
Cyberlibertarians’ Digital Deletion of the Left - jboynyc
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/12/cyberlibertarians-digital-deletion-of-the-left/
======
rjknight
There's a good argument to be made about this kind of thing. This isn't it.

The author starts out critiquing people who see connections between their own
politics and technology where no such connection exists, then proceeds to
ramble through a variety of tenuously connected issues, labeling anything he
doesn't like the look of as "cyber-libertarianism", then segues into a piece
about neoliberalism that has no obvious connection with the text that precedes
it other than an attempt to rescue his argument by wrapping it in someone
else's metaphor.

The really fucking annoying thing is that you _can_ draw connections between,
say, Hayek, decentralised networks and silicon valley hiring practices. You
really can do this and actually be quite devastating, but the author seems to
be throwing as many "boo" words in as possible (Hayek 'n' Mises, Ayn Rand
because why not, the Tea Party) rather than assembling any kind of argument.
He lumps Julian Assange in with the bad guy crowd, but I presume he doesn't
think that leaking the activities of the US government in Iraq and around the
world was some kind of right-wing plot. He says various things about the EFF,
some which are true but which give an overall misleading picture by ignoring
their actions which don't fit his narrative. By the time he gets to Carl
Malamud, he's reduced to saying "I'm not sure he's done anything I disagree
with, and I can't disagree with anything he's said, but his work is championed
by libertarians so he's probably _one of them_ ".

The closing paragraphs, where he talks about general principles and values,
are actually pretty good! If you ignore most of the factual claims, it's a
decent article. I think the author could benefit from a slightly more nuanced
and informed perspective on both the technology and the attitudes of the
people who use and create it though.

~~~
humanrebar
After reading your comment, I agree that most of the post is a practice in
guilt by association without actually getting to much actual analysis or
argument.

I'm curious what you think, guilt by association arguments aside, would be
"devastating" to cyber-libertarian ideas.

------
TrainedMonkey
What we are observing right now - is technology becoming more like magic to
common people, and that is disturbing.

Instead of understanding operating principles behind devices we now quantify
them by few superficial quantities at best: screen size, pixels, gigahertz,
amount of bytes. None of that tells you exactly what device does.

Goverment is able to deploy complex 1984 monitoring technologies without
massive negative sentiment - because average person does not understand
technology, direction it is going, and long term implication of such
surveilance.

Amount of information available to us taught us to ignore things, so we often
ignore things we do not agree with. In the age of information we have all
incentives we need to stay ignorant.

And as technology continues to get more complex this will get worse, not
better.

------
exelius
I read this entire article, and I'm still not sure what it really said. IMO
the author falls into the same trap as most of the media, casting people as
"leftist" or "conservative" when most take a liberal position on some issues
and not on others.

What's really happening, in my opinion, is that there are people who are happy
with the status quo. These people are usually doing pretty well (see Koch bros
or startup millionaires.) They are politically inclined to believe in things
that are in their own self-interest: for many tech geeks, that is the
"freedom" of information because it sustains the belief that they can
personally profit from such a situation.

You saw a lot of this with Google. For a long time, they were all about
freedom of information and open source software because their mission
statement is to "organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful". A key part of doing that is having _access_ to all of
the world's information. But now that they have proprietary information that
is in their interest to keep to themselves, that tune of openness and
transparency is changing a bit (see Google+, et al).

Many tech folks have the same thoughts about government regulation. "If only
HIPAA didn't exist, I could create a universal medical records solution!"
Nevermind that if the regulation didn't exist, someone would have done it a
long time ago: tech people see government regulation as a limiting factor in
their potential for greatness.

It's not about "left" or "right", it's about individuals who believe many
different things for many different reasons. To call out "cyberlibertarians"
as a unified group is disingenuous at best: net neutrality is a classic case
where this falls apart. The cyberlibertarian believes in additional government
regulation on telecommunications not out of a belief that government
regulation is a good thing, but because they fear the loss of a profitable
market that belongs to technologists. It's special-interest politics at its
finest.

~~~
rayiner
The author does not call people leftists or rightist, but rather associates
language and causes with the left or right. He points out that cyber-
libertarianism tend to use the terminology of the left ("freedom", "open"),
while embracing the values of the right. Not every one on every issue, but as
a pattern of behavior across many issues. The article points out that because
of this language, people who otherwise identify with leftist causes end up
supporting cyber-libertarian policies that further rightist causes.

I think the best thing in the article is about the different definitions of
"freedom." Cyberlibertarians use "freedom" to mean "freedom from." This is
quite incompatible with what many leftists,[1] might mean by "freedom,"
specifically the freedom of the masses to act collectively to shape their
society.

