You will find a fair number of libertarians though, who don’t believe in socialism.
I think the primary reason is, of course, that techies do tend to not be social conservatives. Of course, many don’t seem to have the first clue about economics.
Yea, I think Libertarian would be the better description of techies.
Libertarians are a strange mix though, conservative financially, but social issue liberals.
That goes along with another of my hypotheses; that they're not true liberals but are libertarian enough to be put off by Republican social authoritarianism, so think of themselves as liberals, yet aren't politically involved enough to be concerned about Dem/liberal authoritarianism on every other issue.
[It's what happens when you place the Computer Science department in the Engineering School.]
I’m with you on the Libertarian assessment... most of the IT/programming people I know are that way. I think it’s mostly the small-government, extremely-pro-privacy aspect that attracts them most. Heck, the more I understand computers and networking and the internet and privacy issues, the more part of me never wants to use anything that could in any way be connected to or accessed from the internet ever again.
But you’re right about the economics. Our idea of economics is ‘So everyone’s dependent on computers, and the computers will break down without us, therefore people need us - hey, job security!’ or in programming school it’s something like ‘Without my parents’ health insurance, I’d have to pay too much for my adderal to be able to make a profit selling it to other programming majors who are trying to pull an all-nighter!’