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Comment by asdfman123 | Hacker News Reader

Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies.

Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers. Watch your callback rate dramatically decline.

I grew up in a suburb of a conservative state, and I learned early on when to show "who I am and what I really believe" and when to be low-key about it. Others like me who did not learn that skill were bullied relentlessly. I got along pretty well.

If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well.

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> Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies.

Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all, but I do pretty much that now. My name is unique - look me up. For what that's worth, a good portion of my posts even here on HN have something to do with guns. I try to be more "informative" than "confrontational", but that's because of the nature of the site more than anything else. I'm here to discuss, share, and learn, not to argue.

I'm definitely a "card-carrying gun owner". I literally put guns in the hands of children on a regular basis (I'm a 4-H youth firearms instructor), a past board member of a state gun rights organization, and an outspoken advocate for the recognition of individuals' rights to both defend themselves and to own and carry the most effective tools possible to that end.

It would be fair to say that I'm anti-abortion as well, with the caveat that I'm much more anti-government. I believe abortion is a terrible thing, but I also believe that giving government the power to prevent it would be much, much worse.

> Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers.

I need to redesign my blog, and post more often, but hey - it's still in my real name: http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html

> If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well.

Did you read my last paragraph? I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people.

[edited for spelling]

>I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY."

Paying the government a premium to say you don't believe in it, that's rich.

The delicious irony did not escape me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/...

It's massively OT for this thread, but it's interesting that you consider anarchy the natural state. Aren't humans absolutely hardwired to form hierarchies and seek leaders?

It seems that we're just as compelled to create presidents, kings, and gods for ourselves as pack animals are to follow their alphas. The lone wolf is the vanishingly-rare exception in the animal kingdom, just as the anarchist is in the realm of human politics. NTTAWWT as far as having a lone-wolf personality type is concerned, but any model of human interaction that seeks to exalt the lone-wolf nature in each of us seems bound to fail. (Small-scale egalitarianism is just a separate case of that, since the same hierarchies will inevitably emerge between groups.)

If this condition isn't "natural," then why do things always -- virtually without exception and never sustainably so -- turn out that way?

Not GP, but I stumbled across this website in college[1] that had a lot of interesting articles on anarchy and “the worker’s collective.”

I don’t agree with the viewpoints but I learned a lot from it! Really cool material.

[1] - https://crimethinc.com/

I don't think I disagree with anything you said here, I just sorta see it from a different perspective.

I didn't mean "natural" as "default" or "as found in nature" - I meant it in the sense of a "natural right". Anarchy is the social and political system we start with, and government is a distortion placed upon it. Further, government's nature is to grow in scope and power over time. This growth leads to tyranny, and eventually, to rebellion.

Honestly, I'm not sure that a truly anarchic society is either possible or stable. I see it as an ideal, not something that I think is reasonable to see in my lifetime. To put it another way - I don't want to destroy the government, I want to shrink it to the point that people question the need for it and eventually just decide to stop pretending we have one.

Reminds me of the people who pay extra to the state to have the Gadsden flag license plate.

They love those in Virginia

Ha! Funnily enough, I lived there for five years. My Arkansas "ANARCHY" plate replaced my Virginai "4NO GOV" plate: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/279byb/...

> I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people.

You're not an anarchist and you should stop try to adopt an identity with a vivid anti-capitalist history to represent your desire for corporate feudalism with guns. Anarchists are socialists and anything otherwise is misusing the word.

You aren't harassed for your beliefs because people with your economic beliefs literally hold every branch of government.

I'm sure you'll come back with something about republicans wanting big government to police morality, but those differences mean almost nothing when your economic incentives are aligned.

> Anarchists are socialists and anything otherwise is misusing the word.

So.. you're saying that the other anarchists "own" the word itself? How does that work, exactly? Is it their private property, or merely a personal possession?

I jest, of course; I mean no offense.

The fact is, "Anarcho-Capitalist" is the most precise term for the economic side of my beliefs I've found. "Voluntarist" is the most precise term for the social side. I'll continue to use those terms until I find more descriptive ones.

> I'm sure you'll come back with something about republicans wanting big government to police morality, but those differences mean almost nothing when your economic incentives are aligned.

I'm pretty disillusioned with both major parties; I'm not going to be defending "Republicans".

I generally get along better socially with people on the political right, but that's because I grew up in a "Red State" not because of a greater number of shared beliefs.

I like your approach very much.

> Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all

Exactly. Which is why people put different stuff on LinkedIn, FB, and dating apps.

When you combine those three, your dating profile is your resume is your friends and family persona.

> but I do pretty much that now

Good on you.

But it's not just alarmist speculation to say those things can have a serious impact on your career.

Mozilla's CEO was fired (or some version of that) for having years before donated a modest sum to a then-majority-popular activism group.

If the inventor of JavaScript can be pushed out for a now-unpopular stance, imagine the career consequences for the rest of us.

Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies.

Even if someone did put something on their resume that I personally agreed with, I still wouldn’t hire them. In the context of work, I only want someone who comes to work to do the best job they can at the company, collect a check and go home. I don’t want to talk about politics at work.

Sort of related, my wife and I are Black in a mostly White part of the city. We rode an Uber and the driver who was also Black immediately started talking politics because he assumed we “would relate to each other”. I agreed with most of his political points but that’s not what we wanted to hear when we are just wanting to have a relaxing night on the town, and have a few too many drinks.

I work for a big tech company and I can guarantee you that it will not count against you. Some of my very successful friends and people I look up to come from conservative backgrounds and are outspoken about it.

That being said you need to be respectful of everyone, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, gender identification etc. I think it is very possible to do that and still be a strong conservative.

Bullshit. You can be as conservative as you want as long as you remain silent and not protest anything at all that the diversity and inclusivity mob proposes. One word against that crowd in a SV tech company and you are dead in every sense of the word except physically.

That is the power dynamic of our times and hence why the need for dual personas.

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