The free common individual can't really coexist with an economic doctrine that only accepts the pursuit of constant financial growth. Cyberlibertarianism as well as any form of self determination needs a regression to the mean, where we equalize everyone's expression and power. This, however, needs a different mindset, that which is not centered solely on the individual as it's own project of perpetual self improvement and denial of death, but one that realizes that true freedom lies in the common good. One such form of moral doctrine which as been transformed in a product we call the church is called the love of Christ, but it's also encoded in virtually every religion that preaches the care for the other, and also in the philosophy of care. Those are the foundations we need to build in order to truly decolonialize our cultural medium.

Excellent text and Winner's "Cyberlibertarian Myths And The Prospects For Community" is a milestone.

Further reading:

1) Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. ‘The Californian Ideology’. Science as Culture 6, no. 1 (1996): 44–72.

2) Harvey, David. Spaces of Neoliberalization: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005.

3) Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

4) Mirowski, Philip. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. Verso, 2013.

5) Brown, Wendy. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. The Wellek Library Lectures. Columbia University Press, 2019.

6) Greer, Tanner. ‘The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite’. The Scholar’s Stage, 21 August 2024. https://scholars-stage.org/the-silicon-valley-canon-on-the-p....

7) Stevens, Marthe, Steven R. Kraaijeveld, and Tamar Sharon. ‘Sphere Transgressions: Reflecting on the Risks of Big Tech Expansionism’. Information, Communication & Society 27, no. 15 (2024): 2587–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2353782.

8) Lewis, Becca. ‘“Headed for Technofascism”: The Rightwing Roots of Silicon Valley’. Technology. The Guardian (London), 29 January 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/j....

9) Bria, Francesca, and José Bautista. ‘The Authoritarian Stack’. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Future of Work, 8 November 2025. https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/.

10) Durand, Cédric, Morozov, Evgeny, and Watkins, Susan. ‘How Big Tech Became Part of the State’. Jacobin, 24 November 2025.

11) Spiers, Elizabeth. ‘The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites’. Elizabeth Spiers, 1 April 2026. https://www.elizabethspiers.com/the-anti-intellectualism-of-....

For more along this line of criticism, read Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech by Paulina Borsook

The problem with [conservative] libertarians is that they are half anarchists.

They support "radical individualism" (anarchy) and "free market absolutism" (hierarchy). This is a blatant contradiction no matter how you talk your way out of it.

If you are participating in a free market, then you are subject to corporations. The conclusion of libertarian ideals is that one must both allow corporations to rule over them, and never allow anyone to rule over the corporations.

This is where most people, including the author, present liberalism as the solution. Free market + democratic regulation is a great way to manage an economy; but is it really a good way to manage the rest of society?

The article brings up copyright without exploring the idea at all. I think this is the greatest mistake of all. Copyright is what forces every facet of society to participate in a capitalist market.

Without copyright, what would change? First of all, we wouldn't have tech billionaires. Wouldn't that be nice? Next, we wouldn't be structuring all human interactions with corporate ad platforms. There seems to be a lot of unexplored opportunity there. Even more exciting, moderators would suddenly have all the power that they need to manage the responsibility they are given. No more begging to reddit admins! No more fighting automated censorship! Doesn't that sound good?

It boggles my mind how people from nearly every political perspective have accepted copyright as the one perfect inarguable virtue. Even the cyberlibertarians op argues with are only willing to concede copyright with the promise of a magical free market replacement! Now's as good a time as ever to think about it.

> The cyberlibertarians wanted you to believe that radical individualism plus deregulated capitalism plus inevitable technology would produce communitarian utopia. This is, on its face, insane. It is the economic equivalent of claiming that if everyone punches each other really hard, eventually we'll all be hugging.

The alternative, of course, is that a nanny state + highly regulated tech + inevitable technology leads to exactly the outcomes we have now. I’d prefer something else personally.

What? No mention of Web3?

Hacks like Curtis Yarvin proclaim that code wranglers have solved all the problems and should be running the show because they made money flipping shiny shit to gullible buyers.

Where is Web3 in solving all our problems? What does technofeudalism get the people?

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