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.
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.
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)