Computer nerds and losers in the Libertarian movement

Economics Political Theory
1

In Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed” he mentioned that a problem with the Libertarian / Anarchist movement was that it was prone to attract “losers” and “mooches”. This is seen as something that limits its growth and not the philosophy itself. (I don’t have the book in front of me so I cannot cite it. Sorry.)

He also mentioned with the losers and mooches that it was heavy in people who work in computers. I work in computers, but I took this more as a call for people of other professions to join or try to attract them and not a statement condemning computer nerds for being anarchists.

I have encountered a few impoverished Randians with oddball money making schemes that they want me to invest in. Or invest in and do all the work and split the money with them 50/50…but they are easy to avoid. But I have not encountered the other losers and mooches that Hoppe mentions.

Computer nerds…Yes, plenty of them. Including myself. I think I can explain our attraction to anarchism:

Thirty years ago computers were just beggining to emerge as something people could use at home. Before 1975 to use a computer you had to be in a large university, business or government institution. Three years later people were playing PAC PET on Commodore PET computers in their living rooms. People who fiddled with electronics in sheds were now multi millionairs and there was a software industry specifically for them.

Still, big Government and big industry had the really cool, powerful stuff available to them. It was not like a Motorola 6800 chip or an intel 8080 were going to ever best DEC, IBM or Cray.

Flash ahead years later to 1995 when Intel’s top chip was 166mhz and 32 bit and DEC’s was the 64 bit Alpha at 500mhz. Still…almost 20 years after the first desktop computer there was no real comparison between consumer grade technology and the industrial high end computing other than one was affordable and slow and the other one was priced out of range of most people and really fast. The cost was the only real competition, not speed and quality.

Now, once again thanks to people tinkering in sheds and kitchens we have commodity PC based clusters than can beat nearly anything. Cray and SGI moved to the x86 platform and IBM is adopting Linux (programmed first in a dorm room in Finland). The desktop computer has not only brought computing to the masses it has usurped the powerful and the costly…All due to capitalism making things cheaper, better and faster and dedicated hobbiests and professionals exploiting this with products of their own.

So I do not know why other professions such as drywallers and automechanics have not been drawn to anachism but the nerds and computer wonks have seen it in action and see that it works. In this action companies such as intel, apple, AMD and Microsoft combined with the spontaneous order of Linux have trounced the powerful and the previously untouchable and it can be done again in other areas of life.

2

I think his point is that these people are introverts by nature and thus not conducive to spreading the message of liberty or presenting it in a solid fashion. He also refers (through Rothbard) to lawyers without practises etc. So I’m guessing his point is that libertarianism needs to appeal to a broader audience. I might be wrong though, but that’s what I got from that passage.

-Jon

3

I think the big reasons basically boil down to level of socialization, intelligence, and availability of information.

Part of the definition of a nerd is that, even if one is not a friendless pariah, social skills are somewhat limited. A nerd doesn’t do popular things; they’re bookish, less athletic, have trouble talking to members of the opposite sex, et cetera. While this can often be a painful set of affairs for the ones involved, it has its advantages. You don’t fit in, and you don’t talk to those who fit in. Indeed, your relationship may be defined somewhat by hostility. So, those viewpoints and tastes which seem conventional, are, to the nerd, unwelcoming and associated with rejection and other unpleasantness. This causes the nerd to seek unconventional viewpoints.

A certain degree of intelligence, such as nerds tend to have, also aids in the process, because an intelligent person can analyze different viewpoints better. A nerd’s strength is intellectual, so he/she gravitates toward intellectually sound and defensible ideas.

Finally, as computer nerds, we have a greater adroitness with the use of the unprecidented font of information that is the internet. Others might go online for news and the like, but they will restrict themselves to Faux or CNN and the like.

In sum, the adult nerd is one who, after a lifetime as at least something of an outsider because of his or her intelligence, tastes, and creativity, has generally come to embrace and take pride in this status. In the case of those of libertarian mindsets, this is actually somewhat justified.

