lbo-talk-digest V1 #3370

Barry Rene DeCicco bdecicco at umich.edu
Wed Sep 20 07:25:08 PDT 2000



> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:06:42 -0400
> From: Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: geeks


>
> Doug Henwood:
> > So why are geeks such market-besotted libertarians? Because they're
> > poorly socialized loners? What's the reason?
>
> My theory is that they're lower-middle-class, petit bourgeois.
> They more or less own their tools, and their skills have been
> in high demand most of the time. If they were further up the
> economic food chain, they'd be bourgeois and the government
> would protect their status, property and other interests.

One minor quibble - if they were further up the economic ladder, they would have the government working for them a lot, but that wouldn't prevent them from spouting libertarian rhetoric between phone calls to their lobbyists.

But it is a minor quibble. Personally, I'd put most of the weight on the simple fact that so many of them are in high demand, and are mobile. As far as I can tell, a 20-something programmer can move around in industry and geography more easily than anybody else. This mitigates the effect of being in a hierarchy, since they can opt out of any single given hierarchy and look for better condition.

The next recession might cause some interesting times for these people, since there've been a lot of people going into the profession for this decade.

Another thing to bear watching is intellectual property rights. A programmer sells skill and experience. As more and more 'experience' becomes the intellectual property of the programmer's employer, programmers will find it harder and harder to switch jobs.

[There was a discussion in 'The American Prospect' (http://www.prospect.org/controversy/open_source/raymond-e-2.html, then search for 'shocking travesty') where Eric Raymond gets down on software patents. Not any other sort of patent, just software.]

Barry



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