I would say the same damn thing regarding the knee-jerk right-wing proprietarianism, except that rich Bay Area techies have had a tendency towards the less-well-considered forms of "wannabe ubermensch" libertarianism for a long time now.
If you pointed out that leftists cluster on Reddit you <i>wouldn't even be correct</i>, as Reddit was pretty unambiguously rooting for Ron Paul in the past couple of elections.
I was talking about the tone, which sounded like a personal attack to me. HN used to have a more civil conversational tone.
Reddit always seemed divided to me, lots of leftists and lots of libertarians. Maybe the Paulians were noisier and more visible. HN seems a bit more libertarian to me, maybe because people here have higher incomes.
The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it. There's something irritatingly privileged about ideologies with lots of money behind them, that by some wondrous magic they are allowed to utter assertions where others (with less money them) are required to set out extensive proofs, and the most unpopular (who have basically no money) are required to display conclusive empirical evidence.
> The tone was, I admit it, meant to be harsh. The reason for that is precisely because the high-income techno-libertarians feel entitled to be blithe about it.
Please don't. Being harsh is not a good way to argue against blithe nonsense. It's a way to corrode the discourse and ruin the community [1]. If you're patient and reasonable, there's at least a small chance that you'll evoke that quality in others. If you're harsh, the chance of provoking the same and worse is high.
1. That particular comment was actually relatively mild. This is a personal appeal to drop the harsh tone on HN in general.
I would say the same damn thing regarding the knee-jerk right-wing proprietarianism, except that rich Bay Area techies have had a tendency towards the less-well-considered forms of "wannabe ubermensch" libertarianism for a long time now.
If you pointed out that leftists cluster on Reddit you <i>wouldn't even be correct</i>, as Reddit was pretty unambiguously rooting for Ron Paul in the past couple of elections.