In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is still half blind

This seems familiar:

[...] Because protectionism is an issue on which [economists] believe they have some special insight, they inflate its importance, and make free trade versus protectionism THE crucial issue in economic policy — which it isn’t. Trade barriers are a minor issue for the United States today; even small wrinkles in health care policy, like overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans, probably matter more to public welfare than all the trade restrictions now in place.

[...]

The gas tax holiday is in this category. Economists really do know something about tax incidence that the laity don’t. So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

(NYTimes, Paul Krugman, "Gas tax hysterics", 2008/05/06 -- yes, I know, I need to broaden my source material away from just Krugman...)

This reminds me of how a lot of computer geeks approach issues like net neutrality, copyright & trademarks, patents, DRM, ooxml, etc.

It's not that geeks are wrong to have a libertarian stance on these things.

Its that these things simply aren't that important.

Who cares if Comcast wants to throttle BitTorrent users, or the RIAA is upset with people trading music files? Who cares if Disney gets to keep the trademark for Mickey Mouse into perpetuity? Hm? Why was it so terrible for Amazon to get defensive about one-click? Why is it so catastrophic for Apple to use a little DRM on iTunes purchases? So what if Microsoft wants to replace the Office formats, who really cares?

Are these really the things that keep people up at night? We should all be so lucky as to have such small problems as these.

Just because nerds have enough context to know that these things are "wrong" doesn't change the fact that they just aren't important.