As an interesting side note, up at LRC right now there is an interview of Glen Jacobs, AKA Kane of WWE wrestling, who was a celebrity supporter of Ron Paul and is a libertarian. I guarantee that this 7 ft. behemoth (though I haven’t watched in awhile, he was always my favorite) was a nerd in his youth, and indeed, as a blogger and libertarian with a fictional gothy persona, still really is. Just a rich, gigantic one.

4

I have always had a soft spot, like a cushioned turnbuckle, for Pro Wrestlers.

I agree with JC and Jon’s description of what Hoppe meant by nerds (not a word he used though) but luckily that is changing now. I used to be a truck driver and then became a nerd but I will always be a truck driver at heart just as I am sure Kane will always be a nerd at heart too.

I just got a promotion where I work and part of that has been interviewing …nerds…and the batch of nerds I am interviewing is really not nerdy at all. All are svelte, use deoderant, and wear clothes besides sweatpants. The last job I had I helped with interviews for Unix (my boss was a VMS guy) right after the dot com crash and we got a whole load of guys who looked and acted like “Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons, young “web content developers” whose previous job was to play Quake on the Lan while their boss burned through venture capital and people from the Indian Sub-Continent who had fraudulent resumes and hoped that the stereotype of Indians as computer experts would get them a job and a green card.

Much better batch of people these days. Nerds are more mainstream now since no one wants to work with the smelly, cocky ones..where before there was no choice. But I can see where Hoppe and Rothbard were coming from …but it is getting less and less like that (as far as computer nerd libertarians go).

5

This reminds me of a Kevorkian quote, of which I think “boredom” (I would say institutionalized apathy or lethargy, having grown up in the Statist system, are better phrases) most certainly contributes to some becoming “moochers”, (reluctantly, sub-consciously, or purposely):

6

Libertarianism / Anarchism is popularised a lot using the internet, so it’s no wonder it’s web-geeks that stumble across it the most.

7

There is the boredom possibility, but I still attribute boredom as more of the attitude of the bored than the environment. Bored people always seem to want to be entertained and expect people to amuse them and stimulate them. As a kid when I would complain to my mother about being bored she would tell me to stop being boring and shove me outside. (not literally). I grew up in a boring place surrounded by boring people and I enjoyed it since we tended to focus on reading and conversation for amusement rather than entertainment.

When I was part of the anti-IMF and anti-World Bank movement years ago we had moochers a-plenty. They just spent their time showing up at organizational meetings and tried to tell everyone what to do but they themselves did nothing and somehow thought their nothingness should be equal to substance. They were even derisive of us and called us “Workists” (I have yet to figure out why that is insulting) but they really enjoyed the free pizza I bought for people and had no problem asking me and others to give them money for some charitible project they were working on (most likely themselves). One fifty-something Canadian woman even insisted that I marry her so she could remain in the country and I was derided as being “selfish” for refusing.

My other “Workist” friends and I handled the situation by sneaking out of the meetings to hold real meetings elsewhere and that worked very well. We theorised that these people blamed their current situation not on themselves but on the "state"and the only way to better their current situation without becoming a “workist” was to smash the state so it could be replaced with something that would value them.

The other theory was that they were moochers to the core and sought out defiant enviroments to mask their lazinness with a veneer of rebelion and mooch off the “Solidarity”.

I should not have to tell any of you that these were mostly leftists but I think the dynamics might be the same in other movements as well.

8

Nitro, I think the italic (i) or (em) tag on your quote has been left open and is bleeding to subsequent posts.

