Ask HN: Homogeneity of HN readers in terms of political views?
Are most of the hackers leftist/anticapitalist/cryptoanarchists? Most founders in SV capitalists? Do you need to be like that to get VC funding? Do these groups get along fine together?
There seem to be anarcho-capitalist, social-green-leftist, pro-state surveillance, anti-state surveillance, pro-(progressive-)tax people, voluntarists, etc.
I am sometimes offended or even horrified by some of the views expressed (like the surveillance apologists, or drone-war fascists), but overall I think HN diversity is a good thing. Only group bias is towards tech.
I genuinely don't understand that.
But then GCHQ has a big bunch of data that they rarely access under (we're told) strict controls. So, I'm less bothered by the gathering of that data than other people. I would be angry if GCHQ started grepping it for stuff that isn't nationally important.
Since there are particular talking points that we are biased to signalling on in a technology/startup culture, we're more likely to being perceived on political axises linked to these talking points: surveillance, regulation, capitalism, freedom, anarchism, etc.
However, this doesn't mean that we don't also belong to our respective local communities and have views which we do not disclose to each other (for reasons of lack of interest and not just self-censorship - though yes, some groups have membership rules which involve affording others the perception of seeing members hold particular political positions.)
A completely subjective point that I'd like to make is that for various reasons those of us that identify with hacker culture are prone to disliking social/organisational structures and norms we perceive to be stupid, and also many of us enjoy intellectual exercises/displays. This probably gives us some deconstructive and fringe tendencies with the kinds of politics we associate ourselves with.
I personally find a few of the views expoused in the neoreactionary movement insightful/useful/evil/good and I enjoy reading their deconstructions. I think this is a reaction to my previous leftism. It's not something I necessarily agree with, it's just my need to deconstruct and elevate myself over everything I once believed in. I'm not trying to denigrate myself here, I see something similar in everybody and as I write this don't really feel the need to seek a holier posture.
Outside of my own signalling subcultures, my politics is actually one of diplomacy. I have a couple of principles relating to empathy, sociology/economics, long-term thinking and the acceptance and good treatment of others positions, emotions, characters, and roles. I will side strongly on the side of anybody that I believe is towing the line on these principles, but otherwise prefer to acquiesce to whatever configuration social reality is enacting.
1 - Smart people tend to have differing views, and be capable of expressing them.
2 - Really smart people tend to continually learn, so expect those views to change.
3 - Smart types generally counter an argument without too many obvious logical fallacies, so more gets said here than elsewhere (generally)
I doubt there'll ever be a mass consensus here, and that suits me fine. I've learnt a LOT from you guys!
I will say that I'm more comfortable expressing my true opinions here, than on a site like 'Reddit'.
Emotionally: Reddit feels mass market now, HN feels more genuine and soulful in a sense.
EDIT: I really hang out here for the community, not interested in VC related stuff - perhaps quite a few of us are here for that.
HN seems to be the thick root of the long tail. Over time, it's less about intellectualism and more about group conformity. People just take comfort in belonging to an ostensibly intellectually elite group and use that as a proxy for real intellectualism. This is why there's a new norm of down voting to disagree. Now there's flagging to disagree. Also, there's now so much posting, new headlines that lack an up voting cabal have to be hand-promoted by mods to have a hope of being seen.
HN has been overrun by many who don't understand intellectual integrity and operate on the premise that it's allowed if the mechanisms allow it. Pretty much, it's now reddit as of a few years ago.
HN readers skew young, so a fair guess would be that HN mostly has the politics of the young demographic. I know a lot of the SV-types are of the same U.S. political party. Whether or not that skews their decision-making is beyond me. Since funding in general is just herd activity, I'd bet it did.
Having said that, I've always heard that there was a strong strain of libertarianism in the hacker community. The Thiel fellowship comes to mind. As a libertarian myself, I'm too close to the subject to judge. I suspect, however, there are a lot of Ayn Rand fans who are either out in the open or too clever to make their opinions known. Just a guess, though. (And I count those guys as separate from just the libertarian folks)
As for myself, out of the statist/capitalist debate, I like both sharing and trading, and I don't see why we can't have both. I think the sharing folks tend to be mushy-headed at times, and I think the trading folks tend to be hard-asses. In my mind, most of the huge improvements in our species, including language, society, government, and the rest, are based on freely trading things. Having said that, most of the things I hold dear -- family, friends, goodwill, living a decent life -- are based on sharing. I don't see a conflict here. Many do. [insert long discussion about how MSM and the net makes money by splitting us up into little groups and having us fight each other]
So I have no political affiliations. We're all clowns, regardless of the colours we wear. I have views and opinions and biases on certain issues, but I don't really care to choose a team.
