Cyber-Libertarians: A Sympathetic Account of Origins

After reading Mithras's recent post about the Republicans' comparative science fiction advantage among Schmibertarians, I remembered an essay I'd partially written some months ago, and thought it might be an interesting time to dust it off and finish it.

I have spent most of my career in Silicon Valley, working with very technical people, and I'm a more than a bit of a geek myself (I will use the word geek a lot in this post; it is for me a neutral term).  I and others have noticed the relative prevalence of libertarian thought among the technical crowd.  There are a lot of Objectivists in Silicon Valley, and enough libertarians of other stripes that the term "cyber-libertarian" moved into common currency. Don't take my word for it.  Just head over to Slashdot, and read the discussion on any political thread.  There are a lot of hardcore libertarians among these folks.

There is certainly an unsympathetic story of the cyber-libertarian, one which revolves around a lack of empathy among the technically-minded, perhaps even one which points to Asperger's Syndrome.  That's not the story I want to tell.  I have a far more sympathetic account in mind, though my account is one that I think most cyber-libertarians would reject, as it relies on the decidedly un-libertarian idea that humans are embedded (even trapped) in their society, and are shaped at least in part by that embedding, for better and for worse.  Please note that I don't intend this to be in any way an exclusive account, merely a meditation on some possible reasons for the prevalence of libertarianism among the technical community.

One has to understand that many many highly technical people were misfits as children.  American society is unquestionably anti-intellectual (and getting more so).  Think of the kinds of things most geeks enjoy:  reading, listening to weird music, math, chess, computer gaming, computer programming, and so on.  Now think of the things that have good social rewards for children and adolescents:  being pretty or handsome, wearing the right clothes, sports, wealth.  There is not much positive peer (or community) feedback for the young geek.  No matter how much the geek pursuits might prepare them for a rich and profitable adulthood, the young geek is not likely to be a happy youth.  There is really not very much support for them in the community in which they are involuntarily embedded.

Given an unsatisfying community life, many young geeks (and adult geeks) spend a lot of time in voluntary associations with like-minded people of one sort or another, or in escapist fiction (passive, interactive, and self-generated).  A common combination of voluntary association and escapist fiction is gaming.  The vast majority of computer games, particularly of the role-playing variety ("RPG" or "RPGs"), and even more particularly of the currently-popular massively multiplayer online variety ("MMORPGs"), are freighted with libertarian structures.  (I believe this is largely true of the original pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons games as well, but will not treat that here). I don't mean to say that RPGs are deliberately so, or that there is some sort of concerted propaganda effort.  In fact, I am hard pressed to see how an RPG could be otherwise and still provide a satisfying game experience.

Core underlying principles of libertarianism are an atomistic notion of the individual as existing separate from a social context, making rational decisions on an almost purely economic basis.  The libertarian individual is not embedded in a society, but is able to create himself or herself from scratch. The best-bootstrapped people will come out on top (and they are lionized as heroes in libertarian thought).  Under a libertarian model, only voluntary associations are legitimate.  Any relationship or action that is based on any form of coercion (this is a loaded term, but I will leave it without comment for now), like a state levying taxes, is suspect at best, and more often considered to be illegitimate.  (I don't think I'm setting up a straw man here.  This is a fairly strong form of libertarianism, but not too far off the mark.)

Let's look at the ways in which RPGs, especially of the chain mail bikini or space opera varieties, are structurally libertarian. First-person shooters and strategy games share some of these characteristics, but given the immersive nature of RPGs and the relative sophistication of the social and economic lessons they teach, I have focused on the RPGs.

• All RPGs are fundamentally voluntary associations at the highest level.  You have a choice of whether or not to play, and once playing, whether or not to continue.  This is true even if an RPG was not itself libertarian inside the game.
• The primary narrative in any RPG is that of the bold protagonist, stepping out into the world.
• The first thing that one is generally asked to do when one begins an RPG is to "create" a character.  Typically, this is done by a random generation of some characteristics or attributes of the character, like strength, intelligence, charisma, and so on.  The player chooses the character's class, race/species, sex, and so forth.  Each of those choices can have some modifying effect on the character.  RPGs don't start out a new player in the way that humans start out, embedded in their family and class and nation and religion.  You create yourself in the image that you want.
• The newly created character goes forth into an environment, where, if a solo game, their ability to succeed really is almost exclusively dependent on the player's skill, and where success is almost always assured if enough time and energy is expended. 
• The character will make its way through an environment of plenty, where there are always more monsters to be conquered, and more booty to be gathered.  In the most popular MMORPGs, like Ultima Online and Everquest, the game publishers actually create new worlds when the old ones are too crowded.
• Even when the RPG allows characters to play shopkeepers or other non-adventurers, the economics of the game are such that it is dependent on the adventurers, the entrepreneurs for continued flow of gold pieces or credits.
• There aren't many messy externalities in RPGs.  There's no collective action problem.  There's relatively little in the way of the imperfect information problem.  They're really optimal market models.
• There are no relatively few long-term involuntary associations even in MMORPGs.  Players band together by mutual agreement, for mutually clear purposes.  There are few entanglements.  Even in Ultima Online, one of the longest running MMORPGs, which has had profound problems with player-killing and other anti-social behaviors, the towns are formed largely by mutual voluntary agreement for the purposes of socialization and mutual protection.

