Yes, that was normal in Italy too during fascism. Protectionism has always been a great popularistic argument and that's why I am surprised to see it on a geeky product like that. One would think that the user of battery powered cufflinks wouldn't care about that.
I'm not sure why you think geeks unilaterally oppose protectionism (or that we'd even call it protectionism). Seems like a broad, inaccurate generalization.
Personally, I like keeping money in the local economy when it makes sense to.
Because hackers are usually curious people, with many interests; chances are they study some economics and found that this kind of 'protectionism' doesn't make much sense.
But yes, you're right, it's quite an assumption. On a parallel (OT) note, I have no idea whether there is a political bias amongst geeks. I've read some pool from NSF a few years ago and it was quite impressive how scientists tend to be left wing/liberal, why engineers tend to be right wing/conservative. So politically speaking there's probably two kinds of geeks but how about two kind of hackers?
