Comments on: Open source votes for Obama, and other inconsistencies

The open-source world appears to be voting for Democrat Obama en masse. But isn't open source a conservative phenomenon?

[royrusso]

I'm not sure where you got the impression of OSS members leaning Libertarian. I find that the vast majority lean heavily Democrat/Liberal.

Maybe it's the prevalence of California-based startups? ;-)

[grsites2008]

I suspect OSS geeks do lean libertarian, disproportionately. But why would they find McCain endearing, really? He can't use a computer, supports the DMCA, rejects net neutrality, etc... Exactly the kind of politician who would stand for those whose business model relies on intellectual property. Not very open source friendly, is it?

I know that in principle, the Right stands for smaller government. In practice, Republicans don't, I'm afraid. They're too busy pandering to evangelical rednecks and all the anti-intellectualism that comes with it, which also turns geeks off generally.

[rickfrrss]

... pandering like in Paul Krugman's 'party of stupid' concept. (NY Times, aug 7 08).

[Sortova]

Wow. I'm not sure if this was meant as flame bait or not, but I'll take it and respond.

Over the last few years the line between Republicans and Democrats has become increasing blurred. I have only belonged to one political party, the Republican party, but I left many years ago when it was overtaken by the "neo-conservatives". I am currently unaffiliated.

As a small "L" libertarian, the Republican party no longer represents my interests. I am for maximizing social freedom, minimizing government and being fiscally responsible. The Republican party represents none of that.

You refer to "big-government Obama" but it was the current Republican administration that greatly increased the size of government (such as new cabinet-level positions in Homeland Security and the new bailout czar), spent money like a sailor on leave, implemented a trillion dollar tax payer supported welfare program for the country of Iraq, and implemented domestic spying policies and new classifications such as "enemy combatants" that chip away at our freedom.

While I don't view Obama as the second coming, he does represent an indictment of the last eight years, and you are fooling yourself if you think that the Republican party represents the opposite of "centralized power and government solutions to local problems".

The free software crowd is more worried about being spied on by their own government and having their laptop seized at the border (along with a slim but non-negative chance of ending up with a free trip to Cuba) than any worries about free healthcare and higher taxes.

I don't think that there is any doubt that McCain would have performed better than George W. Bush as President, but he has brought nothing to the table that said he would change the policies that have brought us to the brink of economic collapse. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was reckless, especially considering that a 72 year old man has a 15% chance of dying before his 76th birthday. That was one of the main reasons he lost my vote.

This doesn't mean that there are not some libertarians still among the Republican party (I plan to vote for Bill Lawson for Congress) but it no longer represents those ideals at the national level.

This election is not about the traditional labor/big government vs. business/small government division usually represented by the Democratic and Republican parties but more about do we like where the country has gone in the last eight years? For those of us who value personal freedom the answer is a resounding "no" and thus you'll see a lot of first time voters for a Democratic presidential candidate.

[Benjamin_Reed_562]

Given the choice between big-government Obama and big-government McCain, Obama slightly edges out to the win category in my opinion.

If you believe the Democrats *or* Republicans have anything to do with the supposed platforms they represented (and I'm being generous) 30 years ago, then I would say you're in for a rude awakening, but I would have thought that history would have already shown you their platforms have nothing to do with their actions for many years, so... good luck with that worldview. ;)

[The_Decider]

Your comments about big government Obama are way off base. Since 1948 EVERY republican president oversaw an expansion of the government. The government shrunk under Clinton.

The government is bigger today then it ever has been. The government will need to get bigger to correct the mistakes of Reagan, Bush I, II, and to a slightly lesser degree Clinton. Free markets require government intervention, just ask Alan Greenspan.

Open source advocates(with a few glaring exceptions) are intelligent. They may not support everything Obama says, but he is miles ahead of McCain and Caribou Barbie in terms of intelligence, thoughtfulness, rationality, and just plain decency. McCain and Palin has shown no intelligence, which is why the remaining red states tend to be on the lower educated side. That is why Palin's crowds get frothed up in a frenzy of hatred, because they are chumming the shallow end of the gene pool.

A few things make me nervous about Obama, but I am still voting for him because there is no rational alternative. Personally I am hoping he does something that has yet to be done from an administration following a criminal one: hold them responsible.

[Seaspray0]

Generally, I find that the traditional democratic and republican ideals are no longer the foundation of the parties as they stand today. It used to be that republicans were deeply rooted in less federal government and more state government with the democracts more for federal oversight and less state control. The basic translation of those ideas was democrats wanted to tax and spend while republicans wanted a minimalistic federal government on a shoestring budged and let the states do as they please. Those were the founding principles. I don't see that today. Both parties are not what they were 100 years ago. Liberal? Conservative? Those words still get used today in reference to the parties, but can you really say they hold the same meaning they once did? Hardly. More and more they are being associated with the new vs the old. It seems to me that conserative is more and more being tied to a belief that the old values and old way of doing things is better while liberal is geared more towards exploring new ways of governing. In this respect, I can see why open source would side with the democratic venue.

[eksortso]

I like to think that there are still Republicans that are fiscal conservatives, and that there are Democrats who uphold civil liberties. These days, though, I'm in doubt.

