> Gosh man, I really mean no offense to you, but I am really glad people I work with are not this open about their viewpoints.
No offense taken whatsoever.
I will note that "open" is not the same thing as "aggressive". I'm not trying to convert anyone, and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable at work. For one thing, I'm an empathetic person and don't like to think that I've unintentionally offended someone. For another... if someone is working with me, by definition we're contributing toward the same things. Alienating them would harm damage that cooperative action, and I wouldn't be there if I didn't think it was right.
> I would really prefer not to work with anyone who openly and gleefully calls themselves an anarcho-capitalist.
Why? People's actions are what I care about, not their reasons for them.
At a previous employer I was working to increase access to scientific publications and supporting materials to the general public. One of the reasons I think that's important is because much of the work is funded by taxes, and I view it as much worse to use tax dollars for private gain than to use it and at least make the results available to anyone. Several of my coworkers were authoritarian socialists of various stripes. Their reasons for wanting to make that stuff available were wholly different from mine - but we shared a common cause. We'd discuss politics sometimes over beers or after a "crunch time" when we were all in the office at 2am and a bit delirious, but otherwise it just didn't come up.
> without needing to confront that
Ahh, that's the rub. I know I'm an extreme minority politically. I know many of the people I work with and interact with on a daily basis hold positions antithetical to my own. I have zero desire to "confront" that. Discuss it? Sure, if they're open to it. I'm happy to debate if someone wants to do so (and if they're similarly willing to not make it personal), because that's how I arrived at my positions.
Metaphorically, I feel like my positions have been forged over time by repeatedly beaten against the anvil of others' positions. Where they were deformed, they were weak. I modified them and repeated the process. At 35 years old, I feel like my views are fairly rigid - but that doesn't mean they are unchangeable, and it's because I continually do my best to test them and look for weaknesses. To me, a good political discussion is one where I come away with something to think about that I hadn't considered before. A great one would be where an inconsistency in my positions was pointed out to me.
I actively try to avoid this conversations with coworkers, because many people aren't comfortable with them. That's OK. If they change their mind later I'm happy to oblige, but it's not like forcing people to argue politics is something desirable.