The circus is absurd as it is without me choosing to wear a funny hat.
This is full of win. I will soon annoy everyone I know with this new mantra. Thanks!
(Of course, anything that explains everything explains nothing, but fundamentally the point is that life is absurd, and we'll have to acknowledge that- I think it was Albert Camus who wrote extensively about it in The Myth Of Sisyphus.)
So that means generally anti-surveillance (right-wing libertarian? progressive liberal?), pro-green energy (I guess that's left-wing?), pro-some social programs, but also against other wasteful ones.
The HN community is generally pretty smart, and thinks in terms that aren't as black and white like "right-wing" or "left-wing". And since it's a heavily Internet-involved community, it does tend to be a little more pro-freedom than pro-regulations (which is how the Internet has worked for the most part).
For years, Slashdot has tended to attract the more straight-laced conformist breed of hacker, and (at the risk of stereotyping) they tend to have steady, reliable engineering jobs at large established companies that do a steady business. This is not to say that Slashdot doesn't attract a broad readership, just that, in particular, that subset of hacker does seem to be present there and missing here. Mostly, because you'll find stories there, that they can comment on, with first-hand experience, which, for whatever reason, don't seem to catch on here on HN.
A good example might be a story about nuclear engineering, and you'll see comments from experienced nuclear engineers with military backgrounds and security clearances comment on nuclear engineering articles on Slashdot, that you wouldn't see here on HN, because in many ways that field has absolutely nothing to do with the startup scene. I'd still regard those people as "hackers" though.
The other strain I see: A belief that "disruption" is always good, and every industry is in need of it. Dangerous if you ask me.
SEA is a niche condition which health professionals believe originated in the second and third generation of SoCal entrepreneurs.
No problem in the world exists which a STEM graduate in possession of seed funding and a desire to change the world cannot solve.
Hell, it is his or her destiny no less.
Political problems that are also technical[1], on the other hand, are something for which we should make a exception. It could be said to that we have a duty to address those issues, because we (the greater population of technically-minded people) are the people with the necessary background to deal with the problem. Yes... we need a lot more practice in that area, and political discussions could be handled a lot better.
Avoiding politics on technical forums entirely means it will have to be handled (at least in part) be handled elsewhere by people who lack some of the background. Thats still wors some of the time, but we've all seen the cases where a ruling is made or law is passed that isn't even close to reality.
Put simply: we should really learn to clean up our own house, and that includes the hard and/or annoying political subjects.
[1] examples: "Net Neutrality", the NSA imbroglio, some copyright/patent stuff (DMCA)
The leftist/anticapitalist/crypto thing sound like an amalgamation of HN rather than spotting the diversity of opinion that tends to mash together to form a 'superorganism'. HN by user is probably left/crypto via comments, however, it would be a good idea to look at the highly upvoted posts from the leaderboard to find the 'silent majority' who support the top ranked posters via votes rather than comments.
(I may be misreading your question as it was not worded clearly, what does 'like that' mean, I assume )
Being a founder virtually requires one to be a capitalist... Yes, you need to be a 'capitalist' to receive Venture 'Capital', if you weren't a capitalist then you wouldn't own the venture, and would hence not be in a position to be funded.
The use of money to fund non-private / profit ventures is generally known as charity. Yes, many VCs fund charities... however it would be inappropriate to call a charitable donation venture capital.
Most economies are mixed economies and not purely capitalist or socialist. A great example is Tesla/SpaceX which would both be dead with out government funding AND venture capital.
It's also important to note the narratives in the culture, which fall far more along party lines rather than a left/right or capitalist/socialist analysis, and obviously try to paint things in a light that will be receptive to the audience.
(eg. GM can't survive with out government 'bailouts', but Tesla is an innovative private company receiving government 'loans' for it's work.)
Fundamentally people like the things they like and then come up with reasons to justify it.
Is being a founder of a startup make you automatically a capitalist?
Similarly, I'm pretty sure that there were plenty of powerful members of the communist party in the Soviet Union that simply saw it as the best opportunity they had.
