Ask HN: Homogeneity of HN readers in terms of political views?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832504

by arisAlexis • 12 years ago

49 67 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

madaxe_again• 12 years ago

No. Classic Hayekian liberal here. Used to wear a little l libertarian hat, until I realised that Abilene and Kafka rule the planet.

olalonde• 12 years ago

What distinction do you make between "classic Hayekian liberal" and "libertarian"?

coolsunglasses2• 12 years ago

Libertarians can fall on a left-right spectrum the same as anybody. Hayekian liberals are generally monetarists (Austrian) that fall on the "right libertarian" spectrum. They tend to favor a state of a similar size and purpose as many Objectivists. Enforce rule of law, property rights, national defense - little else.

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.

Ihmahr2• 12 years ago

I'd say HN is actually very mixed. See this discussion as an example where the only three comments are downvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7831778

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.

PaulHoule• 12 years ago

That last bit is the unusual thing. In real life you meet a lot of people who think Snowden should go to hell, but in Hacker News you are beyond the pale if you think that NSA surveillance is less important than say, homelessness, global warming, the drug war, etc.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

People seem to get really angry if you suggest that NSA surveillance is less important than Facebook/Google/etc privacy violation, even though very many people have experienced negative consequences of Facebook/Google/etc privacy violations.

Ihmahr2• 12 years ago

I think that is your [country you reside in] or social circle perspective. In my country and social circle, suggesting that would simply be outrages, like saying gay people shouldn't be able to get married. I live in the netherlands.

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

Some of us believe that we should pay taxes and that we need some sort of standard of security, but that the government should just be "better" about it (use tax money more efficiently, balance security with liberty, etc...). But moderation doesn't make for good reading.

arisAlexis4• 12 years ago

As a side note I didn't put a poll cause it only serves to divide. I hope we can have an interesting conversation here.

pavement• 12 years ago

Many "hackers" fall on the conservative right-wing side of the political spectrum, but this sort of personality doesn't tend to self-identify one's self as a "hacker" even if they share similar technical interests.

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.

frozenport• 12 years ago

Also some people don't vote

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

That doesn't mean you don't have political opinions.

VLM• 12 years ago

It might help to provide links of explanation.

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.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

I think HN is a little homogeneous in terms of political views, but not completely so, so there will always be dissenting opinions on any issue. But it also doesn't mean most are "libertarian" or "liberal". I think most of the HN community thinks beyond those labels, and instead support policies that "just make sense", regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.

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).

nexus76• 12 years ago

I'm an IT pro and avid reader of HN and would consider myself a conservative libertarian (basically an Orthodox Christian whose views are more dictated by that than any political party). I'm pro-2nd amendment (actually pro all amendments), anti-abortion (will qualify here in almost all cases), both of which are considered right-wing, but I am also anti-capital punishment (again to qualify in almost all cases), and support the legalization of all drugs (even though I don't personally believe in inebriation as a moral standpoint), both of which are considered left-wing. I think we should lesssen the size of government, the mass of laws we've accumulated, and generally keep the government out of our daily lives. I think our tax code needs reforming and may even be in favor of a flat tax (although I'm not sure on this one). I believe in capitalism over socialism, but still recognize that it's flawed and am keenly interested in learning/exploring other economic systems, just so long as their underpinnings are based in freedom. Hope that helps to shed light of at least one reader's politics!

lhnz• 12 years ago

A lot of subcultures have a certain amount of perceived homogeneity but it doesn't necessarily mean that internally their views are homogenous.

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.

fleitz• 12 years ago

Lets deconstruct this...

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.

arisAlexis4• 12 years ago

Sorry, "like that" referred to a leftist getting VC funding from huge corporations/funds, there should be some problems there for both sides I guess.

Is being a founder of a startup make you automatically a capitalist?

maxerickson• 12 years ago

I think you can be just a pragmatic capitalist, without embracing it as an ideology. I guess you're still "being 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.

hitchhiker9992• 12 years ago

Well, don't know about homogeneity - as we're not 'mass market', and it's a semi-specialised field, people on HN seem to be above the average 'smart' (not going to say IQ)

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.

stcredzero• 12 years ago

Well, don't know about homogeneity - as we're not 'mass market'

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.

hitchhiker9992• 12 years ago

I hope you're wrong. But the 'rot' you describe does eventually overwhelm most of these communities.

Kiro• 12 years ago

On HN we definitely have a large crowd of leftists/anticapitalists which I find surprising since most hackers I know are libertarians.

icebraining3• 12 years ago

Well, the Center of Libertarian Culture near my home is anti-capitalist :)

marcosdumay3• 12 years ago

What's a set of completely worthless generalized labels.

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.

icebraining3• 12 years ago

Should it act against information asymmetry? That's intervention too, and required for capitalism to work.

Is it required? Why?

vidarh• 12 years ago

Libertarianism includes a substantial percentage of anarchists and communists.

visakanv2• 12 years ago

I've concluded that life is an absurd circus; we're all clowns trying to amuse ourselves in the face of inevitable death and meaninglessness. So politics strikes me as just another sideshow in the larger circus.

