participating as a productive member of the economy". Consider what Adam Smith had to say:

"But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion."

Now that's not to say that there aren't Libertarians out there with a "fuck you, got mine" attitude. Then again, there are people with that attitude who aren't Libertarians as well.

What happens when 'my own terms' are heavily asymmetric in the speaker's own favour? How often would 'my own terms' be against the speaker's own favour?

We've also been through times when people "contributed to the overall good simply by participating as productive members of the economy". It was awful, and is why we have welfare programs these days. Private charity and/or trickle-down economics just do not cut the mustard, especially for individuals with chronic or ongoing problems.

> But though this principle ultimately provides [the beggar] with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for

If you define 'necessities of life' as merely 'keeps a heartbeat going', then that paragraph will probably make sense to you. Most people would also consider shelter against the cold, clothes that fit and are in good order, and regular food as being necessities, none of which are needed to keep a heartbeat.

The other thing is that people's own self-interest is rarely thought about in the long-term. It takes a lot of education to plan out far ahead, which is one of the reasons why the wealthy stay wealthy. People aren't the perfectly informed, perfectly rational actors that these kind of paragraphs (and libertarian ideology) suggest.

So, you talked to an idiot whoclaimed to represent a certain idea and ended up believing his claim?

Awesome, you've done both a No True Scotsman and a Strawman fallacy in just the one relatively short sentence.

No True Scotsman requires a non falsifiable hypothesis. And how exactly did I construct a strawman?

HN has not become explicitly more statist or less libertarian. More to the point, it has become far far more pro-establishment as its posters have seen success. The fact that progressivism is the zeitgeist of the establishment is ancillary to migration of poor hackers into establishment social classes.

The problem I see is that many of the most prominent media libertarians are far from the "hippie libertarians" that still have the "anarcho" in their anarcho-capitalist philosophy.

Exhibit A I would point to is Lew Rockwell's blogging group, a prominent self-proclaimed "libertarian" and "anarcho-capitalist". Sure, they have a strong disdain for "The System" (items like "Wall Street", "the elite", police corruption, spy agencies) combined with the standard right-wing (they love "market forces", a bit ironic given the Wall Street hate; they hate any social redistribution, hate environmental regulations, etc.). Unfortunately, I think their true colors have shown recently, in that they have shown quite a bit of love for strong "macho" leaders like Putin and Trump.

In reality, I believe that this group is fascist-capitalist: they are right-wingers that don't like the messiness of democracy and laws and rules that much (unless said laws and rules benefit them, of course). No true philosophical libertarian would support strongmen leaders, for fairly obvious reasons. But just like the word "liberal" has been perverted in America (it's not classic liberalism any more!), "libertarian" has been perverted into this capitalist-at-all-cost strongmen personality in the public mind, because unfortunately too many of the loudest "libertarians" are.

As far as SV goes, you are right that (from a distance) it appears less libertarian than 15 years ago. It seems interesting that one of the biggest pushes for "basic income" comes from this crowd for instance. But I can also see why the shift happened.

In addition to the TV Show a lot of the companies in SV have their own website, which absolutely nails the essence of what they're mocking (Warning: spoilers if you aren't caught up):

http://www.piedpiper.com/ (complete with a blog) http://www.hooli.com/ http://www.bachmanity.com/ http://www.coderag.com/ http://raviga.com/ http://www.endframesystems.com/ http://drinkhomicide.com/ https://github.com/Stitchpunk

"Smaller files take up less space on your computer. Less space = more stuff. More stuff = better life!"

For some reason I just couldn't suppress my laughter reading this...

Raviga's website is gold, here's hoping Fixxie Tech makes an appearance on the show.

Reviga's website has a bonus Bioshock reference: https://i.imgur.com/Eks4tuu.png

Except the "beneath" part, I think that's more of a reference to Peter Thiel and Blueseed/Seasteading.

Who said Bioshock isn't a reference to Peter Thiel?

I think the 'beneath' part (and then calling it out in parentheses) is precisely what makes it more than just a Thiel reference. Very clever!

Hm. I'm a libertarian in silicon valley - and while I'm not opposed to making money, I don't care that much about it (I've made a net of 9k this year, I run a nonprofit that seeks to develop open-source anticancer drugs). And my experience is that libertarians very much care about right and wrong, it's just they take a slightly more absolutist perspective about what makes something right or wrong, resulting in misunderstandings when what others percieve to be a method to "right a wrong" abuts against libertarian principle "primitives" and those others can't concieve of any other way to achieve that desired end.

To be fair, there are libertarians (notoriously PT, although i think he's been lightening up a bit) who do sometimes act as if they see making money as the only right.

I'm starting to think that Thiel is mislabeled as libertarian. I mean, he's a delegate for Trump, no? What libertarian could possibly support Trump? I'm starting to think Thiel is one of those people who falls into a category that doesn't really have a good name, but has a vague resemblance to "libertarian" and so people call him a libertarian. At the very least, I am doubtful that he's a principled libertarian who subscribes to the NAP.

I think it's just how colloquial definitions have taken over: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11873396

He's fairly closely aligned with the neoreactionary / dark enlightenment movement which does have some elements of libertarianism but is more focused on the rejection of democracy, taxes, and anything approaching egalitarianism.

He wrote an essay for Cato a few years ago that spells out his views fairly specifically:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

There are some stark quotes, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" or "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In that sense, his support for Trump makes more sense.

Good point. This whole "dark enlightenment" stuff seems so ridiculous to me though. :-(

Those are the parts of that essay that people always quote -- which is odd, since they're just statistical observations about what the electorate will support. The real meat of the essay is what Thiel proposes we do about it: not some political project to seize power or disenfranchise people who disagree, but a few ideas for how to sidestep politics with technology that will make freedom easier.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom.