Immersion in this kind of lesson, particularly when the larger outside world has little to offer, is bound to have some effect.

When young geeks move into the working world, they find that the nature of technical work and the technology industry resonates with libertarian thought as well.  There are (at least) three elements of this resonance.

First, libertarianism is a very clean system in principle.  If one makes the leap to a couple simplifying assumptions, one can then happily go on to analyze any situation in terms of the straightforward rules libertarianism presents. A lot of technical work is similar:  attacking known problems in a systematic manner with a set of known rules. 

Second, the technical working world really is a much more meritocratic system than the "outside world".  Good code is good code, fast coding is fast coding.  Both are rewarded.  Good code fast is rewarded very well.  The meritocracy breaks down to some extent as one moves up the engineering management chain, as management structures in corporations are, like all hierarchical organizations, often determined politically, rather than on technical or managerial skill.  (Of course, when one succeeds in those organizations, it's easy enough to convince oneself that it was a purely meritocratic process.)

Third, the technology industry is radically ahistorical, and for a while was wildly profitable for many of its participants.  If one ignores all of the government-funded basic research, as many do,(after all, DARPANET seems centuries ago in Silicon Valley time) one could believe that the technology industry exists despite government, not because of it.  If one wins stock-option lotto, it's easy to believe that it was all one's own doing, and the government's tax bite (which seems huge as part of an option windfall, and enormous if one gets caught in AMT on the hold) seems an entirely unfair confiscation of private property.

So in sum, we have young geeks who learn that their involuntary communities have little to offer them, who (more than the general population) rely on voluntary associations and structurally libertarian fictions for positive feedback, and who then are exposed to a meritocratic ahistorical work environment. Adding up all of these influences, I think one can understand why there's so much libertarianism among the technical set.

Comments

[Abby]

I do think that if the benefits of taxes and general society were more obvious and widespread, people would not be quite so averse.

I talked to a grad student the other day who is from California and had worked for a management consulting firm whose name rhymes with Indenture. She said that she wouldn't mind paying the taxes, if she got good roads, but it was hard to take the potholes.

It's hard for youngish people who pay social security and medicare taxes but can't afford health care for themselves. The answer, of course, is not to drop medicare, but to provide health care for everyone.

[donzelion]

A theory is as valuable as its testability. Your theory works like this:
young misfits => game addicts (esp. RPGs) => cyberlibertarians

Applying a modernized variant of the ancient notion "leisure dictates lifestyle," (which has fine pedigree going at least to Aristotle), your theory has the same problem: such generalizations wind up proving only the assumptions built into them, rather than anything in the real world.

First: "libertarianism relies on applying simple rules that answer any question." Religious tenets, Kantian theory, communitarianism - all work similarly. Indeed, each has social and anti-social aspects, depending upon how one approaches them.

Second: the "technical working world is more meritocratic" - Dilbert suggests otherwise; most important, should one believe an "average programmer" who perceives himself as an artist is any more or less a cog in the wheel than a hamburger assembler? Is "stock option lotto" a sign of the meritocracy of wealth? If so, I'll be happen to sell you some Enron stocks...

Third: "radical ahistoricism" is universal. Every trade deploys history only when useful. Even historians are generally uninterested in examining the history of their trade.

I suggest trying a different tact: what, precisely, is it that cyberlibertarians consider most aesthetically appealing? What brings them back to those attractions? Is the process of "levelling up" and "fragging" the only thing that distinguishes RPGs from Shakespearean characters - and if so, then what do they mean?

[paperwight]

Donzelion -

I don't disagree with your critique as far as you mean that I may be making the correlation-causation mistake. That's entirely feasible. I do disagree with much of the rest of your comments, though.

Your theory works like this:
young misfits => game addicts (esp. RPGs) => cyberlibertarians

Actually, my theory is that a number of influences may collectively foster a tendency in a specific political direction. I laid it out chronologically, but in no way did I mean it to be some kind of process that these folks go through. I apologize for my shortcomings as a writer.