9

Fixed it; turns out I italizied one of the quote tags, strange :\

10

This is why I think Stefan Molyneux’s work is positive. He tries to really help people psychologically rather than just relying on theory that nerds can ingest and then say they know stuff (about the Fed, price calculation, etc.). Christ, we all know we’re nerds and many of us know the standard economic and ethical theories of libertarianism – but is that all there is? I think Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand tried to do the same with self-esteem, from what I’ve read. Of course, there’s always controversy with them too… people will say they are fascists for suggesting there is something to do in the free world besides just knowledge acquisition. Like happiness and attaining goals and stuff. Who knows if they are correct in their methods (save the people who just tried it and found out), but it’s certainly something to think about.

11

Why don’t you just marry him?

12

While Molyneux’s work is positive regarding psychology, it should be considered, not taken as doctrine. The followers of Rand made the similar mistake when Herr Peikoff took over & began the Neo-Objecticon movement; this is why if anyone asks me about Objectivism, I usually refer them to Post-Objectivism instead, as it treats Rand’s work as something to build off of, rather than some end all be all bible for one to program themselves with.

Some of that criticism regarding followers could apply to Molyneux’s as well, but I’ll take those guys over a Peikoff-droid anyday.

Back on topic, the “Psychology of Statism” is a more recent focus of mine as well, & even though it probably has been covered before by others, I also agree it doesn’t seem to be an area many get familiar with until after stumbling around with theory. I’m beginning to also think that such psychology would be easier to ultilize instead of pure theory, regarding the conversation & arguments with Statists.

13

Well, I think nerds and losers are just more curious and receptive to radical ideas. For example, I explored everything from anarchism, transhumanism, to free software and learn all sort of cool stuff.

Nerds are like genetic experiments. The only problem is that the really good ones don’t like to reproduce or lack the gene to attract the opposite sex. So we’re left with mostly brainwashed people.

14

That brought tears to all three of my eyes.

15

Well, I don’t know if it is professional advice or not (though I thought libertarians were opposed to licensing cartels)… but if it seems to work on the individual level with the people he talks to, I don’t see how it is a negative thing. I think it is a positive thing if people have self-esteem instead of, for instance, harming the movement by being another cliche of anarchism. Push comes to shove, he just refers them to professionals in general. Which may be the basic push people need (not any specific anarchist related advice). I’ve been really interested in his psychological work after he recommended Lloyd deMause’s psychohistorical work which I find fascinating (especially his work on war, money and guilt).

Frankly, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that some anti-government stuff is pretty paranoid and crazy. And not just 9/11 conspiracies. If you listen to stuff like the commercials on the Michael Badnarik… it isn’t nerds, but stuff that sorta borderlines on the reptoid overlord stuff. And we certainly don’t need people mixing the business cycle theory with aliens or Satan. I already sense that information about the Fed could easily reap diminishing returns and be turned into a parody by people on both sides of the issue that don’t understand it very well.

16

Yea, I only focused on the effect of an individual growing up in a certain enviroment (this would be more obvious in school, where those who drop-out & werre considered “failures” in school flourished elswhere in different enviroments that more than likley had less authoritarianism going on than public schools); the individual him/herself cannot be ignored either.

On somewhat of a side note, what do you think of Bob Black’s advocation for the abolition of work / turning work into play (text: http://www.zpub.com/notes/black-work.html or summary, under the Abolition Of Work section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Black) ?

* I disagree on his statement that all work is meaningless, though.

17

I don’t know of any non-nerds who study philosophy or economics for fun. That being said, you can still be a bit nerdy and have a social life at the same time.

18

I think it’s hard to define a nerd nowadays. One can be a loner without being a nerd and vice versa. And also read a lot without being one.

-Jon

19

Agreed, but I am only interested in the opposite sex. =p

20

I think it’s valid to point out that people who believe in liberty tend to be intellectuals, and there’s a good reason for that - your average rat-racer or “popular” person just doesn’t stop to think about that sort of thing. They’re too busy working or being popular.

That’s happening now, though, thanks to things like Free Talk Live and a swarm of swarms of internet-based pro-liberty media - for which we have none other to thank than the computer nerds.