I'm currently a relatively junior flunky in the Marine Corps, and the GS civilians who work here are hilarious. "We need to cut the fat!" We work at a minor airbase in the middle of nowhere... oh. Oops. Whatever we are, it sure as hell ain't muscle.

"Government spending is out of control" while talking about how they exploit the DTS system to get as much per diem as possible.

"Those lazy people who expect everything to be handed to them, and that Muslim in charge is just giving it all away" while sitting in their chair bitching whenever a Marine disrupts their Freecell session to ask about equipment repair.

I don't even talk to them about it, mostly because the fact that they are capable of this caliber of doublethink indicates that they're beyond saving.

My response: But you're paid with those taxes.

His response: Oh, right. <subject change>

I live in a military town, 20k people work directly for the base (there are only 120k people in the county, 250k in the counties most of the employees live in). They rail against the fat, then when furloughs happened last year railed against that. No shit, you want the government to spend less, you've got to take a pay cut or a program has to get cut. You're consistently late on delivering equipment and completing jobs, you're the ones that'll get cut. And the safety record, the morons think it's government interference (damn OSHA!) to insist on PPE [edit: personal protective equipment], and don't wear it so their kids end up with heavy metal poisoning when they carry the crap home on their clothes.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment ... ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_protective_equipment )

Somebody's going to be getting paid for doing nothing - it might as well be me.

But it is doublethink if you hold other people in contempt for getting benefits from tax revenue, or if you think they are immoral for doing so.

For example, I think Ayn Rand's position was not just that "looting" is bad for the country, but that it is immoral and that doing it makes you a bad person. A Randite who made special efforts to get any kind of money from the government would either have to think of themselves as a looter, or make a special exception for themselves.

Are you then looting somebody every time you make a cash withdrawal?

Social Security, on the other hand, is a "pay as you go" program. When you contribute money into the Social Security trust fund, it is used to satisfy payments to current recipients. If it's still solvent and operating when you retire or become disabled, then you can expect to receive benefits similarly (though, technically, retirement/"old age" and disability benefits come from different funds).

Moreover, if the fund were to go insolvent — or Congress were to shut the program down — tomorrow, you would have no recourse. (Whereas with bank deposits, you have recourse at least up to the FDIC insured maximum.) If you renounce your US citizenship, or decide to fund your retirement yourself, you don't somehow magically get back the money you contributed, and you're still subject to payroll taxes in the latter case.

That's now how it works. The reason you get those annual pamphlets from Social Security Administration is to know exactly what you're entitled to. It's highly dependent on your rate and consistency of contributions.

> or decide to fund your retirement yourself, you don't somehow magically get back the money you contributed

Not sure what you're saying. When you reach proper age, you're entitled to Social Security payouts as long as you've contributed into the system the way that was intended. A lot of people fund their own retirements through 401(k), annuities or personal savings, that does not disqualify them from Social Security.

PS: congress is just as capable of shutting down the FDIC as the SSA

Either it's a trivial point that applies pretty broadly outside of SS, or you meant something more significant and I'm interested in knowing what that is.

Ayn Rand, and any other person who has become independently wealthy in a way that has nothing to do with the government, can despise looters and be consistent. Government workers in particular cannot.

Or someone like John Kerry - both independently wealthy and a government worker?

It's quite possible to be the user of the system due to the lack of other alternatives and oppose it in principle. People with mortgages or shares do not necessarily support corrupt Wall Street practices and financial institutions getting "too big to fail", yet benefit from low mortgage rates or bullish runs in the stock market.

It's easy to say that a truly just person would not work in an industry that benefitted from tax dollars they would rather not have paid, but considering that the government tends to overpay, it is often the best position for one to be in.

If you worked for the TSA, you would also have sworn an oath to the Constitution.

> It's easy to say that a truly just person would not work in an industry that benefitted from tax dollars they would rather not have paid, but considering that the government tends to overpay, it is often the best position for one to be in.

So, some people who have sworn an oath to the Constitution should optimize their personal income even when that means benefitting from things they see as a contrary to the Constitution, while others shouldn't?

I believe my point still stands for all those federal contractors who have not sworn such an oath, but are similarly suckling off of the federal teat.

Contractors don't.

> I believe my point still stands for all those federal contractors who have not sworn such an oath, but are similarly suckling off of the federal teat.

Its not necessarily incoherent (but, still, IMO, somewhat odd) to argue that it is immoral to choose to benefit from violations of the Constitution only if you have sworn a special oath. That argument isn't about the Constitution, just the binding nature of oaths.

The oath of office is perhaps a thinner line than I'm making it out to be, but there's a larger point to be made there about the role of the federal government, the incentives of office, etc.

That said, I'm high (low?) on Valium at the moment, so I'm in no shape to argue it at the moment.

Do you shun others when they fail at it? Do you respond poorly when someone calls you out for having the same problems? Then you're somewhere in that hypocrisy/doublethink territory. (from what you've written it sounds like you're in the first group, not the second.)

It's really a lot about the degree and self-awareness of the individual. A federal employee is not a hypocrite for wanting smaller government. A federal employee is a hypocrite/doublethinker for failing to acknowledge that they want a smaller government, their program is too large or wasteful (F-35!) and that they should be affected by cuts.

brb gotta murder someone.

"We need to shrink the government!"

Sequestration happens

"Well not those specific things I like!"

Doesn't that imply then that those bits that shouldn't have been shrunk are therefore not part of what they think is "the government"?

Considering that the list of things that usually people who want to shrink the government think should be exempted usually includes the military, I find that particularly troublesome.

No, what you are doing is demonstrating the fallacy of division. The proposition "we should shrink government" is not equivalent to, and does not imply, the proposition "we should shrink every individual component of government".

