The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The Liberaltarian demographic, ignored by political activists, analysts and pollsters at their peril

    By artappraiser on Wed, 01/09/2019 - 12:41pm |

    I ran across this article from Nov. New Study Indicates Silicon Valley’s Elite Are Not As Liberal As They Think by @ NYMag.com.

    It reminded me of how geek world, since it's development, always seemed to tend to lean libertarian and therefore prone to prefer "third way" political solutions. With the polarization introduced by the Trump and similar populist movements, the lefty Democratic types seem to be getting hopeful that swings are coming over to their side and are thinking "oh boy, the DLC ways of thinking are dead, now we can finally go socialist." Um, but there's this Liberaltarian cohort out there, growing all the time. With lots of money. And a new kinda "don't like big gummint" and bureaucrats attitude. That will be swing supporters and voters if Dem candidates are too left. I've noted a thing watching Twitter over the last few months: even though this type may deplore Trump dolts and rural rubes, they also are very much prone to ridicule earnest lefty types like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Christian right and other socially conservative nutcases sector of the GOP may be dying out, but this group will be growing. And may be sympathetic to a lot ot "Freedom Caucus" type aims. Politicos ignore them at their peril.

    Excerpt:

    “Long before these people get involved in the tech industry and found their own companies, they already have these predispositions that are leading them to be more skeptical of regulation, yet are liberal otherwise,” Broockman said. In other words, the findings suggest those who eventually work in tech may share some common values and experiences with each other that lead them into the profession.

    This is not necessarily a new idea: The classic essay 1995 essay “The Californian Ideology” laid out the libertarian foundations of the tech industry, and Steven Johnson coined a term in Wired article this summer for the “liberal-not-liberal” tech-elite attitude, “Liberaltarianism.” Now we have some empirical evidence that this loose political affiliation extends to more than just the loudest and most prominent voices in tech. Broockman compared the political power of emerging tech elites to that of 19th-century railroad barons. “It’s no secret that the tech industry is immensely growing on all dimensions that would give them political power,” he said. “When you think about everything a politician is looking to in terms of where they are getting their voters, where they are getting their campaign donations, technology companies and those who found them and run them are in a position to exert a lot of power in politics.”

    For Broockman, the challenge this poses isn’t to the Republicans complaining about supposed liberal bias, but the Democrats who are forced to choose between different belief systems. “I think what the stage is set for is Democratic officeholders will really be pushed within the party and really be torn between interests from unions and more classic consitutientices on the one hand and what these technology entrepreneurs want them to do on the other."

    Comments

    We should be winning these people over with legal pot!


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 01/10/2019 - 10:42am

    well it is a *popular* non-partisan idea, is it not? wink

    along those lines, this is fun:

    LEFTIES: We're proposing this big idea to shift the Overton Window

    ME: Actually, this is a pretty mainstream, center-left idea

    LEFTIES: Shut up you neoliberal scum

    ME: Wait, I thought you said you wanted to shift the Ov--

    LEFTIES: HOW DARE YOU SAY OUR BIG IDEA IS CENTRIST

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) January 10, 2019

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/10/2019 - 1:57pm

    I hope you do not think this thought trite....

    But I recall when the Beetles discovered the British and US tax systems.

     

     


    by Richard Day on Thu, 01/10/2019 - 3:34pm

    oh I think about it often, one of the things I'll never forget from the shock of it: the countercultural heroes of my naive radical teen years fleeing 95% tax rate as they got rich. Here's one 2015 story I found that's a reminder of the sort of things going on: HOW THE ROLLING STONES, ROD STEWART AND DAVID BOWIE RAN FROM THE TAXMAN. But you know what's really funny about that, the way I recall it: it would be like Mick Jagger saying I can't handle these taxes no mo, but then you'd read oops, in trouble for drugs in the U.S., and then start wandering, no place to call home.laugh Another irony: John Lennon, once with Yoko, they stayed, became Americans, whatever the tax, called NY home--killed him....


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/10/2019 - 7:40pm

    The Stones moved to France (where Wyman could be with his 14-year-old girls), and now Depardieu flees to Moscow. "It's the Time of the (Tax) Season for Loving" (what's your name, who's your daddy, is he rich like we?)


