Hacker News Reader

Comment by ouid | Hacker News Reader

libertarian, I believe, but if OC answers differently you can ignore this comment.

There's some downvoting that I don't understand here. If the parent comment is referring to modern slang, lib is a ray on the political compass "lib/auth" "righ/left".

View on HN

Lib means liberal, and not in the sense of classic liberal.

Not if you mean "as the kids say". Sorry.

If you're involved in far-left movements on twitch and elsewhere, the kids definitely do say this and use liberal synonymously with centrist / to the right of the far left

Yep - the leftists started by disparaging neoliberals, but today they just say liberals.

Even someone like Elizabeth Warren, who is generally recognized as very progressive, falls under this heading because of her basically positive disposition towards capitalism.

And to the inevitable downvoters - go read leftist social media. I'm just stating easily verifiable facts here. I don't have a problem with leftists.

Yes, everything said above is true. It makes for some very fun twitter conversations where the far left and the right both rail against liberals, and the right is like ????. More than once I've actually seen it open some eyes.

Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a too-online leftist, I can confirm that "lib" is short for liberal, and is applied to essentially any supporter of capitalism, even, or perhaps especially, those who position themselves as progressive. As indeed, it should be. /p

And they're not wrong, either.

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

It basically means "pro-capitalism boomer" to most progressives

I more commonly see "shitlib" which pretty concisely summarizes the corporatist, militarist, fake-center positions taken by these politicians.

Actually, remarkably close to the sense of classic liberal.

In this sense, it does mean more or less "classical liberal": a supporter of market economies, and, more generally, the political dominance of the bourgeois class (as, initially, opposed to the gentry, and as, later, opposed to the working class). It's used today by Internet leftists to include basically all of the mainstream political spectrum, but especially to denigrate "progressives" who claim to have leftist values, but in practice support the status quo.

Classical liberals want some semblance of limited government, and would oppose many mainstream Democratic ideas.

lib means liberal, in the "centrist / neo-liberal" sense. Also synonymous with "pro-capitalism boomer". Anything right of far left but left of right is lib. Used very commonly by online progressives, on twitch, by the kids, etc.

"lib/auth" is very easy to read as a rephrasing of liberal/conservative to liberal/authoritarian (even after you say libertarian above) as that's a comparison some of the far left seem to be trying to promote, but I understand you mean libertarian/authoritarian. Such is the problem of shortened words in a domain where there are very similarly spelled terms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com