>Ya know, I really think that the left hasn't a CLUE about why people are
>libertarians, and what a libertarian is (and Kelley aptly pointed out
>that many on the other side don't fully understand the differences within
>the left and between liberalism).
>
>Many geeks are libertarians because we believe that a highly centralised
>and powerful State leads inevitably to tyranny. That people think it has
>dick to do with paying less taxes shows how clueless about it all they
>really are.
>
>If many and most of your friends were being harassed and investigated by
>the Feds how much of a fan of the .gov would you be?
>
>Most of the cyberlibertarians care about RKBA, privacy, and cryptography.
>How many secrets would the .gov let me keep in the Socialist Utopia? The
>Socialist Utopia may look great on paper but it ain't gonna fly when
>you've got the Klintons and the Algores usurping power.
>
>THAT's why geeks are [market-besotted] libertarians.
Actually I know quite a bit about libertarianism and libertarians. I used to be one, in fact <http://english-www.hss.cmu.edu/bs/36/henwood.html>. I am still pretty much a libertarian on matters of personal behavior and freedom of speech. I even think the feds committed mass murder in Waco. But (you knew that was coming), the kind of technolibertarianism that Paulina Borsook writes about in Cyberselfish just seems like childish entitlement and stubborness elevated into a political philosophy. The computer industry wouldn't exist in its present form without what you folks charmingly call the .gov - nor would the Internet. Private industry had no interest in funding it in its first decades - too much risk for uncertain reward. Silicon Valley wouldn't exist in its present form without the Pentagon and Stanford University, and Stanford, like all big universities, would be hard-pressed to keep the doors open without all kinds of public subsidy. And most libertarians are completely indifferent to private concentrations of wealth and power: marketers do as much to spy on people as do governments these days, not that that's the worst thing about concentrations of w&p. Wealth and power run the state most of the time, but unlike corporations, states are somewhat contested terrain, and politicians have to face elections, as flawed as they are.
I'm not sure if you're implying that "the Klintons and the Algores," which is almost as charming a spelling style as MIM's "Amerika," are some kind of socialists, but if you are, please schedule a return to planet earth sometime soon.
Doug