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 01/14/2019 - 1:43pm

    Flicking the off switch to all the screaming, but at the same time thinking of running for mayor:

    Basically what happened with me. I'm done with all radicals https://t.co/cr5S6cUdko

    — William Edmonson (@NeoLibertarian_) February 25, 2019

    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 2:52am


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/11/2019 - 7:31am

    Sure, because there's no corruption at the local level.
    Seems Matt "hasn't thought deeply about that" for a lot of things.
    Yeah, democracy & policy issues is a pain to keep up with - except these are the ruling and controlling bodies of our society. If there's a President i can marginally trust, I know things will go well within say 20%. If there's one I don't trust, things can go badly to say 80%. So it's worth paying some attention at least for that race. The weakness there is that a blinkered Congress can destroy any efforts of a competent President (or a woke House can put a stop to some of the most egregious Presidential behavior), so voting only for President isn't enough.
    And because of the electoral college (along with voter repression), much of our voting potential is weakened. At one point I had a choice to vote in 2 places (possibly 3) but *NONE* of them would have ever mattered for the presidential race as it's concluded before the voting starts. Sure, lowering the margin has some good effect, and some of the local races can go different than planned, but it's only 10 states or so that really matter for that all important "swing" vote (which made the Russian hackers' job much easier in 2016).

    Should I care about AOC? well, not really - she was elected to represent some community in the Bronx, and she's presumably giving them what they want. Does it trample my rights or my policies? Not really, maybe a little bit, but as much or more positively as negatively.

    The only significant crisis was with challenging Pelosi - and in this, AOC was reasnable - she pushed her agenda, she basically noted she wasn't elected to follow lots of "sit back and watch" niceities and traditions - but she also threw her lot in with the longstanding female in control. I keep thinking of this, during the government shutdown, or now with the new majority and Barr testifying - and how having some inexperienced dickhead take over could have left us very weakened at a time we need strength.

    Sure, it'd be easy to just shut my eyes and let Trump do all his wicked bad boy stuff - I mean, I'm a white male citizen - how bad can it hurt? But I don't work on my own car anymore - that doesn't mean I'll take it to just any mechanic to fuck it up - I depend on that car, and even though I'm not telling the mechanic how to do his job, I will evaluate how well he does and switch repair shops as needed. And it's not like it really takes that much more time and effort to at least pick a few decent main representatives - i.e. not to the state of being a news junkie like you or me. Matt can go get stuffed. He's part of the problem. Just like this college-aged Hispanic girl I talked to before the election - she was just right to be a Hillary supporter - but she'd taken some of that disinfo to heart - "well, I just don't know" - so she either didn't vote or maybe voted Jill Stein, or something else. But she didn't take this assignment nearly as seriously as she would a class homework - she turned in a short essay without a real conclusion, without real research. That's an F. And if enough students of democracy don't do their not-so-tough homework diligently, it all falls apart. Then Matt gets his oligarch he thinks he's fine with.

    And sure, we thought Facebook was fine too - no need to regulate. 2 years now of assurances from them, and we find their behavior for 6 or 8 years has been totally egregious - hardly this hands-off benign community with a few algorithms we'd dreamed - more a monster mosh-pit of vulture capitalism for hire, where the users *are* the product to a much more draconian extent than we'd ever thought. It's not like our intelligence agencies behaved that much better under Obama than Bush - but there was at least that bit of promise of more oversight, of protest and appeal. Under Trump, well, he's been gutting the professionals, so we're really getting Oligarch 2.0. Even if/when we get him out of office, there's no real idea what it takes to clean up the mess and broken regulatory and management structure he'll have left behind, with a great void as serious government workers have departed.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 04/11/2019 - 8:14am

    Matt & Bret Easton Ellis seem joined at the hip:

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bret-easton-ellis-thinks-youre-ov...


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 04/12/2019 - 7:23am

    WAIT A SEC...Shouldn’t Libertarians Be Against Free Money? Not When Andrew Yang Is Peddling It

    Some notable young dark web libertarians have warmed to a Democrat. But why not? His central idea really goes back to Milton Friedman.

    @ DailyBeast.com, 04.26.19 11:03 PM ET


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/27/2019 - 6:10am