I just...don't care. I have my own day to day life to live. What do I call myself? I don't know. I'm more curious how many young people feel the way I do, and what evolution it will have on politics as we age. (For reference, I personally am only 24).
On the other hand, threads about politics tend to produce shit discussions by inviting trolling and encouraging the 'I am this kind of snowflake' which facilitate it at one end of the spectrum and constitute it at the 'I don't give a fuck what you think' end.
This thread is no exception to the political threads produce low quality heuristic.
Voluntaryist, Libertarian, Panarchist, Polycrat, Anarcho-capitalist and Liber-agorist.
In that order.
Everything should be voluntary even taxes, liberty is the highest political end, all kinds of voluntary government are allowed, and as many rulers as people so voluntarily choose.
I personally prefer no rulers and private means of production in free markets, but that's my very own personal opinion. I respect everybody's opinion on the subject as long as they don't try to impose it on me.
Should the government intervene in a market? Any market? What about security? That's a market too.
Should it intervene in natural monopolies and monopolist behavior?
Should it make commerce easier? That requires intervening on banks.
Should it act against information asymmetry? That's intervention too, and required for capitalism to work.
Should it provide social nets so people can take risks? Without those power slowly consolidates, and capitalism slowly goes away.
Is it required? Why?
I don't see how that papers shows that State intervention is "required for capitalism to work".
I don't think company reputation works very well, but your experience may vary.
Some fans of Austrian economics will go further, sometimes all the way into anarcho-capitalism.
Other sorts of libertarians might be left-libertarian, anarchists, marxists, distributist, geo-libertarian, all sorts.
Distributism's core principle is that the ownership of productive property should be as widely distributed as possible, which is in contrast with both capitalism (where it's held by a relatively few wealthy shareholders) and socialism (where it's in the hands of political leaders).
To the extent that open-source software is geared toward benefiting the community of contributors, rather than generating a profit, and the resultant product is free for anyone to use and improve upon, I'd say that definitely has a distributist feel to it.
Yes, very socialist. Actually, outright communist.
Yeah, but vanguardism was part of an effort to divorce Communism (as articulated by Marx) from a key element of its theoretical foundation, in which it must be grounded in an advanced capitalism, some Communism without it is, just, well, Communism.
And that vanguardism opresses, and if given half a chance, slaughters those who don't get with the program. Here's the latest major US example: http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-p...
As a resident of a flyover state that's 80% powered by coal, I'm not looking forward to this this precipitous action that will cause my electric rates to "necessarily skyrocket"....
Vanguardism mostly distracted people with the (historically) brief ascendance of Leninism, which was most influential in states which lacked the prerequisites Marx identified for transition from capitalism to socialism on the way to acheiving the communist end state while the developed capitalist societies to which Marx's theories applied continued to change in the direction Marx predicted.
> And that vanguardism opresses, and if given half a chance, slaughters those who don't get with the program. Here's the latest major US example: http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-p....
I'm failing to see how:
(1) That has anything to do with "vanguardism", or
(2) that has anything to do with oppressing or slaughtering anyone.
(3) where the "necessarily skyrocket" quote comes from (its not from the linked page, doesn't seem to be from any linked documents, and doesn't seem accurate in any case, since there is nothing inherent in the proposed rule that requires any costs to be born by rate payers -- although, of course, state plans could result in that.)
Yeah, but capitalism also begins and ends with vanguardism (it's called Enclosure). So does almost every ideology in human history, since any organized program of change in any status quo (whether you like it or not) almost always has to be forced and enforced. Left alone, people just go back to doing what they've "always done", which is almost uniformly such utter crap[1] that the clever people keep coming up with programs to change it. Which reactionaries then complain about for the rest of time while enjoying the blessings.
[1] http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.il/2011/11/pining-for-feudalism...
But my point is not about vanguardism per se, but what vanguardism does in alignment with whatever ideology is relevant. With collectivism in its various forms it leads to extreme oppression up to and including mass slaughter as the vanguard tries to force people to align with a prescriptive, unnatural, i.e. fundamentally wrong ideology. A commonly accepted figure for the 20th Century is 100 million killed by their own socialist governments, I personally estimate (using very rough projections from those former worker's paradises where bodies have actually been counted at least somewhat) upwards of a quarter billion.