There is a legitimate case to be made that many people who would assert the need to shrink government in aggregate haven't actually considered things sufficiently and would not maintain that position if they considered things program by program, by it is quite wrong to argue that not wanting some particular programs to be cut, by itself, contradicts wanting the government cut in aggregate.

But practically "shrinking government" is used to mean "shrinking the civilian parts of government".

> There is a legitimate case to be made that many people who would assert the need to shrink government in aggregate haven't actually considered things sufficiently and would not maintain that position if they considered things program by program,

This reminds me of an extended conversation I had with a local county politician who ran on a "shrink federal government" platform. I asked him what we should shrink. There are certainly parts of the federal government I'd be in favor of shrinking or cutting. He resisted, he wouldn't answer. I found a high level list of agencies and programs and asked him to run down the list and specify what his platform was.

He refused.

He'd get up and give a speech about the excesses of government and the deficit and all that. So I put together a list of what I'd like to see cut or what I thought would be okay to cut. I was able to provided a rough budget that cut the deficit in half and calculated out a small tax increase that would end the deficit and provide a small surplus that would simply be used to pay down the debt and then simply be returned as tax returns every year.

He refused.

Finally somebody pulled me aside and explained that he needed the support of the national party to help fund his campaign, and they hadn't publicly specified their platform for cuts yet. So he couldn't specify his support for specific cuts. Which meant the conversation never got beyond "shrink government" as a principle, but not any specifics.

A while later, the same national party put in place an across the board, every department gets the same cut, policy that for a while drove our news reporters to the brink of madness and was deeply deeply unpopular among much of the political spectrum.

So in terms of how the rhetoric "shrink government" gets transformed into specific policy actions, it seems that yes, cutting it across the board is not what's intended, but the hard work of establishing a specific platform hasn't been done yet...probably because intra-party politics means there's no consensus of what that should actually look like.

However as soon as you actually identify a specific programme or department to be cut, you energize a constituency to oppose you. If you identify a couple of dozen things to cut you have a couple of dozen constituencies opposing you. Now they will hire consultants, do soundbites and pay for attack ads to try to take you down. So you don't do it.

Uh... I think I know what you want to mean, but this makes it seem like you have no idea about the principle of civilian authority over the military.

That the people who listen to their media outlets parrot the talking points shows how effective the strategy is.

DTS = Defense Travel System. The online system through which official DoD government travel is arranged.

Those are the people who have a realistic, first hand understanding of the government innerworkings.

Also, a contradiction between believing that allocation of capital would be more efficient under a less centrally-influenced system, and being willing to accept higher pay and benefits from one of the central institutions only exists if you believe that individuals should strive for public good even at great personal expense. Which strikes me more as a moral view taken by nationalists than libertarians.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I've worked for financial trading companies and for advertisers before, but I can't do that work anymore because I think those industries mainly make the world worse. Not won't do it, but can't. The daily conflict between my principles and my actions would be too painful.

Cognitive dissonance is really uncomfortable. I don't think most people can live with the cognitive dissonance of being an anti-government government worker. Not without falling into what user omegaham correctly identifies as doublethink.

And I think that would be especially true of the libertarians I have known. If I were to generalize about them, I'd say that on average they're unusually thoughtful and unusually principled. Most people don't even try for a coherent political philosophy. I just don't know a lot of people who will think that deeply and then be totally ok not living by those principles.

Libertarianism will look like a "coherent political philosophy" only if you're a young white kid from an affluent family.

They make for witty-sounding quips, but both are ad-hominems[0] that do little to actually address and argue against the tenets of either philosophy.

[0] (In before someone points out that this is not a true ad-hominem because it attacks a stereotype (and a straw man at that) rather than a specific individual).

Or, anybody else.

Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")

So with that world view, working at a defense contractor isn't a conflict at all, instead, it is the one "true and legitimate" reason for government in their eyes.

It's not really a viewpoint I totally agree with, but people who are really deep students of the philosophy come across as pretty internally consistent in their viewpoint.

I think their's a good place for this type of politic. But I'm afraid far too many people who self-identify with it, don't understand it deeply enough or the implications of the ideas.

The Constitutionalist argument is mostly an outer limit on their support for government programs. They also believe that the federal government shouldn't do many things that it is expressly empowered to do in the Constitution.

Libertarians who don't themselves do any drugs (eg, Penn Jillette) still want drugs to be legal for other people. Libertarians who are themselves pacifists still want gun ownership and self-defense to be legal. And so on. It seems to me that this view you think "falls apart" with so little thought doesn't have much to do with libertarianism.

No it isn't. You're either badly misinformed, or trolling. That is nothing like the libertarian viewpoint.

Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.

They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as anarchy.

Ultimately most of us end up voting republican because they are seen as a "lesser of two evils".

> AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.

There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds.

> They are an extreme minority.

Perhaps, but they are an extremely powerful influence in libertarian ethical and economic thought. Murray Rothbard and Benjamin Tucker are (in my view) the fathers of the modern American libertarian movement, and they happen to have been anarchists. Even some popular conservative constitutionalist limited-government libertarians like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are anarchists who essentially lie about their views in order to deliver libertarian principles to a wider audience (I don't really approve of that technique, by the way).

But I suppose I did paint with too broad a brush. My statement about law enforcement is the equivalent of someone saying "Democrats don't believe in a totalitarian communist regime where we are all forced to have vegan diets", By and large it's true and for the sake of brevity it makes sense to say it, because those views are not a good example of what the Democratic party as a whole is actually about. This also helps some of the more naive people in this thread get a more realistic perspective on what most self identifying libertarians actually believe.

Cheers.

NASA for most of its existence was pretty much was a platform for military research and demonstration of military capacity with a civilian/exploration PR veneer.

If the public was more less interested in non-military functions of government, we'd still probably have had something doing most of what NASA did, it just would have been more overtly military.

