My gamer and geek friends have been spewing libertarian flavored Randian nonsense since middle school, circa 1983. I never imagined that worldview would prevail. It was just so puerile. Not so different than the tortured coming of age fantasies embraced by the other subcultures (stoners, metalheads, preppies). Though maybe the nerds were more aggrieved, seeing themselves as an oppressed minority.
Of course, none of us knew about the well funded propaganda machine pushing the whole Austrian/Chicago school of economics. Young Republicans, trickle-down economics, John Birch Society, Hertitage Foundation, disaster capitalism, Grover Norquist, etc.
Edit: TL;DR: Mockery is the only appropriate response.
During the aughts, I attended many of our local political parties. Socialists, Dems, GOP, Libertarians, etc.
All these cliques, for lack of a better word, are mostly defined by what they're not (in opposition to other cliques).
The exception was our local Green Party. Their members were defined affirmatively, by what they stood for, vs in opposition to some other group.
The Libertarians were especially mushy in their supposedly beliefs, and no two agreed on anything other than everyone else was wrong. Kinda like the various Christian sects.
You could add in the Mont Pelerin Society,Foundation for Economic Freedom, Atlas Network, and Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, Adam Smith Institute, Mercatus Center.
And personnel: Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, the Kochs (Fred, Charles, David), for completeness.
Mark Ames has an excellent general summary: http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Educ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center
See, e.g., Philip Mirowski's The Road From Mont Pelerin:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/road-from-mont-pelerin-the-mak...
I recently read a magazine article that covers same history as Mirowski's book. Hayek's motivations and strategy for pushing his ideas (take over economics depts in higher ed) are fascinating, instructive. Sadly, I can't imagine how the left could replicate that effort for reality-based polcies.
On mobile, sorry no link handy. I'll edit if I can find it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.#Powell_M...
I'm not immediately recalling or coming up with a Hayek reference, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least, and I'd very much like to see what you're thinking of if you can find it.
At least someone on the Internet recognizes the Mercatus Center for the Koch propaganda machine that they are. It's unfortunate, the influence they have on the GMU graduates.
I've been re-reading John Henry Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, published in 1864, describing the author's conversion from the Church of England (where he was one of the most visible clergymen of the time) to Roman Catholicism. It was written in response to another clergyman making accusations that, not only was Newman being dishonest, that dishonesty was an inherent characteristic of Catholics, and that (based on an uncharitable reading of Alphonsus Liguori) it was Catholic doctrine that Catholics could lie about anything to preserve their faith, and therefore Newman had been a Catholic sleeper agent his whole life, tricking his fellow conservative Anglicans into adopting papist positions until he was ready to reveal himself as a Catholic to convince others to jump ship.
He sets out his response in the introduction, and in it he introduces the term "poisoning the well" to name a logical fallacy: he asserts that his ideological opponent has made it impossible for him to say anything in self-defense, and hopes his readers will recognize it.
This all strikes me as extremely reminiscent of Internet arguments. The uncharitable clergyman is very tribal, and defecting from the Anglican tribe to the Roman Catholic one is an unforgivable offense. And Newman responds by saying, look, you have used a logical fallacy against me. They'd fit so well on Slashdot! But it was over 100 years before the Internet.
(On a side note, the phrase "imaginary Internet points" to describe upvotes strikes me as a thought-killing meme jab itself. The descriptor "imaginary" makes no sense: what would real Internet points look like?)
Some people live in a political/cultural "tribe", and see the entire world through a prism where everything they dislike is linked to "the other tribe". They often punctuate every paragraph with some meme jab at the other tribe, even if it's seemingly irrelevant for everyone else who doesn't share the same prism.
On Reddit, this results in imaginary Internet points (i.e. upvotes), which reinforces the behavior and the underlying mindset. The HN community is better, but still not immune to this. I'm convinced that the "gamification" of online discussion over the past ten years has pretty deep impacts that future generations will look back on someday.