I've always had the impression that the cryptocurrency community was trending rightwards. So it's good to see some quantifiable evidence of it.
Which leaves the question: why? Technology as a whole is centre-left, so there's something else going on.
One common theme seems to a loss of trust in any institutions, and democracy itself: "the FED is just a private bank" isn't far away from "the mainstream media is lying", and even the latter is an opinion more common among the crypto bubble as far as I can tell.
Or are crytocurrencies of interest primarily to people interested in "getting rich, fast" and therefore liable to glorify a self-annoited master of making money with little work?
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Crypto was always about freedom, and as things stand the right is advocating for freedom more than the left (gun rights, freedom of speech, smaller taxes).
Crypto was always about freedom, you're liberated from the dependence on your country, bank, or whatever else it may be. Your fate is in your own hands, your wallet, your funds.
> and as things stand the right is advocating for freedom more than the left
I don't think that's quite clear cut. The right politically makes more hay about freedoms these days, but they have equally strong positions that are anti-freedom (pro-life, voting restrictions, immigration policies, drug policies, religion) and the left has pretty strong advocacy areas for freedom (religion, drug policies, "gay marriage" ) etc.
There are multiple kinds of freedoms, I suppose.
For immigration, yeah, being free to move somewhere seems clearly freedom. A freedom to do something.
Not being forbidden from practicing ones religion is also a freedom to do something.
Being free from being discriminated against on the basis of religion is a different kind of freedom, I think.
There is a similar way to split the third kind.
I suppose the boundary between “the freedom to do x” and “freedom from being treated badly for doing x” is kind of fuzzy. It would be absurd to say that “we have freedom of immigration, it’s just that basically anyone who comes in we happen to shoot.”, in such a situation, people are clearly being forbidden from immigrating.
But if someone is endlessly harassed by people, and treated with extra suspicion by the police, in response to their practicing their religion, yeah, that is kind of going against freedom of religion kind of in the first sense, or perhaps somewhere between the two senses, even if officially by law there is nothing forbidding it, and another law says that no law can be made which does forbid it.
But, even if things like this show that the distinction between the two senses is kind of fuzzy, I still think that the distinction is still somewhat relevant and somewhat reasonable.
A self-consistent rightist could very well support nearly-open borders, and legal protection of the practice of other religions, and oppose attempts to criminalize or otherwise legislate against LGBT things, on the basis of freedom, while at the same time also being somewhat discriminatory on a personal level against one or more of those groups.
> A self-consistent rightist could very well support nearly-open borders, and legal protection of the practice of other religions, and oppose attempts to criminalize or otherwise legislate against LGBT things, on the basis of freedom, while at the same time also being somewhat discriminatory on a personal level against one or more of those groups.
They probably could. The large bulk of right wing legislators and media personalities aren't like this, though.
> the right is advocating for freedom more than the left (gun rights, freedom of speech, smaller taxes).
You got that backwards: The left is advocating for freedom more than the right (freedom from gun violence, freedom from hate speech, freedom from preventable/treatable medical conditions).
agree about freedom re: healthcare. it would also mean freedom to take risks as a creator or entrepreneur, if you don't have to rely on an employer for health insurance.
the gun issue is a city vs rural thing. you don't want them in a city, but you might in the rural context.
> freedom from hate speech
but reframing censorship as freedom is blatantly Orwellian. also, the left is not a monolith.
the liberal left advocates for free speech and liberty. aligned with freedom.
the illiberal left advocates for censorship and control. the opposite of freedom.
The kind of freedom the left advocates is more about freedom from being dominated by some authority; but we see your boss or your landlord as being more of an immediate authority than the government. So we support labor organizing and tenant rights. Many leftists support the right to bear arms (Karl Marx, famously).
The original meaning of “right wing” meant supporters of monarchy or aristocracy. (The supporters of the aristocracy sat on the right in the Estates General assemblies right before the French Revolution, the commoners on the left). What you are describing is a free market libertarianism that denies or pretends that class doesn’t exist at all, which generally serves the interests of economic aristocracy.
Yes - I just finished reading a book about the French Revolution and it was surprising how far the modern definition of right vs left has strayed. Imagine living in a time when the leftists were pro-war nationalists who loved prison and the death penalty! But in the current political climate, libertarian market ideas are generally included in the basket of ideas labelled 'right'. That's all I meant.
Yes, I think also that the word freedom is a bit ambiguous which lends itself to being distorted. The left wing view is that freedom means not being dominated by authority figures, and the way you fight back against authority is to band together to pursue your common interests, which means that to obtain freedom you have to take collective action. So freedom is seen in terms of power relations. The right wing idea of freedom is being alone or being independent; but we on the left would say that being alone just makes you vulnerable, unless you are already in a position of considerable power. But you know, independence from other people is a kind of freedom too, so I can see the idea there.
Whilst your second sentence is true, belief that Trump would be declared the winner of the election even after he lost is something highly skewed towards people inclined to believe Trump and Trumpists' claims about electoral fraud,- Mike Pence having the casting vote etc.
And the most obvious reason why not enough unbiased cryptoenthusiasts were tempted to place massive bets on something already decided to correct the odds was suspicion that the oracles might be too biased in favour of Trump being the real president for them to be sure of the easy profit the odds implied
There's another possibility, which is that "Crypto people," are another isolated pocket separate from any mainstream faction, that come up with their own weird beliefs for their own divergent reasons. An uncorrelated niche faction would be expected to go closer to one mainstream faction's beliefs over another's about half the time.
Right, and as mentioned in the article: The markets were guessing Trump would win after he had already lost. If that's not evidence of a political bias to you I'm not sure why.
When hurricane forecasters predict that a hurricane will strike a city, would that be evidence of their pro-hurricane bias? If they were consistently overeager to predict hurricane strikes, would that be evidence that they supported hurricanes, or merely were overcalibrated to predicting them?
If a forecaster saw a hurricane make landfall in Texas and still gave it a 15% chance of hitting Alabama, that'd be pretty far beyond simple poor calibration, and I think it'd be justified to ask some pointed questions about why they're so dedicated to their bad prediction.
or maybe it just isn't and crypto is a counter example? not sure why it has to be an axiom that tech is "Centre-left" especially considering the historical relativity of terms like right and left
Center-left is a liberal euphemism for normal. It's what you assume everybody is when you're part of the urban middle-class and don't really talk about politics.
Which leaves the question: why? Technology as a whole is centre-left, so there's something else going on.
One common theme seems to a loss of trust in any institutions, and democracy itself: "the FED is just a private bank" isn't far away from "the mainstream media is lying", and even the latter is an opinion more common among the crypto bubble as far as I can tell.
Or are crytocurrencies of interest primarily to people interested in "getting rich, fast" and therefore liable to glorify a self-annoited master of making money with little work?