And I do make an effort to push them toward more cost effective technologies and processes but the sad truth is they don't want to hear it because they prefer to waste money on oracle licenses and aligning text on reports nobody will ever read, than have their budget reduced.

There really ought to be incentives/bonuses built in for employees in govt who can successfully cut their budget and perform the same job at the same level of quality. We would instantly see a drastic reduction in the cost of our government.

There are some types of services, like crucial infrastructure, where failure is not an option, hence government, hence sacrificing efficiency in favor of dependability.

The larger the organization the more room there is for waste within its ranks. No organizations are larger than the government.

Perhaps you should consider consulting for less well-funded segments of the Government? The constraints make for ingenious solutions.

If you don't mind me asking. What state/department do you work for?

On the theoretical side it goes back to the whole Trotskyism/Stalinism debate.

Okay, I give up: What are you expecting to find upon doing that? Most libertarians I know are in favor of free movement of labor and open immigration in general. The current Libertarian Party Platform includes this bit:

"Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders."

(source: http://www.lp.org/platform )

Are you trying to imply that libertarians are inconsistent? There are plenty of libertarians who believe in open borders, Bryan Caplan being one prime example.[1][2] On the other hand, it is also perfectly self-consistent to believe that citizens of a country are entitled to liberties which are not guaranteed to foreigners.

[1] http://openborders.info/bryan-caplan/

[2] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/caplan_on_immig.htm...

I self-identify as a libertarian (with qualifications, if you want details). If you try talking to me about free movement of labor, I think you'll find that I advocate it fully.

Just about every self-professed libertarian I know (and I know a lot) support total freedom of movement of labor. Many of them actually oppose the very idea of nation-states and national borders in general.

Second, it's a quite small branch of libertarianism that doesn't recognise any role for the state (and thus, taxation) at all - and the one they do recognise is mostly concerned with security.

For example, if you ask somebody of any of these various personal philosophies, regardless of what the textbook definition is, to self identify, they'll say "conservative" or "libertarian" and often they'll self-identify as both...and their Facebook feeds will be clogged with endless anti-Obama anti-Government pro-gun patriotic religious posts sprinkled with quotes from the Constitution and reposts from Libertarian Girl, Fox, the NRA their favorite ultra-conservative or libertarian congressperson and then their occupation will be listed as "Department of..." or "<insert Fed Contractor>".

So folks definitely self-group and self-select and self-identify with these labels even if by some strict definition it doesn't make any sense.

And I guess that's what my point is, I run into people like this who've fundamentally constructed an anti-government world view that simply doesn't make any sense internally or externally...and here, in this area, it's shockingly common among civil servants and federal contractors and I find this pattern curious.

I think you're seeing hypocrisy here when there is really a lot less in reality.

People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass. This is why I don't give liberals a hard time because they are in favor of higher taxes but don't voluntarily pay higher taxes themselves.

First of all, most conservatives/libertarians are in favor of a smaller government, but smaller doesn't mean nonexistent. There are often large swaths of the government that they are in fact in favor of, and defense is one of them. I would be more surprised if these type of people that you're observing worked in places like the EPA, the Department of Education, and other things that the worldview opposes.

But even if… One can't just concede the playing field to the other side. If there is to be an EPA or Department of Education, been all things being equal it's better to have some conservative/libertarian people working there to keep things from getting out of control.

I actually do find it curious, but frustrating. I have a great many friends, who I quite like in normal face-to-face interaction, who I've FB friended, and found I had to unfollow their feeds because in private they turn into rabid ideologues...from every part of the political spectrum. In this case I'm isolating conservative/libertarian folks, but I see similar kinds of things from people in various liberal parts of the spectrum as well...endless huffington post, MSNBC and planned parenthood links or whatever.

> People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass.

Yeah that's true in theory. But it can get out of control. It's like attending a rally about having too many strip clubs in your neighborhood, then chilling out after the rally in your local neighborhood strip club.

It's not like there isn't a large, thriving, private, non-government sector in the U.S. that they could be employing their skills at.

> all things being equal it's better to have some conservative/libertarian people working there to keep things from getting out of control

What would concern me is people who fundamentally don't believe their job should exist because it's a waste of resources, simply not doing a good job.

It's a strained analogy, as strip clubs are fundamentally about the thing people who are opposed to them find objectionable - the stripping. Most things government is about these days isn't the thing libertarians or conservatives oppose.

They generally don't oppose that education or the environment is being studied or recommendations are being created - they oppose that the government coerces people to pay for the study and follow the recommendation.

If you're a passionate researcher of things environmental, you probably won't be able to pursue your passion if you cut out government employment - and if you live near DC, most jobs will be "contaminated" by government. Nothing about libertarianism compels you to move to a less government-y place just so you can work a more ideologically pure job.

>Nothing about libertarianism compels you to move to a less government-y place just so you can work a more ideologically pure job.

True, but it does compel you to work in a non-governmental job as much as possible. Or at least be honest about the situation:

"I hate working for the government and all the waste, but I applied to 100 jobs and this is that only one I could get. I'm looking to get out as soon as possible into the private sector."

I'm not fighting for ideological purity, but for ideological honesty. To me at least, it's okay to be a hypocrite or inconsistent, just so long as you are aware of the situation and can acknowledge it. Sometimes shit just happens and you end up in places, doing things you'd rather not be.

The specific thing I'm curious about are the all-too-common cases of people who do not possess the meta-cognitive awareness that they are engaged in hypocritical behavior.

Not really. Libertarians want government limited to certain essential functions (exactly which those are varies a bit between individual libertarians.)

There's nothing inconsistent about being Libertarian and working for the government in one of those essential functions.

Do you see that as rabid ideology? I ask because I'm always interested in what is becoming the norm (or how far the goalposts of reality move). For instance, while a lot of FB relatives might believe Obama is coming for their guns tomorrow, the last clinic serving the entire Rio Grande Valley in Texas is closing tomorrow.

