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stale2002yesterday at 9:19 PM3 repliesview on HN

Geohotz's politics are fairly straightforward once you understand his background. Geohotz is the prodigy child who, at the age of ~16 accomplished amazing technical feats on his own.

And his politics are a derivative of Great Man Theory, and his positions on things like democracy follow from that. This idea, and those espoused by some of the VC/tech elite like Peter Theil are that singular hardworking genius individuals can change the world on their own, and everyone who not in this top 0.1% are borderline NPCs.

They do this both because of their genius/hardwork, and also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%.

I'm starting to call this ideology Authoritarian techno-Libertarianism. Its a delibriately oxymoronic name that I use, because these "Great Men" are definitely trying to change the world. IE, they are trying to impose their goals and values on the world without getting the buyin of other people.

Thats the "authoritarian" part. And then the "libertarian" part is that they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.

Think "Person invents a world changing technology, that some people thing is bad, and just releases it open source for anyone to use". AI models are a great example, in fact. Once that technology is out there the genie cannot be put back into the bottle and a ton of people are going to lose their jobs, ect.

A distain for democracy follows directly from things like this. You dont wait for people to vote to allow you to change the world by inventing something new. You just do and watch the results.


Replies

overfeedyesterday at 11:44 PM

> also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%[...] they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.

I think all these wildly successful neo-feudalists get increasingly emboldened the more they get away with bigger and bigger social infractions.

It's also clear that they haven't experienced existed an environment with extreme inequality - it's not safe for anyone there! They think the NPC plebs will continue to follow "the rules" ad perpetuam without considering that it is a direct result of the stability they are actively undermining. They clearly don't read enough history.

SilverElfinyesterday at 10:18 PM

What makes it “Libertarianism” still? To me it feels like they’re taking away freedom, control, and influence from everyone who is not them. Even the concentration of wealth is itself taking away everyone else’s places in the world.

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