First to address the last part of your comment. I think we can agree that politics will not go away any time soon. That means you either take sides or let others decide for you. So, no, there's no conflict in my statement. Politics sucks. I believe that a moderate "centrist" Libertarian approach will suck a lot less.

Now, about your left-leaning tech friends. There are probably multiple answers to this question.

The first answer is simple: Nothing.

Politicians need massive numbers of people to vote for them in order to win. This is done by giving to the masses, not to highly paid tech workers. This is why the rich are easy targets in political speeches. They don't represent a large voting block. There are enough rich people supporting each party to keep the cash coming in. I have yet to see one politician, regardless of affiliation, not take a single dime from the rich people they vilify in public.

Politicians get votes from giving to the masses. It's a simple formula really. I don't think tech workers fit that category. What's interesting is that this sort of talk on HN will result in vicious down-voting yet nobody stops to think and understand that what people like me are saying is supported by massive amounts of evidence, not just in the US but all over the world. The very article that started this thread talks about it being common in India. I speak about Argentina because my family lived there for a number of years and I came to learn about just how fucked-up and manipulative their politics are.

And so, when one sees American (or any other for that matter) politics with the benefit of years of exposure to other cultures and the blatant use and abuse of the masses for political gain, well, it's only natural to want to alert others. The emperor has no clothes. Yet nobody wants to stop and think.

The explanations for the left-leaning of your tech worker friends would require knowing each of them personally. If I am to generalize I'll say that it is very likely there was a degree of indoctrination at home. BTW, this is true of any political bend.

It is also no secret that our universities are permeated with far-left-leaning professors. And it is no secret that a degree of indoctrination goes on in many classes. My own son often tells me about experiences he is having in college with militant left-leaning professors consuming class time to indoctrinate. It's sick.

In a lot of cases there's a situation of not having enough life experience and cultural exposure outside the US. I know people in the US that have almost never ventured outside their city. Young 20-something tech workers simply don't know what they don't know when it comes to political reality. They just know what makes them feel good and what their friends and bosses might think. And they fall right in line with them.

Note that I am not favoring Republicans when I speak ill of Democrats. I think both parties have degenerated into ugly piles of manure. They are collectively doing more damage to this country than we can probably quantify today.

All I ask is that people stop to really think about these things because, in the end, they will really affect your life in massive ways. And the lives of your children. I know that to a 20-something rocking it in Silicon Valley this might be hard to connect with (the idea of thinking about children you don't have) yet, it is the way you need to start thinking if you want things to get better rather than worst.

More government isn't the solution because it is giving more control to people who think it reasonable to spend a billions dollars (or whatever it was) to build a website or billions of dollars bombing the shit out of people we should have nothing to do with or a joke of a high speed train to nowhere.

More government is NOT the solution. Leaning left or right in a mindless manner, or just to be part of the group you associate with is exactly what you should not be doing. You need to look at every piece of manure that comes out of politicians mouths with huge skepticism and cast your vote in favor of what, in the long term, will be best for your children and their children.

I mean, look at the various wars and tell me how effective they've been: War on Poverty. Fail. War on Drugs. Fail. War on Education. Fail. War on Terror. Fail.

The only war we are winning is that being waged by bad politics against ourselves. And it is going to cost us our country.

That's why, again, I say: Since politics isn't going away any time soon, perhaps we ought to give a moderate Libertarian approach a shot. Extreme Libertarians are just as crazy as the extreme's of any other party. I find that a reasonable Libertarian position where government is small, taxes are low, regulations are sensible, foreign relations are based on respect, people's freedom and privacy are truly respected might just be the right approach.

Will it be perfect? Of course not.

I hope that clarifies my position.