Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians?

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A question on Slashdot...

BrendanMcGrail writes: "Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views, but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= ... 5&from=rss

My Answer: Because so many nerds are Aspies and Aspies are individuals. Individuals vote Libertarian. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom over a centralized powerful government and other forms of ridged hierarchical social structures. It emphasizes individual freedom, equality and non-interference by "big brother".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Any Comments?

If you're interested in finding out what your politics are, go to http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and fill out their short on-line questionnaire. Here is my Political Compass

I'm more Objectivist than Libertarian, but the same applies as you wrote. " Because so many nerds are Aspies and Aspies are individuals. Individuals vote Libertarian. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom over a centralized powerful government and other forms of ridged hierarchical social structures. It emphasizes individual freedom, equality and non-interference by "big brother". It's the short answer, and a generalization, but accurate in many cases.

It has nothing to do with aspies There's a LOT of nerds and only a few aspies.

The real reason why is nerds are smart (aspies included), and smart people tend to value their freedom and question the government we have out there. By the way, on that politcal compass thing, true libertarians would be in the bottom right quadrant. Left and right on that chart refers to economic policies, and libertarians are extremely right economically. The section you are in is where most liberals would fall.

Yeah like Psychotic said -- not all nerds are Aspies.

And I didn't think voting was a big deal to Aspies. I'm not Libratarian, though some of there ideas are appealing. I'm registered Independant. Actually I only registered that way as like a rebellion thing against the Republicans and Democrats as they are so mainstream. I really hate all politicians regardless of party because they are all a bunch of lying thieves. I really wanted to register as something more radical other than Independant, but at the time I couldn't think of any other alternate parties other than Whigs and I knew I didn't like them. I didn't think of the Libratarians. But I don't like how pushy they were at the county fair last year chasing me to try to get me to change my affiliation.

I think I want to reregister for the DA party. They can't do anything if you make it up right? Because you can write in candidates on ballots and people have put everyone from Elvis to Fred Flintstone in the past.

I lean toward libertarianism in many areas, due to my "overthinking" issues. Often once I consider all the evidence at hand I still cannot for a strong opinion on an issue, and I often think it best to err on the side of "too much" freedom over not enough.

I tend towards libertarianism. The way I see it, if a person is old enough to die for his/her country, he/she should be allowed to have as much freedom as possible.

I have wanted to be a librarian since I was about in 4th grade..I even wrote a song called "I wanna be a librarian"
Unfortunatelym though I tried for years to get a real paying job at the Houston public library, I have been unable to.

Go back to sleep! This thread is about Libertarians not librarians.

My politics tends towards the liberal. I mean liberal in the sense of free speech, freedom of belief, free association, and freedom from intrusive government regulation of, say, sexual mores (intellectual and personal freedom are crucial to me). I believe the state does play a role in guaranteeing social welfare and regulating the private sector of the economy to ensure the common weal. Essentially, I believe the role of the state is in protecting what is common to the whole society.

Libertarians claim to be both socially and economically liberal, but I tend to see the distinguishing feature of libertarianism as laissez-faire capitalism. Libertarians loathe government of any kind, especially a central government, yet most seem to trust corporations just because they're not the government (let's not forget that corporations are chartered by the government). The possibility of market competition is not enough to ensure ethical behavior. The few libertarians I have met offline (Slashdot is a haven for them) usually take a callous attitude towards the poor, uneducated, or otherwise disadvantaged from being exploited by moneyed interests. To me, it is a core imperative of the state to prevent this.

All this said, despite my liberal leanings, I am not a particularly huge fan of Democrats (seeing them as only the lesser of two evils). Many self-proclaimed liberals (really Democratic apologists) don't blink at taking numerous illiberal positions or merely parroting back the party line (not thinking for oneself is distinctly illiberal). Most people desire to be led (whether self-proclaimed liberal, conservative, socialist, libertarian, or unaffiliated), and so many feel compelled to conform to their ideology or party line. At Slashdot, the party line is libertarianism, so the poster assumed most nerds are libertarian (when, outside Slashdot, I've met very few libertarian nerds).

Why are nerds libertarians? After getting the crap beat out of you for the first 17 years of your life, you tend to want to be left alone by the time you're ready to vote. D'uh!

I've changed through my life. When I was a teenager, I was strongly liberal. As I grew older, I moved to the right, until I was a staunch conservative. Today I've moved away from the "staunch" part, and toward a conservative/libertarian bent. Largely because I think the Republican party has abandoned or ignored it's core ideals of smaller government and less governmental interference in daily life, a commitment to individualism over social controls, and the libertarians have picked up that ball.

"liberal" is just another box to think in, another reason to be ignorant, another reason to deny facts that go against your already set-in-stone ideology.