First: "libertarianism relies on applying simple rules that answer any question." Religious tenets, Kantian theory, communitarianism - all work similarly. Indeed, each has social and anti-social aspects, depending upon how one approaches them.

Actually, I think that at least the first two examples you use have very few useful simplifying assumptions, in the way that "Get the government away, and all will be well" is a simplifying assumption in much of libertarian thought. The golden rule actually leads one down a lot of difficult paths, as does much other religious thought not of the literalist variety. As far as communitarianism, it's been a long time since I studied much communitarian thought, but my recollection is that there's an inherent conflict between the particular and a universal in communitarian ethical theory at least, which is very difficult to reconcile. My recollection may be wrong.

Second: the "technical working world is more meritocratic" - Dilbert suggests otherwise;

Dilbert's creator worked for PacBell. I won't disagree that there's a lot of PHB-ness in Silicon Valley, but there's also a lot of smart people who recognize good work when they see it.

most important, should one believe an "average programmer" who perceives himself as an artist is any more or less a cog in the wheel than a hamburger assembler?

Huh? I think there's something important here, but I'm not sure what it is.

Is "stock option lotto" a sign of the meritocracy of wealth? If so, I'll be happen to sell you some Enron stocks...

The stock option question is two separate questions, which I think you may be conflating: (a) Silicon Valley's relative democratization of opportunity for wealth creates a lot of post-hoc rationalization of desert, and (b) WTF? is an unsurprising reaction to the tax burden imposed in one swoop if one actually gets a hit.

As far as Enron, there are a lot of things which are very different between Enron and a software startup. For one thing, dime-on-the-dollar ISOs are very different from 85%-of-market ESP plans.

Third: "radical ahistoricism" is universal. Every trade deploys history only when useful. Even historians are generally uninterested in examining the history of their trade.

Maybe, but Silicon Valley was, I think, unique in the extent to which it disdained the history of even the basic tools which it used, as it (speaking collectively) engaged in creating a brave new world. People of good will can differ on this point.

what, precisely, is it that cyberlibertarians consider most aesthetically appealing? What brings them back to those attractions? Is the process of "levelling up" and "fragging" the only thing that distinguishes RPGs from Shakespearean characters - and if so, then what do they mean?

This is an interesting set of questions, and one which would really require a lot of sociological legwork to answer in depth. I think that for one thing, the video game character as avatar of one's own ambitions is very different from the non-interactive fictional character which has its own agenda with which the reader must content.

[jack*]

Don't forget Ayn Rand, and her promise of infinte wealth and zipless sex as reward for embracing hubris.

Libertarianism might be a workable system if we were all perpetually 33 years old, single, never needed to reproduce, and lived in an environment so rich and plentiful that depravation was basically impossible. Oh, and we were all masters of any and all armaments.

In other words, a video game.

[jack*]

I also think that it's innacurate to categorize libertarian social order as a meritocracy. Especially the "cyber" variety. Instead it's a kind of geek aristocracy which encourages a type of nerd "dandy." The nerd dandy can put anyone down with a biting comment, can quote chapter and verse from the Linux man pages, and always brings out some annoying bit of trivia to derail any halfway interesting discussion.

They think that they are superior because they have relatively high-paying professional jobs, although in fact most are rather mediocre. Feeling entitled to their superior positions, they feel very little incentive to improve themselves and instead spend their time griping about how other people are idiots for not appreciating their greatness. Women seem particularly blind, and somehow getting dumped time after time fails to make the nerd dandy reconsider that perhaps he's not God's gift after all.

They are drawn to libertarian ideals out of this sense of entitlement. Since they ARE superior, they reason, if they were only unfettered by dumb social rules and taxes they would assume their natural position at the top of the social order. It would almost be worth the experiment to see how wrong they would be.

[Barry]

In terms of meritocracies, a big boost was the Silican Valley/Internet boom of the mid/late 1990's. If certain industries are booming, critical workers have a good time of it. They are in demand. And the bigger the boom, the more categories of workers are critical. The joke was that anybody who could spell 'C' had a programming job, but people also becamse marketing/finance excecutives, on the basis of not much.

Given the boom, stock options look like both an entitlement and an almost-sure thing - if not this year's job, then the next. Similar to real estate, during a time of rising housing prices.

And the 90's boom occurred before the current off-shoring wave. US industries have discovered global labor arbitrage for the skilled professions, and are exploiting it heavily. This means that far fewer purely technical positions will be in short supply in the US, and for shorter lengths of time (paying somebody to take 3 months of intensive training is easier if they are earning <$10/hr).