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.

sphildreth• 12 years ago

"life is an absurd circus; we're all clowns trying to amuse ourselves in the face of inevitable death and meaninglessness"

This is full of win. I will soon annoy everyone I know with this new mantra. Thanks!

visakanv2• 12 years ago

It works remarkably well in almost all conditions except in cases of human tragedy. Then it's usually more tasteful/appropriate to be sensitive. (But if you're willing to go there, you could say that seeking pleasure, seeking love, seeking glory, etc are all variations of self-amusement/utility-seeking.)

(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.)

naturalethic• 12 years ago

You might like to read some Mencken

noir_lord• 12 years ago

I'm fully pro-abortion, pro regulated market capitalism, pro welfare and state healthcare (I'm English and I think the NHS is the greatest thing the UK ever did).

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).

NAFV_P2• 12 years ago

I'm a limey myself, I was just thinking...

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.

ZenPro3• 12 years ago

What other views are there?

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.

ZenPro3• 12 years ago

You just wrote down word for word pretty much how I feel. Fellow Brit.

dTal• 12 years ago

I think you have generally sensible, pragmatic views. However, please re-examine your stance on the House of Lords - while on paper, having an unelected body with their political power sounds like a oligarchical disaster, in practice not being beholden to tawdry party politics means they are consistently the sole voice of reason in an otherwise bonkers political climate. I trust the Lords more than any other government body to stand up for what's right. I would be loathe to swap that for another Commons.

(also re: Trident - "it will never get used" is a bad argument. It's a nuclear deterrent. It's being used right now.)

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

Meta: Hmmm. Wonder how this discussion will go?

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]

arisAlexis4• 12 years ago

just being a bit more controversial, is open source software a bit socialist in nature?

coolsunglasses2• 12 years ago

Closer to voluntarist.

tom_scrace2• 12 years ago

Not at all, because there is no coercion.

mcv2• 12 years ago

So libertarian socialist, then. GPL in particular has strong socialist tendencies: you can build on it, but you've got to share your changes too.

jawns• 12 years ago

I think of it more as distributist.

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.

eli_gottlieb2• 12 years ago

Means of production are owned by the workers, and the product is distributed collectively, without the intervention of a money or wage system?

Yes, very socialist. Actually, outright communist.

hga3• 12 years ago

Yeah, but without the vanguard of the proletariat or its like, with its pesky need to oppress and slaughter those who don't get with the program, not such a problem.

brudgers• 12 years ago

The set of shared interests of HN members is largely orthogonal to political orientation or affiliation. Discussions organized around those interests tend to produce insights from experience and productive discussion including productive disagreement.

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.

Thiz• 12 years ago

My view?

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.

RollAHardSix• 12 years ago

I can only speak for myself in that I don't care. I don't vote, don't watch the news, don't keep up with issues, don't care what laws get passed (I respect and observe the laws unless I was able to do something such as save a life by breaking the law than I'd break some, ie something very important morally), I don't discuss politics, don't get riled up over certain issues, don't care about gay's or abortion or oil or any of that.

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).

normloman• 12 years ago

If there's a common political strain here, it's a misplaced faith in technology and data analysis to solve the worlds problems. I often read comments like "we could solve education if we only tracked teacher performance better," or "we could fix the labor market by giving kids computers and teaching them to code." HN people have watched one to many TED talks.

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.

ZenPro3• 12 years ago

Startup Effectiveness Arrogance.

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.

decasteve• 12 years ago

I am wary of anyone who describes themselves primarily by words that end in -ist or -ism. Often those who do find themselves in a "finger pointing to the moon" scenario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1GFaw09hk

tokenadult• 12 years ago

Some of the most experienced members of Hacker News are very homogeneous in discouraging political discussions here. Many political discussions here are decried by many of the highest-karma users not because they are uninterested in politics (a lot of people here are passionately interested in politics) but because they think Hacker News isn't the place for political discussion. Those users have won me over to their way of thinking. They think, with warrant, that Hacker News has never developed a culture of careful fact-checking and truth-seeking in political discussion as it (partially) has in discussion of other issues. I fully agree that one of the main systemic biases here is a pro-computer-technology bias, and I will add that most thoughtful young people who have gone into programming and related careers have missed out on educational experiences that would prepare them for a deep understanding of politics, so it is not surprising that the political discussions here, when they occur, are often very shallow. That's why I'd rather discuss politics elsewhere than here.

arisAlexis4• 12 years ago

I agree that this is a subject that is difficult to handle properly, but I also think that having a sense of what the rest of the community is about is important in communities that self-define. Note that my intention was to get a general feeling of the waters I am swimming in and what fellow fish look like, rather than discussing if a specific policy or view is superior.

pdkl95• 12 years ago

In general, the idea that politics should be considered "off-topic" here is understandable; the venues for that type of discussion are numerous, after all.

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)

Ask HN: Homogeneity of HN readers in terms of political views?

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