I also have people who non-stop, 20-30 times a day, post patriotic pro-gun items or a few that pretty much only post pictures of Obama Photoshoped to look like the Devil or Stalin or whatever that I've had to unfollow as well.

My own mother is on the unfollow list because all she posts are heart warming pictures of lakes and natural settings with religious quotes and ghostly pictures of Jesus or whatever on them.

It's endless. I honestly don't know how they never just get bored or tired of it.

In an effort to find more signal in the noise of my feed I just simply turn those people off and if I need to I tell them to just message me if they need me to know something. (Of course now I get religious quotes emailed to me a few times a week...)

Let me look at one of my unfollowed: last 10 posts

1. Picture of soldiers firing guns with a patriotic slogan

2. Picture of a Navy Anchor

3. Some kind of rambling statement about God and country and service.

4. A picture of a congressional hearing with the following text "Facebook wants to delete all pro-gun rights pages: Share this if you think that's a bad idea"

5. Picture of his new indoor gun range

6. Picture of some war memorial statues

7. Picture of guys in Colonial costume reenacting the revolutionary war.

8. Picture of a handgun with the following text "GUNS My right to own one is what protects your right to tell me I can't: like and share"

9. Picture of a handgun, a combat knife and some money

10. Picture of an outdoor shooting range next to a Lincoln style lodge

And I'm not even back into Feb yet.

Here's another one...this goes back to Jan.

1. Picture of a black woman with an inspirational quote

2. image of text supporting gay rights

3. image of a guy holding out his hand, text reads "Just let the lesbian and gay people get married and calm the fuck down"

4. Image of the MLK diner sit ins with inspirational quote

5. Picture of a football player coming out as gay with inspirational quote

6. Statement being upset about some legal issue surrounding gay people.

7. Picture of the pope with link to Dailykos about Rush Limbaugh being a bad person

8. Link to thinkprogress about how Racism caused the shutdown

9. dailykos link about a right-wing truckers beltway blockade

10. link to thenewcivilrightsmovement.com concerning a gay rights issue

These aren't even the worst of the lot. I'm just picking at random. But it goes on.

It was much later I realized that he had said he was a criminal laywer and therefore here in the UK his main source of income would have been Legal Aid - paid for by the tax payer.

[NB He was really quite staggeringly rude - probably one of the few times I have considered punching someone. Fortunately, even here in Scotland, thumping someone during a wedding lunch is frowned on, you do that at the dance later, where it is practically a tradition].

The government they're "anti" is one which confiscates enormous fractions of productive citizen's incomes, spends far beyond that revenue stream incurring impossible-to-repay debt, twists & breaks the guiding verbiage of the constitution granting it powers, and generally is so far from the aforementioned ideal that the temptation is to scrap it all and start over.

One can also learn the necessity of functioning within a disliked system, sometimes living off & taking advantage of it, because the dominant system makes preferable alternatives unworkable. Working within that system may also make one painfully aware of what's wrong with it, with circumstantial realities making it impractical to do much other than take the money and bitch about it on Facebook.

Hey, there's plenty of people who hate their jobs, employers, industry, etc. - regardless of sociopolitical persuasion of both employee and employer.

tl;dr stupid arguments make good causes look stupid.

Conversationally, it is critical for many people to map their peers, friends & families to these taxonomies. They seem to need to be able to define you as a conservative, liberal or whatever. Along the way, any sense of true, genuine compassion goes out the window until they interact with you more and find where their modeling isn't correct. Then they redefine their cubbyhole for you, unless you entertain or arouse them. Then you're Truly Unique.

So for what it's worth, I appreciate that you're trying to defend a more independent view point, but I argue that doing so on a message board (and in this thread in particular) is utterly futile.

This is one interpretation of the oft-used phrase "one with the universe."

Doubtless I've mangled some of the concepts as bit, for which I apologise, but it's unavoidable when discussing zen.

If anti-government and experienced then: 'Hypocrites!'

else: more government

It's a stronger position to oppose something you are experienced with and benefit from. Imagine a nuclear engineer who's advocating that the new plant she's working on is being built dangerously by the people in charge. Would you refuse to listen to her because she works there?

However, believing the government should be smaller and then voting for politicians who want to grow your sector of the government does seem hypocritical.

Working productively for the government, specifically when non-government alternatives exist, does.

Let's say you work in transportation, should you work for the DoT or the company that owns all the toll roads in the region?

Let's say you do a damn good job for the DoT and because of your work you drive the the cost per traveled mile per person (or whatever the applicable measure is) to a fraction of the same for the private toll roads. You've just justified that government is in fact better than the private sector. The local general assembly passes a law that the toll road should become public property and a forced takeover is instituted. Government is grown.

But you could work for the toll road company, drive their costs down while expanding their owned network, demonstrate that private road ownership, a pay-for-what-you-use system is the best. It beats paying taxes on roads you won't even drive on! Private road companies start taking over all the roads and the DoT becomes nothing more than a small regulatory body. Government is shrunk.

You have a choice, participate in government or not. If you believe the government cannot be effective, and you still take the government job, you become part of the problem and that's hypocrisy full stop. If you do a good job, you defeat your own argument. If you do a bad job, willfully (to try and prove government can't work) or not (just laziness and incompetence), then I question the need to retain you either way.

The U.S. at least has such a large private sector, it dwarfs the public sector, that there's very little excuse in going government vs. finding a commercial job somewhere.

But more generally, there are lots of things that only governments can do, that no free-market alternative can provide comparably, or can provide structure to where the non-government solution provides inefficient chaos.

People often use government mandated standards as the example. "Drinking water must have no more than x parts per million of y" and then provides testing and enforcement of those standards to ensure some minimal level of safety. And if some act of God means local drinking water becomes undrinkable regardless of efforts to clean, the government also carries out public awareness and warning campaigns and offers remediation guidelines.