Matt, I don't think that certain positions are inherently Republican or Democratic, or even inherently Libertarian, from what I've seen of them. These positions are deliberately chosen and pursued, even if it takes generations for various notions to take hold.

The last twenty years are causing a lot of political rethinking. The parties are in flux. Lines are being redrawn. The next few years should be interesting. They shouldn't be, but they will be. And that means rough times ahead, because so much power is at stake.

That said, I'd like to comment on the Ayn Rand reference. A few years back, someone wrote an article showing that open source is fully compatible with free-market capitalism, and used Rand's writings as a touchstone to show it.

Some advocates of open-source software may sound hippie-ish, but those advocates are already aware that the politics of freedom are more complex than the colors of the states on TV.

[seanupton]

Matt, don't fail to recognize the coming split in the GOP. There is this anti-intellectualism that brings us divisiveness and culture wars that eats at the libertarian soul of classic conservative values; it brings us folks in Utah contributing tons of money to divide folks in California on ballot initiatives, to pit everyone at war with their neighbor. And this will split the GOP within too (see Christopher Buckley's recent work, for example). Open-source people are generally smart people, but the kind of politics incited by folks like Palin (you have previosly mistaken her folksy pandering as "normal person" -- I call BS) serve to label smart people, urban people, the creative class, gays, and intellectuals as threats. This reminds me of Boyd K. Packer's line over a decade ago labeling gays, feminists, and intellectuals as the three "enemies" of his church in response to academic freedom discussion about a Church-run university. At their core, most hackers are libertarian, context-sensitive, detail-oriented, and intellectual -- all things the current GOP seems to want to hunt down. At least now, the divisiveness is doing as much damage within the Republican party as it has done to our country as a whole. Hopefully (I say with marked cynicism), that will make the politics of division go away to some extent.

[OpenSourceWallstreet]

A few observations:
Fiscal policy is the most important thing the government does. Travel to any third-world nation and observe how little time they have to worry about the social issues that occupy so much of our politics.

The current fiscal disaster is directly attributable to violations of the open source principles of meritocracy, transparency and trust.

To explain, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both at the center of this crisis, are government sponsored monopolies created by social engineering policies that granted them lower borrowing costs through governmental lines of credit, exemption from state and local taxes, and lower capital reserve requirements, amongst other advantages. This concentrated risk and amplified poor decision making (such as allowing no money down, interest only loans, for poor credits, to be considered conforming). Transparency was limited when congress inexplicably exempted Fannie and Freddie from Sarbenes-Oxley - the transparency legislation that every other public company operates under. (Of course, this might be explained by millions in campaign contributions). Finally, trust was shattered once the executives of these corporations decided to cook the books. (Why these exec's are not in orange jumpsuits remains a mystery, unless one cynically believes that political contributions had something to do with it.)

Of course these violations of open source principles were justified by the noble concept that everyone should own a home (regardless of down payment, income or credit history). And of course only an omnipotent federal government could have forced these violations on institutions that initially resisted. Witness the extension of the Community Reinvested Act by Presidential Executive orders under Clinton and DoJ sponsored lawsuits against banks through the 90's for not participating in the sub-prime market.

Had the government not sponsored these monopolistic bureaucracies, many private firms would have participated in the CDO market diversifying risk and providing a broad spectrum of investment philosophies. In a Meritocracy of Ideas, the failure of bad ideas only strengthens the better ideas..

More broadly, imagine 50 states competing to most efficiently provide services and mitigate the impact of taxation versus today's reality where the states act as appendages of a monolithic, wasteful and often corrupt federal government.

Even more broadly, the taking from one person to do good is inherentlyflawed in that it; 1) requires the application or threat of force, and 2) people never spend other people's money as prudently as they spend their own.

Moreover, the threat of force means a violation of civil liberties and as history has often demonstrated such a socialistic approach approach often leads to extreme violations of individual liberties. Imagine how long Linux would prosper if Linus mandated that the best programmers dedicate half their time to projects he chose. Imagine the long-term impact if the richest American's wealth was confiscated each year and given to 120 million American families. Nice for the families as Warren Buffet's fortune would translate into about $500 each, not so good for Warren's civil liberty. It is also a safe bet that finding the next richest American the second year would be more of a challenge and the check would be considerably smaller.

In the decision between two lesser evils, more than anything else, always support the one less likely to grow a centralized and potentially-corruptible bureaucracy- that is the Open Source Way!

[andremolnar]

Open Source is apolitical.

There are going to be socialists who work on or believe in open source because it levels playing fields and maximizes utility for everyone.

There are going to be new democrats who work on or believe in open source because of a sense of solidarity among code contributors.

There are going to be libertarians who work on or believe in open source because open source is free as is liberty and they don't want anyone telling them what they can and can't do with code.

There are going to be conservatives who work on or believe in open source because... ummm... well I'm sure they have their reasons too (leveraging free labour for world domination??? :-) ).

All kidding aside - when something is correct it doesn't matter what portion of the policial spectrum you choose to be in for you to recognize that its correct.

andre

[john.mark]

Matt,

If you're looking for a place to direct your ire - and it really appears that you are - it should probably go to the party that failed to nominate Mitt "Mittens" Romney. Now there's a repub worth voting for.

-JM