Are geeks libertarians?

TechRepublic recently postted an opinion piece that listed 'Atlas Shrugged' as the one novel that all geeks should read. I have never read the novel, and hesitate to comment directly upon it for that reason. However, I do understand that Ayn Rand is considered one of the great inspirations of the Libertarian movement in the USA.

Reading the comments after the article, I was struck by the frequent positive comments on the idea of what I would consider laissez-faire capitalism. The 'leave the markets alone' group definitely have a fanbase in geekdom.

I would propose that no economic philosophy, whether it be capitalism or socialism, is tenable in any kind of pure state in the long term. The real world is just too complex to fit into these nice little pigeon-holes. I think it was Wim Wenders who had a character state, "The world is not in black and white. It is all shades of gray." It isn't easy to deal with a reality that is all about nuances, and our finite minds often fail at grasping the totality of what IS. We pick a label, a philosophy, that we feel comes closest to explaining how we perceive most of reality to be, and we stick to it even when it blatantly fails to describe the world around us.


Then again, that is likely my own biases talking.