Nothing stops private industry from providing better than those standards of water, but private industry generally doesn't. Given a set of minimal standards, private industry almost always targets those standards (but not better and of course there are exceptions). Now imagine what gets targeted when there are no standards and no enforcement of the standards? Is the water safe? or does it just not taste bad? I've been in countries where there was effectively no government oversight and the water tasted fine, but would land you in a hospital.

And there are many cases where private industry gets caught not providing that minimal standard and enforcement actions occur. Or industry that has nothing to do with water provisioning ends up contaminating water so badly that people's tap water lights on fire or whatever.

Industry self-regulation sometimes works, but just as often has been shown to not work well at all.

And believing that the State cannot be effective is just one of the reasons to oppose its growth. There's more opposition to the State besides the Tea Party, you know?

This story obviously leaves a lot out from a guy who has had a long secretive life. Also, he isn't on a soapbox. He didn't share these opinions and I imagine, not thrilled that any information about his has got out.

In the Bitcoin conversations, it seemed he wasn't interested in talking about much outside the code. Even though Bitcoin was created for X reasons, the discussions were about code. Then he disappeared. Bitcoin has since exploded and he still hasn't come out.

From the description of the guy, it seems to wouldn't be self proclaimed anything except in passing down advice to his children.

Who knows if these are even his actual views. I doubt we will be seeing any interviews. Just short comments from family who apparently aren't close to him. This includes his brother who thinks he is an asshole.

Having seen it happen anecdotally in literally dozens of cases, I don't think it's that unlikely.

You are trying to over-simplify the complex political philosophy and worldview of a person.

To say that someone is a libertarian, for example, tells you almost nothing about that person.

I am one of those "all models are wrong" kinds of people, but if you were trying to model the beliefs of a person, I would say the minimum questions are:

1. In the ideal state of the universe, how is humanity organized?

2. In the ideal state of the universe, how are the humans close to you organized?

3. How should one act to aid the transition towards the ideal state?

To explain the individual you are describing who is anti-federal government but works for the federal government, there are a number of hypothetical people we can imagine.

For example, one could believe that in the ideal state there is no organization of power at the global or federal government level (#1). But they could also believe that (#3) there is nothing an individual can do to speed up that transition in any meaningful way. They may be waiting for some cultural evolution of humanity or a game-changing shift in technology (e.g. unlimited free access to power).

Or they could believe that the way to transition is by participating to ensure that it does as little evil as possible- or they could even be actively undermining the system from within. There are countless possibilities that could explain what you are describing.

On the other hand, they could just be big fat hypocrites. ;)

Focusing on the article itself - I'm glad it was not a pseudonym. Takes a lot of the mystery and shadiness away from the origins of the coin. Just an individual who believed in what he put together and didn't want a lot of attention or celebrity. I think that's a positive. I'd buy him a beer for sure.

As far as anti-government libertarians being hypocrites - who isn't? Silicon valley heavily favors the democratic party, a party that generally favor higher tax policy, and also has the largest tax avoiding corporations in the world. At a certain point, it's hard to rationally engage with what people claim to believe. Just watch what they do, focus on the outputs.

Not disregarding it. I just think the topic is already beaten to death elsewhere in this discussion. I wanted to talk about something else.

Anecdotal I know, but quite a few of my friends are former military of some type and their facebook feeds are jam pack full of libertarian group reposts.

> Everyone has the programs that they like and the ones they don't.

It's too bad that the rhetoric is "shrink government" not "I don't like this specific program". Because the former statement creates hypocrisy when a program they like is shrunk, but of course picking and choosing individual programs to shrink/cut requires actually knowing what's going on above and beyond catchy political slogans and reposting a repost from a Fox news article who's headline ended in a question mark.

Again, growing up and living in the D.C. area, I think everybody in these parts has distaste for government in some way.

Sometimes the solutions that are government mandated or subsidized would appear in a different form if the government didn't run them. So, for example, mass transit, like subways would still exist if the government didn't use coercion to fund and run it, it would just be owned by private individuals. Just because the government decides that they should be the ones that run the subways and I disagree with that, doesn't mean that I should be exempt from working for the TTC's construction engineering department.

These are two different things. When you live in a system that coerces you into giving up half of your income it doesn't mean that you are in the wrong for working for it or even taking things like subsidies.

I'm positing that it does.

In fact, there's only one case where I can find working for the government while thinking it shouldn't exist is workable, and that's working for the government in a capacity where you can dismantle the government. Which is often what happens right?

Privatization of previously government run programs is one of the example methods for doing that. I'm not interested in discussing the politics of this method, or if it is good or bad. I'm interested in cases where somebody specifically holds a viewpoint, then does everything in their power to work against that very viewpoint.

You were perfectly capable of finding a job that wasn't with the government, yet you specifically chose to apply, interview, get hired and maintain employment with an entity that you didn't agree with. I bet you signed paperwork and everything and happily collected your taxpayer provided paycheck.

It's actually the very definition of hypocrisy to the letter. In fact you put effort into ensuring that you behaved as a hypocrite.

It sucks, and sometimes people do hypocritical things. I'm not condemning you for it. But I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.

If you say "I'm a hyprocrite, it sucks and I know it but...meh." I'm actually fine with that.

But saying you aren't when you explicitly, textbook definition, are, is silliness and no amount of explanation or word bending can change that.

It's this exact behavior, this lack of meta-cognition and self-awareness that I find explicitly curious. You haven't explained why you engaged in hypocritical activities at all. You simply said that you did it and that what you did isn't hypocritical and you should be free and clear from behavior inconsistent with your beliefs because...?

Thank you for understanding.

>I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.

It's welfare, okay? It's all a giant welfare program. Gravy train. Uncle Sugar. Call it what you will. It's all very contradicting on paper, but it's not so bad when you're in it.