[1] And indeed, many who would probably consider themselves "conservatives" in
a pre-Tea Party world.

~~~
subsystem
The concept of freedom can quickly become confusing, but I think the accepted
terminology is that "freedom from" is negative freedom as in protections like
universal healthcare. While "freedom to" is positive freedom as in expressions
like absolute[-1] freedom of speech [0]. Where negative freedom is more left
and positive freedom more right. You of course also have to account for the
political y-axis (or similar concept [1]) i.e. the level of authoritarianism.

I think it's interesting that many of the concepts that the US prides itself
on originally included negative freedom in a more prominent way than you see
today [2][3][4].

[-1] Non-absolute freedom of speech can probably also be seen as a negative
freedom.

[0] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-
negative/...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-
negative/#DisStiUse)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi-
axis_models)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dream)

[3]
[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms)

------
tedks
This article isn't about a leftist view of cyberlibertarianism, but about a
_liberal_ view of cyberlibertarianism.

I doubt that many leftists see the capitalist Western states as "the
realization of democracy".

~~~
dmix
Indeed, cyberlibertarians are all about decentralized power structures. The
internet is actually anti-democratic in a sense, as it gives individuals
direct power, not just by proxy of representative politicians or collective
voting (as in a "leftist" world). Therefore it's the most classically liberal
political position around. And one not to be mistaken with the
authoritarian-"liberal" style generally upheld in current politics.

~~~
3pt14159
(Hey Dan, long time no see.)

I really dislike the term cyberlibertarians, since it conflates a (nearly)
authority-less society with the movement. We don't call people that go 250
km/h on desert highways "highwaylibertarians". Libertarians will always do
what is right, regardless of the law, provided there are no consequences (and
even then, they often take the risk). Right now, that is setting up TOR for
people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling
black slaves from the south to Canada.

As for the confusion between democracy and freedom: The root cause of course
is that many non-libertarians pattern match and see democratic country and
free speech next to each other. But when they try to "democratize" Iraq or
Egypt to their horror they see that despite record turn out rates even more
restrictive social policies.

This is because the majority of non-libertarians fail to fully accept that
democracy only establishes common wishes as a basis for legality. This in and
of itself is actually undesirable. Liberalism had a history of "natural" or
"negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it
abandoned.

~~~
humanrebar
I think you're confusing modern American liberalism with classical liberalism.
Despite the word "liberal", they are pretty different. The emphasis on
positive rights, like the right to healthcare, is one of the major
distinctions.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism)

~~~
3pt14159
Actually I'm purposely mixing them. Liberalism was never as black and white as
people made it out to be. Sure John Locke had a long list of reasons why
natural rights should be a modern tenant of a just society, but to the average
citizen the shift from classical liberalism to contemporary liberalism was a
series of steps, each of which made sense.

~~~
humanrebar
I understand what you're saying, but the average citizen wasn't alive for both
John Locke and the Great Society. I guess I disagree with there even being a
shift at all. They are quite different worldviews that unfortunately share the
word "liberalism".

------
wcummings
>Cyberlibertarians across the political spectrum focus a great deal on the
promotion of tools, objects, software, and policies whose chief benefit is
their ability to escape regulation and even law enforcement by the state
(including surveillance-avoidant technologies and applications such as Tor,
end-to-end encryption, PGP and Cryptocat).

You say "escape regulation", I say "re-claim their basic human right to
privacy"

~~~
krapp
Regulation and privacy don't have to be mutually exclusive.

~~~
spindritf
You can't regulate what you can't see so they will be at odds at least
occasionally and probably much more often.

------
spikels
This shit is hilarious!

"computational practices are intrinsically hierarchical and shaped by
identification with power"

------
bsgreenb
The need to label everything as right and left betrays a primitive binary
mentality. A more accurate designation here would be distributed vs non-
distributed systems. Then we can have an intelligent conversation about the
relative advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches.