He then goes on to talk about the internet, space colonization, and seasteading. I'm not really seeing the neoreactionary angle here. Am I missing something?

The part where he says giving half the population the right to vote made impossible his perverse fantasy? Substitute "blacks" or "Jews" in that statement if his fascist leanings need to be made more clear.

The controversy of the quotes isn't around the statistical truth of what they say, it's that they reject the "democratist" assertion of a monotonically causal chain of more voting -> more democracy -> better. For "democratists", freedom lost to democratic decisions pretty much by definition isn't really lost.

Ancient and not-so-ancient democracies have predicated the right to vote on such things as military service, land ownership, not being on welfare and other things. The idea is that voters should have a substantial stake in the republic (not saying that either predicate is a good, much less perfect, proxy for such a stake), not merely inhabiting it. Returning to that, rejecting "democratism" is the reactionary part.

Heck man, I'm a "democratist" -- in the sense that I hold democracy to be a sacred value. But I don't beleive in that causal chain; and I probably don't beleive in the less sloppy alterntives you might think of given time.

Also freedom-first thinkers like Thiel (and me for that matter) can just say: sure I believe in democracy -- and the most effective way to get it is almost alway to let people rule themselves.

You can argue that that is playing with definitions -- but every republic since Athens that was worth a damn found ways to give individuals their space to do stuff that other people didn't like.

The concept of escape is of primary importance to neoreactionaries.

For the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative.

http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-b...

It's of importance to anyone with a political ideology they think stands no chance of being voted in on a large scale. Again, I'm not seeing more than a superficial resemblance.

My gut feeling is his support for Trump has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with throwing a gigantic wrench in the works.

In the best case it leads to a realignment of the electorate.

In the worst case a lot of things go to hell, but he's a billionaire so he can always just up and move.

I think Thiel supports trump because he wants trump to blow everything up. He says women voting was bad for his political block (libertarians). He thinks we shouldn't have got enforcing things like safety - instead just sue people who wronged you. just like he did to gawker.

I think that supporting Trump on alt-right grounds while once claiming to support the "NAP" style of "freedom" is a textbook example of being so sharp you cut yourself. One doesn't obtain freedom from state intervention of any kind by putting an egotistical fascist strongman into power.

Perhaps he has changed his views over time. Many libertarians have realized that NAP is self destructive and foolish and have moved away from libertarianism.

I meant that thiel has over time gone from an ayn-rand style objectivist libertarian to a squishier on "voluntary collectivism" principled stance that aligns with the nap more than less

> What libertarian could possibly support Trump?

A pragmatic one.

A pragmatic libertarian would be supporting Gary Johnson.

“It’s capitalism shrouded in the fake hippie rhetoric of ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ because it’s uncool to just say ‘Hey, we’re crushing it and making money.’”

One nice thing about the financial industry is that they generally seem to operate without this sort of pretext. Or the pretext is so flimsy that it's easily ignored. Or, if you're a glass-half-empty kind of person, they've lost enough of their humanity to not give a shit anymore. :/

I used to think honesty was always better than hypocrisy. Now I feel that it's not so simple. Hypocrisy can be a motivator for a bad actor to not go all-in on the bad actions (lest they be called out for this hypocrisy).

That's a false conflict.

Building new profitable companies and industries is actually how the world has been made into a vastly better place the last 250 years.

I think that while these lines are insightful, they kind of miss the point of an important belief that is often shared by libertarians: that in the end, following self-interest is the most effective way to help the common good.

> "Am I being selfish?"

> I pulled my blankie tighter around my shoulders, making a mental note the owner would require more bitcoin this month as I'd gone over my allotted 36 hours of blankie time.

> "No, it's for the greater good."

Jokes aside, you've lit on the fundamental part of this disagreement: In theory libertarians believe that; in practice it's hard to know what someone really believes and easy to see what they're doing. Speaking broadly, some people disagree that the actions of libertarian people are helping anybody else unless by accident. Take for example a straw libertarian who buys water rights in drought-stricken regions and sells the water back to the people living in those regions. This person claims publicly (and may or may not truly believe) they are helping people conserve their water. After all, the free market will quickly establish its true cost. To people who think this is fundamentally wrong, it doesn't even matter what the straw libertarian believes -- if it walks like vampire sucking you dry, it might be.

Interesting example. In it, how exactly did this water right transaction take place - was our strawman libertarian the only one trying to buy water rights? If so, why? May be he foresaw drought earlier than his competitors on the market - and in doing so, is rewarded for his climate prediction skills and willingness to investment in infrastructure?

If he wasn't the only one, how exactly did he outbid his competitors? I'm asking these questions because this example doesn't seem realistic in libertarian effective free market paradise - on the contrary, this kind of situation arises with some regulated monopoly, not with a freely traded good. And just let me clarify for clarity, paying bribes to get purchase preference (which, let us be realistic, is the most common scenario here) is certainly _not_ a part of libertarian ideology.

Well, the straw libertarian might be richer than god and the only person with access to enough capital to buy all the water rights at once. He's a straw person, he can be a lot of things. I'm aware it's not the most plausible example but I tried to pick an obvious one to easily illuminate the other side of the argument. I'm sure you could cut my examples down like Scotsmen (one down, n to go!), so I'll leave the remainder to your imagination.

> some people disagree that the actions of libertarian people are helping anybody else unless by accident

Are those the same people that can't seem to snap out of only caring about good intentions, and shrugging off bad policies (none mentioned, none forgotten) as long as they were well-intentioned? And conversely, tend to view as suspicious improvements when they happened motivated by pursuing profit, and not some higher purpose?

I don't know, your group of people seems very specifically selected by comparison, which would imply it's at most a subgroup.

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