What's curious to me is the meta-cognition and self-awareness that goes on as a change-the-world startup like Google metamorphoses into Big Evil. It's usually a very gradual decline, like a glacier slide. Is it like the frog-in-water, where nobody notices? Does everybody know, and rationalize it? Or are people honest?

This is false. The state has it's own violence that one can constantly object to, but it does not stop one from selling labor on the market. Put another way: The state uses violence to coerce resources from individuals and to coerce other individuals not to compete in certain industries (like mass transit). That is where the sin is. To be an engineer at a public transit system or to be a income earner that pays taxes, both prop up the state in their own ways, but neither of them necessarily willingly works for a state run enterprise, but they both do.

It is not inconsistent with my beliefs because my beliefs do not hold those that work for or contribute towards the state through taxes as liable for the ethical misconduct of the state procuring taxation through force. It sounds like a tautology, but it is not.

Wrong, full stop. It's actually the literal dictionary definition of hypocrisy.

The problem I have is not being a hypocrite, it's not being cognitively able to acknowledge it.

> If I disagree with communism should I refuse work and perish from starvation?

No, of course not. But you can recognize that you are helping perpetuate the system you disagree with. You may be empowered to resolve that conflict or not, but not the conflict exists at all? Now that's a problem. It fundamentally delegitimizes all of your arguments.

> That is where the sin is.

Definitely not interested in arguing where the sin is. Or how lamentable and pathetic a coerced situation you've found yourself in that you have no choice but to hypocrize yourself while insisting you aren't. You can also be coerced into hypocrisy.

Redefining words or insisting that you really truly dearly hold the set of beliefs you hold, yet are working against, doesn't modify the nature of the universe.

The truth is, it doesn't matter if you are a hypocrite. Everybody commits a little hypocrisy all the time. I don't like sweat shops, but man if cheap shirts made in unregulated developing countries don't fill my closet.

I don't have a particular problem with your beliefs, you've selected your chosen set of ideological axioms and have chosen to work off of those. I'm not even remotely interested in debating those.

What I'm interested in what happens when you violate your beliefs, do you acknowledge that violation, or do you try to fold space-time around your beliefs and act as if nothing at all ever happened.

> Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

I'm claiming a set of beliefs, you may judge those beliefs to be inconsistent, but you don't define what those beliefs are, by definition I do. It is not hypocritical because I argue that despite the fact that society should be in a libertarian state a realistic assessment of the situation shows that my impact in supporting the governmental apparatus is inconsequential to its continued existence. The difference I make changing people's opinion on HN during the day is what will lead to the reduction of the state, not the acceptance of grants or employment.

Where do you draw the line? What about using tax-funded roads, or regulated industries like air travel?

I happily think that my taxes help buy the civilization I enjoy. I actually believe the concept that government is not some impersonal monolithic bureaucracy, but is what Lincoln enshrined as "by the people, of the people and for the people".

When the IRS makes a mistake and gives me a hard time I don't think "GODDAMN IMPERSONAL IRS SCREW THE GOVERNMENT", I think "some poor schlep looking at tax returns all day screwed up." I think this might come from the area I grew up and live in, where practically every 4th or 5th person I know is employed in some capacity by the Federal government. So I personalize what it is and understand that it's not a mechanized black box.

In my view, that is either an untestable (and therefore essentially meaningless) hypothesis, or it's a testable hypothesis that fails nearly every test.

Given the dearth of private subway companies, I question this claim. There are lots of places where a subway would be highly desirable but doesn't exist, why hasn't some entrepreneurial soul built one already?

The London Underground, the earliest subway system, was initially built as a patchwork of private railway systems that were later brought under government control.

Most of the subsequent systems (e.g. Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg) used the London system as a reference.

So, mass transit did in fact arise as a result of private entrepreneurship. The reason subways don't exist in places where it would be 'desirable' is because of government interference, or simply poor economics.

And I'm not even a libertarian.

http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-day-lond...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Railway#Establishm...

Same deal with new York's subway - therre were private companies involved but they were set up within the frameworks of a public works project and were basically financial vehicles designed to limit financial liability and attract some matching capital from the private sector for an initial large public sector investment or monopoly grant.

I'm sympathetic to libertarianism but this notion that all this stuff would happen by itself if it weren't for evil government interference is just bollocks, it's just as stupid as communists claiming that all private capital is wicked.

Mind you, I'm not exactly consistent either. I'm quite liberal but I far prefer working in the private sector or even freelance and have never joined a union. Perhaps our political views are an expression of frustration with the negative aspects of our life choices.

I think a lot of these people just subconsciously see "the government" as simply not including the security apparatus.

If you want to tell my friend who was terribly pleased with his heart surgery courtesy of the military that he's worthy of buying a bridge, go for it, but I don't think he's going to be pleased.

>He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen.

"Four legs good, two legs bad."

>Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond measure. "I made a small investment in Bitcoin and it is actually enough that I could now retire if I wanted to," Andresen says. "Overall, I've made about $800 per penny I've invested. It's insane."

"Four legs good, two legs better!"

Apparently, early adopters are "more equal than others" -- the Gini coefficient of bitcoin is near .9.

This is like saying "natural" foods are inherently better (or alternately, that processed foods are inherently worse).

There's nothing inherently wrong with "artificial" power as it may very well be superior to the idea that shit will just "naturally happen" and whatever will be, will be.

Militaries since the dawn of history adopted artificial power early, not because warriors around the world somehow converged on the same artificial Kool-Aid, but because organized armies were much more effective in combat.

This is not to say that "command & control" is always inherently better (and indeed modern armies tend to practice German-style "centralized planning, decentralized execution"). Likewise the free market is a fairly widely-acknowledged success story as opposed to a planned economy.