Also, it seems like this need to split everything right vs left is more
characteristic of the older generation who are less familiar with technology.
I think our generation thinks more in terms of solving problems with the best
tool available-- be it the government, the market, or open source.

~~~
solidhybrid845
I got the same sense from this article. He values "cyberlibertarians" based on
what they contribute to the right vs left and concludes that their
contributions favor the right more. Although the distributed vs centralized
argument is nothing new (see federalists vs anti-federalists in the late 18th
century) it seems to have been largely absent from political discussions for a
long time.

The author seems to be struggling to fit these new ideals into his liberal vs
conservative world view and rather than being able to see this "free and open"
movement as something different, concludes that it's a political ploy to
weaken big government regulatory powers for the profit of wealthy capitalists.

It does seem that younger generations are more open to a wider variety of
political ideology, but I don't think familiarity with technology has much to
do with it other than the incidental fact that the internet allows people to
be exposed to ideas they would probably never hear from the mass media or
mainstream political debates.

------
rayiner
I probably don't share many views in common with the author, but I think this
analysis of the nature of cyberlibertarianism is brilliant and spot-on. In
particular, he insightfully captures the disdain with which cyberlibertarians
view democracy as well as the nature of so-called "grassroots" movements like
the opposition to SOPA being part of a proxy war between big corporate content
creators and big corporate content distributors.

------
iterative
The article is a mess, but the root of the problem is that while the article
presents giving “power to the people” and "dethron[ing] authoritarians" as
goals of the left in principle, in practice what the left does when it comes
to power is always the opposite. Leftists may talk about believing in
democracy and freedom, but these principles are incompatible with the left's
overarching goal, which is promoting economic equality. Since people are
inherently different, the only way to guarantee economic equality is to use
state power to control people. Of course, even where leftist principles are
put into practice, such as in Cuba, North Korea, the Soviet Union, etc., the
result still isn't economic equality, only a lack of freedom and general
impoverishment of the most of the population.

~~~
rayiner
"Democracy" and "freedom" are wholly compatible with promoting economic
equality, given the understanding that "freedom" means the right of the people
to exercise their will through democratic institutions.[1] If promotion of
economic equality is what benefits the greatest number, then it is natural to
assume that free people will exercise their will to minimize economic
inequality (as they have in social democracies in Europe).

[1] To a leftist, and indeed many other people, what separates
authoritarianism and free society is not the lack of someone telling you what
to do, but who that someone happens to be. Arguably, a classic libertarian
government is indeed authoritarian: state power is exercised pursuant to the
policies of philosopher-kings who believe in a particular set of "rights"
(private property, etc), not pursuant to the will of the people themselves
(who may very well have different beliefs). Indeed, even as someone who isn't
a leftist, I have a hard time seeing much difference between classical
libertarianism and divine monarchy. Whenever I hear talk of "natural rights" I
think about who kings once justified their unilateral exercise of state power
by reference to divine natural law.

~~~
solidhybrid845
The obvious difference between a libertarian government and divine monarchy is
in the level of authority given to the government. In a monarchy, the
monarch's will is law. Under libertarian government, the government is
extremely limited to only protecting a very small set of rights. You could in
theory have a libertarian monarchy where a king was only given a limited
authority to enforce laws related to natural rights violations, but the two
concepts are very different.

A libertarian democracy of course is more desirable. Which means the people's
votes, or the authority given to their representatives, would be limited to
only those issues related to natural rights violations. Under a libertarian
government, the people are still quite free to exercise their will, only they
could not use the government to impose their will on other individuals. Social
problems can still be solved through community organizations outside of the
government.

I think the biggest weakness of the pure libertarian philosophy is the
uncompromising defense of property rights. If a small group manages to acquire
all of the property, they can use their monopoly to exploit everyone else
while the government protects their "rights".

~~~
rayiner
My view is this: once you bind everyone under the monopoly on violence that is
government, its wrong to not let the people who are bound decide what the
government should do. That's the fatal flaw of non-anarchist libertarianism to
me. Its some cabal getting together to decide what "natural rights" should be
then using the monopoly of violence to protect what may be their minority
viewpoint. Appealing to "natural rights" is no better than appealing to
"divine law." Its self-serving hand waving.

~~~
iterative
Under that reasoning genocide of a minority is just fine as long as it's
supported by a majority.

~~~
rayiner
That's the old "there is no morality without God" argument. Just because
rights aren't handed down on stone tablets (i.e. natural rights) doesn't mean
that there are no rights. In the English tradition, rights arise from the
long-standing practices and beliefs of a society. Thus, unless we have a
society that embraces savagery and murder in general, it's not "just fine" for
the majority to cause the genocide of a minority.

Also, what's worse: a system in which the rights of minorities may
occasionally be trampled, or a system in which a minority of philosopher kings
_by design_ circumscribes the political self-determination of the majority?

------
knowitall
Interesting, but I think I'll stick to lorem ipsum for the time being.

------
a3voices
Technological innovation alone leads to a capitalist dystopia like the one
seen in the movie Elysium.

~~~
iterative
Right, because you saw it in a movie, so it must be true.

