Since as long as I can remember, I have had this method of judging people: you are a jock, a “normals”, a freak, a geek, a nerd, or an intellectual. Most of my friends (even the liberal ones) agree with me on this view of the world. However, the older I have gotten, I have started to notice policy trends in all these people, and there is no better place to observe this than in college. I think breaking down the school population like this helps explain why our society is so anti-government and (in the most part) those interested in public policy are so pro-government.
Jocks: Views the world in a very narrow view and is incredibly dense. Typically these people are found in sporting events, but can also be found amongst soldiers. Politics is foreign to the jock; in fact I’ll bet they can’t spell politics, let alone capitalism.
“Normals”: These are people that do not make any statement. They just hope to make it home alive. They raise a family and make some money, but they don’t take risks. They are lousy capitalists and often support government protecting the consumers. They think us free market people are too weird.
Freaks: People who just don’t give a damn about the world anymore. They tend to follow the moral relativists in saying that whatever is right is right and whatever happens will happen. They think capitalists are mean and are attempting to rule the world. They however are individualistic and freedom lovers, so they probably agree with the libertarians, but call themselves socialists.
Nerds: These people can program a coffee pot to run a website, but will get hit by a car because they forget to look before crossing the street. (My best friend in high school was a true geek: he made an alarm clock out of rice and wheat but then he fell in a ditch at a construction site near the playground.) They are oblivious of the world of politics and the world of business….what’s a capitalist? Think pre-CEO Bill Gates.
Geeks: They fit in with the Nerds and the Normals, except that they follow the world very closely, have a good level of practical intelligence (no rice-wheat alarm clocks here), although they do have some level of unimportant intelligence (like the nerds). Unlike the normals, they stick their necks out and don’t mind speaking their mind. Its gets ‘em in trouble (I spent a good many days of school life in lockers, trashcans, and the nurse’s office suffering from bruise attacks.)
Geeky Capitalists: Sub-Group of Geeks. They like what the geeks say and they advocate capitalism. Think CEO Bill Gates. Think Johnny Student. The geeky capitalists are the only people who care enough to defend capitalism out of all the groups identified.
Intellectuals: Can we really know anything? No, so we should sit around the coffee houses and chat all day about Marx, Keynes, Freud, and the complex world. Previously on this blog, I mentioned that the intellectuals are the ones who like to create complex situations – well that is all that these intellectuals do. They are friends of Marx not Smith. By the way, these are mostly the professors and other scholars at the school. They don’t really hold the corner on intelligence, but they like to think that they do.
Although this is a quick overview of the various categories of people on campus, it is clear to see why so few people at a college like libertarians.
To avoid the Ambrose condition, Johnny Student would like to thank Jane Student for her work in co-writing this post