The point is rather that "no artificial power" is not a selling point or way of winning an argument on its own. On its own, it's nothing more than a suggested policy option, like saying Ethernet is better than Wifi or that CLI arguments should start with / instead of -.

The effectiveness of such policies can only be determined in light of all the evidence of each case in question.

Entirely different scenarios.

The banker blows a housing bubble, Satoshi blows a bitcoin bubble. I would concede that so far the housing bubble has done far more damage, but if bitcoin "succeeds", that could change.

Other people, of course, suck at the government teat, and drive welfare Cadillacs to the welfare office to pick up their food stamps and welfare check to pay for their 15 kids by different fathers.

In other words, if you do it, it's wrong and you need to change. If I do it, it's because you just don't understand.

(Edit: Do we need an irony tag? This is a humorous comment meant to illustrate one kind of mindset that exists with some of the people who hold 'eliminate all the government' kind of views.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

The cognitive dissonance became too much, he took some time off and last I heard he was working for a small start-up, probably taking a huge pay cut in the process.

I guess the other path is to develop an internal logic that somehow justifies you working for what you despise so that you can get through the day. "I'm surrounded by idiots, sheeple and corporate whores! I'm not one of them! I'm smarter than that!"

By your logic, every libertarian who disagrees with taxes (or the level of taxation) should break the law and face the consequences (of a miserable, tortuous life in prison).

It's one thing to have a political view, and argue for it. Democracies (and republics) wouldn't have a chance of working if citizens didn't take this much upon themselves.

At the same time, you also have one life to live. Some people want to be politicians or activists, others may want to be engineers, scientists or artists.

The latter don't want to spend their entire being on an idealistic crusade, but they still deserve the right to a political opinion like everyone else.

For one, if you are paying taxes (and otherwise accepting that you live in a republic where you don't get the exact set of laws that you want), most people would feel somewhat entitled to benefit from the use of those taxes, which includes government jobs (or state funded research).

What would be hypocritical is arguing specifically that your own entitlement is more worthy of government support.

I see no hypocrisy in partaking in benefits, while arguing that no one (including yourself) should have to pay for them and no one should benefit either.

>I've even pointed out point-blank that their salaries are paid for by the same taxes they rail against incessantly and are met with blank stares or wry grimaces before they launch into an extended soliloquy about "values" or personal responsibility or some such.

There's this kind of sick expectation of consistency. I think it's fine if someone directly benefits from taxes and calls for their decrease. You make a villain out of them, but when someone like Warren Buffet says 'the rich can contribute more' you applaud him even when he directly benefits from less contribution. Anytime anyone espouses some belief and doesn't reflect adequate action to demonstrate that belief you could fault them for it. If you're going to fault the deeply conservative anti-federal government types for being inconsistent, you may as well fault everyone who doesn't meet your standard, less you yourself become the inconsistent one.

Good point on Buffet. Claiming the rich should pay more taxes but having an army of accountants and lawyers on staff to minimize your tax burden seems very hypocritical.

Warren Buffet's personal income tax rate is not a competitive sport. It only affects his take home pay. I could kind of see your analogy holding for the taxes his company pays because they have to compete with other companies. But I believe Buffet is arguing for a higher personal income/capital gains tax rate. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-...

> There's this kind of sick expectation of consistency.

Is it sick to live in a constant state of dishonesty and conflict between your words, thoughts and actions or is it sick to try to live a life free of hypocrisy?

I don't think anybody would disagree that it's perfectly fine for people to have normative desires that aren't reflected in current reality. People who desire less or more taxes still pay the taxes at the current rate.

But it's an entirely different animal to rail against something that you are 100% participatory and complicit in.

If you have never worked in the government sector or in the military-industrial complex, you may suspect that it is a giant dungpile of inefficiency, good-ol'-boy networks, and outright fraud.

If you have worked in it, you know.

And guess what? He was also working hard to switch his job into a department that had more pay/benefit to increase his pay.

Couldn't this also be seen as principled? Arguing for a concept such as smaller government even when it hurts your own career seems courageous in a sense.

A person can dislike some things an organization does while finding value in others, government systems are complex. You can ignore the government and work outside of it or you can work within it to try and push things in a certain direction.

The more I work with government and see more examples of waste and out right fraud the more I think it should only have limited powers (and the whole issue with the NSA seems to support that point). Just because I want a very limited government doesn't mean I can't support the government in things it should be doing well.

1) It's possible to be employed by an institution and maintain an independent opinion about its value. Many employees in the private industry are critical of their employers, smart companies encourage that. You can also be part of a herd, which is a reasonable option as well.

2) It might not be as much of an opposition to taxes per se, as per specifics of such taxation. Watching personal income tax rise as highly-connected corporations carve out new loopholes to keep their rates at a minimum is probably discouraging. If United States personal income tax rate dropped to 0% across all brackets, we'd return to Clinton-era budget spending, and a lot of government institutions were funded back then.

And even if this opinion is widespread and stupid, working for the government doesn't make your opinion more or less valid, because every voter is the same. Anyways it's just an opinion, and I don't think it has a lot to do with bitcoin anyways.

It's not like anyone is seeking political advice and opinion from this guy, that's not why he's famous, so why bother ?

In fact, this very idea is a matter of intense discussion about libertarian types. What exactly can/should you do that makes you benefit from the government? It may seem obvious that working for the NSA would be a no-no, but where do we draw the line? What about working as a public school teacher? What about using public roads?

Snowden did the same thing. Sometimes people feel that you need to understand the beast before fighting against it.

We can point at ANY part of the sociopolitical spectrum and find hypocrites. I could spew the same sort of such outrageous examples about liberals/leftists/progressives/socialists but won't because it has nothing to do with the topic.

Suffice to say Nakamoto did have a change of mind and did do something world-changing about it. And, golly, he is a libertarian who made a herculean effort to live up to his own ideals.

