Depends on what you mean by left. Some people, including many who would describe themselves as such, think "leftist" means things like pronouns and reparations, and are even happy to engage with capital when it supports their pet causes.

…source? I’ve literally never once met a capitalist leftist, only ones that still use the word to avoid alienating people, e.g. Sanders. No offense but I think this is a case of echo chambers in work impeding our discourse —- leftism is anti capitalism, and has been since its inception in France.

I think it's more due to political ignorance and the overton window shifting right the last 50 years. People tend to equate modern liberalism, which is very much pro-markets and pro-capital, with leftism.

Two different things: left liberals and socialists.

It’s populated by a lot of leftists that, while unhappy with the right, can have a sort of reasonable discussion about it though.

I’m left, but I can listen to people that identify as right on HN and not roll my eyes, because they have good points as well.

If you pick a random person off the street (left/right), your chances aren’t nearly so good.

Speaking as someone who self-identifies as far left, the conversation here can go either way. I know it's a common trope that HN is dominated by "Silicon Valley libertarians", but in my experience that isn't really the case when you look at up- and downvotes.

HN is a very strange beast. I do rather enjoy it, though.

I think what you're noticing is that a simple left/right along a line is a poor way to express someone's political views.

I suspect that because a huge portion of the HN crowd are educated IT workers / would-be founders, overall there's both a strong support for capitalism mixed with progressive social views. That doesn't really connect well with the political landscape in most of the western world and typically gets you labeled a centrist, regardless of how important those particular issues are to you.

What you say is partly true, but it goes beyond that. It's not that uncommon to see even straight up anti-capitalist comments here that still get upvoted, or the kind of "market solves all" talk getting downvoted into oblivion. So I'd say there's a hefty chunk of the userbase that is also leaning strongly left economically.

> HN is literally owned and operated by a VC company

So? I have never seen instances where YC's organizational viewpoint controlled the overall discussion, and I think dang is probably the best moderator on the planet.

Sure, HN has a focus around the "tech startup ecosystem", and that may attract a certain type of viewpoint, but I've never seen that viewpoint pushed from an institutional perspective.