By contrast, the "ideology" of capitalism is much more aligned with human nature, it also sets up a system in which everyone is perforce required to minimally engage. Do some work, get paid some money, buy some stuff, repeat. People are strongly encouraged to do more of all of those, but there are e.g. no block or village committees that watch for layabouts and deny them the ration coupons necessary to get food.
(Appropriately, with the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square today, just before then my roommates were a couple of grad students from the PRC, and one of the things they told me was that Deng's economic reforms had negated the ability of these committees to casually kill people. With a free market in food getting on their wrong side meant you paid more to eat, but not automatic death by starvation.)
And of course my other point is one you implicitly agree with: pure, "scientific" Marxism does not and cannot exist.
Rozeff has my favorite overall explanation
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff224.html
The next is typical zerohedge, ZH is more or less the 4chan of finance and politics so you get 10 kilolines of idiocy mixed with a couple excellent lines that make it all worth it, like "Your role, by voting, is to legitimise this corruption." (and edited to add "Democracy has become a religion and anyone who criticises it is labelled a heretic.")
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-02/guest-post-why-i-do...
A minority opinion by a self described "educated, politically conscious Black woman" (edited to quote "My ancestors who died attempting to register to vote, didn't die because they wanted to vote, they died because they wanted our community to have the power and self-determination to live a quality life." and my commentary is if the latter has been intentionally systemically removed as a national policy for members of my community, then the former is obviously meaningless)
http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/expowrite/activities/voteno...
Democracy is an effective PR campaign for an oligarchy to control the citizenry. A non-religious opiate of the masses. It makes money for the right people, and fools the fools into thinking their opinion matters or will even be considered.
I have a complex stance on government/capitalism, I think certain industries (particularly natural monopolies like utilities, transport (trains) etc) should be state owned/run or possibly state owned/privately run (with sufficient safe guards) as those industries enrich the whole of society and shouldn't necessarily need to make a profit (shortfall covered from taxation).
I'm not American but if I where I'd be anti-second amendment (it's largely a settled issue in the UK, privately held guns are rare).
I'm against an interventionist unilateral/bilateral (usually us and the US) foreign policy, while it's nice to think we can help play world police when you actually look at it we only intervene where we have a vested interest (even if tangentially through the US) and quite frankly spending that kind of money when we have major problems at home is idiotic.
I'm in favour of much stricter regulation of personal data (quite frankly the law simply has not kept up with the progress of technology) including government use.
I'm in favour of prison reform towards a more Scandinavian model, whatever your views on punishment vs rehabilitation the re offence rate here is so high punishment is clearly not working.
I support the reform of our political system including the introduction of proportional voting, reforming the house of lords (it should be elected).
I'm undecided on the monarchy, one side of me leads towards been a republic, the other half values the history plus there are advantages to your head of state not been the head of government.
I'm undecided on immigration, I lean towards a point style system similar to what the US and New Zealand use.
I'm undecided on the EU, it's been very difficult to find clear evidence on way or the other for whether it's a benefit for us as a country.
I'm undecided on Scottish independence (and quite frankly it's the job of the Scots to choose anyway) however I do think if they vote for independence it should full independence and they should be unable to rejoin the Union without a full referendum (including Wales, England and Northern Ireland).
I'm pro-nuclear and pro-renewable's (Nuclear is the only realistic technology we have for massive baseload generation at present that doesn't produce huge amounts of CO2, it's the least worst option) with renewable's on housing stock providing a useful input.
I'm anti-Trident (it will never get used) and think we should reduce military spending hugely (We are currently spending far too much on defence), reducing the defence budget by 20 billion (about 40% reduction) a year and putting that into upgrading the civil infrastructure makes more sense.
Essentially I believe in things that each of the major parties in the UK both love and hate (which is one reason why I like proportional representation, I can express complex political beliefs in a more reflective way).
If you really want to find differences in political opinion, bring up a really volatile subject. I would be interested to hear the views of HN readers on the Falkland Islands.
The Falkland Islands existed before the state of Argentina. The islanders voted for self-determination and wished to remain as part of the United Kingdom for defence matters.
There is no other view that is compatible with logic.
Exactly, the Obama Administration took the bait (then let go). Occasionally you have to remind other people and yourself that sometimes your opinion is not your opinion, but someone else's. Forget this important fact, and you risk forgetting how to think independently.
Did anyone remind Argentina about all the mines the Junta buried on the beaches 32 years ago?
(also re: Trident - "it will never get used" is a bad argument. It's a nuclear deterrent. It's being used right now.)