And as to your "curiosity": catchphrase-labeling usually grossly overstates the POV/philosophy. People labeled "anti-government" are rarely true anarchists; they understand government has its proper place but are (as the label is currently applied) dismayed at how this government is exceeding its granted powers and abusing that which is proper. Ex: Making weapons for government use is a legitimate industry; that those weapons are used to violently invade the home of the terminally ill solely for the purpose of seizing a few plants is worth railing against on Facebook.

We actually don't know that. On the surface sure look like it, but he could have had a similar personal philosophy before during and after his time working for the government.

> We can point at ANY part of the sociopolitical spectrum and find hypocrites.

Absolutely agree. I could add also the large number of pacifist liberal vegan types I know who work for the DoD or whatever.

>Non-fing-sequitur straw-man

It's obviously not, if by your own theory his philosophy is what drove him to develop bitcoin, then it is sequitur to examine that philosophy and how it's expressed.

> I could spew the same sort of such outrageous examples about liberals/leftists/progressives/socialists

What example did I provide that was outrageous? You either don't work in or near the Fed-space and haven't come across this kind of person daily or you're living in a state of denial.

And just because you don't know whether Nakamoto suffered & acted on such cognitive dissonance doesn't justify posting outrageous examples of what you're imputing.

In fact my original post is questioning why examples like this are so common.

If really pressed, I suppose I could go through my FB friend's walls anonymize and take screenshots of the thousands upon thousands of posts by Government workers and contractors I know who endlessly post things similar to my example. But I'm not sure I should spend my time trying to make you aware of a phenomenon that's plainly obvious for anybody to see.

Our definitions differ. I'm going with "very bad or wrong in a way that causes anger; too bad to be accepted or allowed; going beyond all standards of what is right or decent; deficient in propriety or good taste".

I'm aware of the phenomenon, and noted that it is plainly in abundance throughout the sociopolitical spectrum.

It's not clear he actually changed his mind though, at least not since young adulthood. His daughter grew up being told to imagine a government agencies, with the correct reaction being to hide in a closet from there. Nakamoto's views certainly appear to be long-held and consistent.

The "change" that occurred was related more toward having to experience inter-bank transfer fees while buying model trains from the U.K. After all as late as 2001 he was working for the FAA.

The religious are no different, they rail against how wrong science is, and yet at the same time have no problem using the fruits of scientific labor like air travel, the Internet or clean water.

People just do what's most convenient for them at the time.

When I was a kid I hung around a farm; on the inside of the wooden fence was a wire that regularly got an electric pulse. After the first time it bit me, I spend a couple of weeks being very careful not to touch it again.

Hypocrisy can happen in a variety of ways. But there's a particular sort of doublethink and denial that comes from avoiding cognitive dissonance.

First off, cognitive dissonance does not explain any behavior patterns other than those prompted by feeling distressed. If these people were exhibiting symptoms of depression, distress, confusion, etc, or were making their decisions under duress of emotion, you could classify it as cognitive dissonance. But the examples given don't paint the people as particularly distressed.

Doublethink is actually almost the opposite of cognitive dissonance, and is the more correct term for the behavior mentioned. Doublethink is when there is absolutely no conflict in the mind about the two conflicting ideas being held at the same time.

Denial is also a different idea, and probably not completely out of context for the individual's reasoning, but does not describe the behavior. Denial is when someone finds an idea so difficult to accept that they reject it in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In this case the person's opinion might actually be weighed on various information that seems credible, and so denial might not be a factor at all.

The reason I chose 'hypocrisy' to define this behavior is because it requires an act that is in direct opposition to the values one espouses. In this sense the major difference is that you don't have to hold two opposing views in your head (whether under distress - cognitive dissonance - or not - doublethink). You simply have to say you believe one thing, and do an act which is directly in opposition to that belief.

You seem to be conflating all these different concepts into one giant over-reaching idea. This is probably not a good thing to do throughout life, not only because you're failing to communicate properly by misusing words, but you're actually simplifying a set of complex behaviors into one single idea to make it easier to comprehend. This leads to all kinds of cognitive bias and illogical conclusions.

Tone it down or be more specific. You are making a very sweeping generalization. And do not worry, I am not going to get into an extended conversation on this.

The groups who actually do see a contradiction typically aren't hypocritical at all about it, to the point of not getting blood transfusions even if it means their death, to use the example of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

Obviously, a lot of people are caught up in the bubble without being racist or even being aware of the implicit racism of those around them, but much of the motivation behind the right's demonizing rhetoric against the freeloaders seems rooted in race.

Edit: also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

Couldn't the argument be made that the other side is rooted in racism too since it appears their goal is to keep a large percentage of African Americans completely dependent on the government fixed-income for their whole lives?

That's what I've heard, anyway.

None of this is to say that welfare dependency isn't an issue, or things like affirmative action aren't harmful to minorities (in fact, Nixon majorly expanded affirmative action programs in order to tame and integrate blacks into subservience to a racist society).

Or, in another words, Obama outperformed Kerry in non-white demographics. Statistics is a wonderfully spinnable, isn't it?

I think that the parent post was arguing that cutting social programs disproportionately affects African-Americans.

I see it this way. Taking away assistance that people are currently relying on is guaranteed to hurt them. Giving someone assistance with the goal of keeping them dependent on it forever seems less likely to have the intended affect. How do you guarantee that people don't use the assistance to better themselves? If the goal is to keep a group of people down, as a whole, this doesn't seem like a very effective strategy.

And this isn't some theoretical thing - this has been a conscious strategy

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Add this to the fact that we have a black president named Barrack Hussein Obama, you can see why and how the very people who had no problem with their own government jobs and Bush's profligate spending are suddenly upset with freeloaders and government spending problems.

You make an accusation, person reverses accusation to see if it still holds true, you double down on accusation while ignoring the point of the reversal.