Libertarianism, Meritocracy and Equality

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TLDR;

Libertarianism when applied to the social and political structure of technology and open source (Meritocracy) perpetuates inequality by failing to acknowledge the role of power and current state of inequality.

Long Version

American libertarianism is uniquely American, unfortunately Silicon Valley happens to be in America. It is a political and social philosophy that believes individual ownership and power should supplant collective ownership of any kind. Most immediately the ownership and interventionist powers of government should be dismantled and the free market should be left with the responsibility of creating equality and individuals expected to protect their own interests.

Filtered through the lens of technology this becomes a more unified theory of Meritocracy. Being that we don't trade goods for currency we don't have a traditional market and libertarians must invent one. A strange mix of experience, social capital, and skill are a sort of currency in technology communities. Meritocracy is the social theory that allows that currency and its exchange to become power the way actually currency becomes power in a capitalist free market.

This is where techno-libertarians and people attempting to build a system of equality collide. To build a more equitable system you have to re-distribute power. If there is an imbalance of race and gender (there obviously is) then it means the under-represented are not engaged and have no power under the existing standards of "merit." To alter representation we must alter the process and culture of technology creation to subvert the value of "merit" so that people without it can engage.

Attempting to alter existing gender or race imbalance is always in conflict with libertarian meritocracy because being black or female has no currency in the system they've created. Such a system must be called out for what it is: a process of subjugation that perpetuates existing power structures. Existing power happens to be white male dominated. Libertarians would then argue that the fact that existing power is white male dominated does not mean the system itself is racist or sexist because the system doesn't value race or sex, only "merit."

To which advocates of equality must respond that any system which perpetuates historical racism and sexism inherits those traits by willful ignorance.

Libertarianism is the philosophy of non-intervention. That no system should exist which attempts to mitigate the private exchange of currency, goods and services in a free market. Any intervention, even intervention that would create gender or racial equality, cannot be tolerated without admitting that the free market is a poor arbiter of freedom.

In the birth of a new culture where a market and currency do not exist as they do elsewhere libertarianism invents the tyranny of meritocracy so that we might extend even further the domination of those who have inherited power over those who currently lack it. If we are to create a more equitable culture we must reject it.

Can you clarify what core values are driving the opinions expressed here? I'm having difficulty understanding exactly what kind of utopia you're striving for here and what the most important things are that you feel so strongly in need of defending or rectifying. I would suggest that the disagreement you're having with what you're characterising (in a straw-man kind of way) as "American libertarianism" have mostly to do with core values and the outcomes that you think are important to achieve.

Can you give some specifics about where you believe that "merit" is currently set up in such a way as to exclude the minorities that you're concerned about? For instance, are you concerned about the representation of women as speakers at tech conferences; if so, what is the "merit" system that is holding them back now, why is it a bad system and and what is the ideal system that would supplant the existing one and how is that overall more beneficial and for whom exactly does it need to be beneficial for to be a "better" system? Just looking for some examples so I can understand better the core values driving these kinds of arguments.

To build a more equitable system you have to re-distribute power.

How do you propose to do this with a state, which centralizes power with a political class? A class which has the power to enforce its dictates with violence. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." as I'm sure you've heard before.

Libertarianism is the philosophy of non-intervention. That no system should exist which attempts to mitigate the private exchange of currency, goods and services in a free market.

Libertarianism is the philosophy of non-aggression, which is the initiation of force (i.e. coercion, violence) against another human being. This includes theft, murder, and slavery. An individual may intervene, by voluntary means such as persuasion or ostracism. But enacting violence against another individual is morally wrong. And violence is the foundation of state power.

I was about to make the same correction on Libertarianism as @programmarchy made in his last statement. Libertarianism is the social-side, capitalism is the economic-side.

Can you clarify what core values are driving the opinions expressed here? I'm having difficulty understanding exactly what kind of utopia you're striving for here and what the most important things are that you feel so strongly in need of defending or rectifying. I would suggest that the disagreement you're having with what you're characterising (in a straw-man kind of way) as "American libertarianism" have mostly to do with core values and the outcomes that you think are important to achieve.

I think that we should strive for a culture that values equality and empowers people. As we create various modes of organization, process, and governance in the creation of technology and expressions of our culture I'd like to expose the inherit inequality of meritocracy which, as it is practiced and preached today, has its roots in libertarianism.

Can you give some specifics about where you believe that "merit" is currently set up in such a way as to exclude the minorities that you're concerned about?

You brought up one good example, conferences. Whenever a conference achieves a progressive speaker lineup, in other words the speakers represent more diversity than the community as it exists today, it is charged with violating the sacred principal of meritocracy and picking speakers just because of their sex. This is the tyranny of meritocracy, that it dismisses any process or governance that values anything other than "mertit" which means currently underrepresented groups will continue to be underrepresented since they lack it.

@programmarchy

My views on changing the existing world geopolitical system is a much longer conversations and, frankly, has people much smarter than me writing about it. I am, somewhat obviously, a follower of classical anarchist thought in the tradition of Emma Goldman, Rudolf Rocker and Noam Chomsky.

Your description of libertarianism is flawed. Very few social theories condone violence and coercion, even some fascist social theorists didn't condone it, and none of the current ruling parties in the United States openly condone coercion and violence. The differences between social theories have far more to do with what they believe will best bring about greater freedom and equality and end poverty and disease. Libertarianism believes the solution is private ownership and the market. The problem with this line of thought is that it ignores the existing imbalances of ownership and power, making it a system that perpetuates existing imbalance descendent from a brutal history of subjugation. Even worse, libertarianism is viewed less as a revolutionary or utopian ideology but as a social theory to be applied piecemeal in existing US policy which creates an even larger wealth divide since the policy is almost guaranteed to be implemented in a way that rewards those with power and punishes the poor.

none of the current ruling parties in the United States openly condone coercion and violence

Not openly, perhaps, but don't all current ruling parties condone violence and coercion? Think about what happens if you don't pay your taxes...

@programmarchy

I know what you're trying to say but, again, this doesn't mean the libertarian ideals get us any closer to where we want to be.

For instance, coercion is rampant in the market today. Nearly all consumption is manipulated on some level by marketing, if it wasn't ads would be nothing but the explanation of a product. So, given that we know coercion is used often and quite vigorously by private enterprise to manipulate the market, how does libertarianism attempt to solve it?

Any answer that would involve empowering a regulatory state can't be part of a libertarian utopia. Hard liners will tell you that it is the individual's responsibility to avoid coercion, which means they'd rather pretend that coercion doesn't exist. The incentives are there, so it will happen, you can't stop it unless you empower people enough that they can't be coerced which lands us back to the existing state of inequality that exists today. You at least have to redistribute wealth enough that you might educate people to the extent that they can act in their own interest rather than be coerced, but that's intervention, it's not delivered through the market, so we can't talk about it.

Libertarianism in America is corporate-funded, neoliberal jingoism.

Libertarian Koch brothers, through organizations such as AFP and Heritage Foundation, CATO, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Tea Party and Republicans (Romney), promote their "small government" freedom dialogue while funding big oil and ALEC.

"ALEC works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public."

It's rhetoric and PR. They even rub the neoliberal "public-private" partnership lingo in the faces of the few who know what that's really about. ICLEI, libertarianism's seeming diametric opposite, uses the same "public private" keyword, a loving euphamism that really means land grabs (eminent domain or otherwise), fascist neoliberalism, and the type of corporatism prevalent here in SF (PDA of the Northern California Megaregion).

A bottom-up society is driven by voluntaryism, community, food sovereignty, and alternative currency. Corporate, concentrated power used topple extant power is more of the same.

(A)