What political ideology are you?

[Bomb#20]

Ideology is the death of thinking.

Yes! That's it exactly!

It translates into nothing more than party loyalty.

What I believe in are moral principles.

Like: Any system of power and control has to justify itself. It has to show how the power and control is legitimate.

They have to make a moral case why the power over others and control of others is legitimate.

Right you are.

Controlling another because they cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to a kind of control, a dictatorial top-down control, is not legitimate control.

It is a form of generalized societal coercion. A forced return to the jungle where the strongest have control.

I don't know. It seems to me that your ideology is pretty coercive.

My system is a system of worker-owned and democratically controlled work places.

All control is horizontal control.

How is horizontal control coercive?

Um, you could answer that for yourself if only your thinking hadn't been killed by your ideology. "Democratically controlled work place" is a phrase that means the majority of the workers control the minority because the minority cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to control by the majority. The majority coerce the minority, the same way the boss coerces the employees in a traditional work place: via their needs.

Vertical control is coercive. Those at the top have more power than those at the bottom.

And thus the truth comes out. Not just "power", "more power". Just like practically every other self-described "anarchist", in the final analysis you aren't really interested in doing away with "arch" -- with power, with rule, with coercion. What you're interested in doing away with is inequality. As long as each individual coercer has no more power than each individual coercee -- as long as he gets his way by power of numbers rather than by power of an individual -- you're fine with coercion.

So why is counting more important to you than noncoercion? Because "three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner" is a legitimate moral principle? Hardly. Counting is more important to you than noncoercion because of ideology.

Undeniably and inherently coercive.

Just as is horizontal control.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ideology is the death of thinking.

It translates into nothing more than party loyalty.

What I believe in are moral principles.

Like: Any system of power and control has to justify itself. It has to show how the power and control is legitimate.

They have to make a moral case why the power over others and control of others is legitimate.

Controlling another because they cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to a kind of control, a dictatorial top-down control, is not legitimate control.

It is a form of generalized societal coercion. A forced return to the jungle where the strongest have control.

Is this an attempt to construct some sort of extinction event weapon out of irony meters? You're the ultimate victim of the bolded part.

 

[untermensche]

Ideology is the death of thinking.

It translates into nothing more than party loyalty.

What I believe in are moral principles.

Like: Any system of power and control has to justify itself. It has to show how the power and control is legitimate.

They have to make a moral case why the power over others and control of others is legitimate.

Controlling another because they cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to a kind of control, a dictatorial top-down control, is not legitimate control.

It is a form of generalized societal coercion. A forced return to the jungle where the strongest have control.

Is this an attempt to construct some sort of extinction event weapon out of irony meters? You're the ultimate victim of the bolded part.

You confuse morality with ideology because all you have is ideology and no morality.

You defend immorality constantly.

You defend the immorality of violent oppression and the immorality of dictatorship.

All the time.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I'm curious what political ideologies are common on this forum. What's your ideology? What other ideologies do you see around here a lot?

If you don't have a coherent ideology, presumably you still have some sort of loosely floating set of ideas that you use to organize your thoughts about politics, so maybe you could describe those instead.

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists. We will see if I am right or wrong about that.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Progressive. With a big, red capital "P".

 

[untermensche]

Um, you could answer that for yourself if only your thinking hadn't been killed by your ideology. "Democratically controlled work place" is a phrase that means the majority of the workers control the minority because the minority cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to control by the majority. The majority coerce the minority, the same way the boss coerces the employees in a traditional work place: via their needs.

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Coercion is where one person has more power than another.

It is not a situation where all people have the same power but some have the skills to form a majority.

Vertical control is coercive. Those at the top have more power than those at the bottom.

And thus the truth comes out. Not just "power", "more power".

Power. That is what Anarchists look at. Human power relationships.

And they conclude that power relationships where one person has more power than another have to defend themselves and prove they are necessary.

Just like practically every other self-described "anarchist", in the final analysis you aren't really interested in doing away with "arch" -- with power, with rule, with coercion. What you're interested in doing away with is inequality. As long as each individual coercer has no more power than each individual coercee -- as long as he gets his way by power of numbers rather than by power of an individual -- you're fine with coercion.

This is incoherent romantic nonsense.

What exactly are you against?

Equal power?

So why is counting more important to you than noncoercion?

Why is democracy preferable to dictatorship?

Undeniably and inherently coercive.

Just as is horizontal control.

How is everybody with the same exact power to form a majority coercion?

 

[funinspace]

I'm curious what political ideologies are common on this forum. What's your ideology?

As you can read, people here also like to argue...

I'm what I call a moderate green libertarian. I don't worship any ideology. I still think we need a defense budget (albeit cut nearly in half when considering all the pots its hiding in), but I don't believe in word domination games. I think having a responsible budget is more important than (and comes before) cutting taxes. The government should strive to help the bottom 50% far more than the top 10% or 1%.

 

[untermensche]

I'm curious what political ideologies are common on this forum. What's your ideology?

As you can read, people here also like to argue...

I'm what I call a moderate green libertarian. I don't worship any ideology. I still think we need a defense budget (albeit cut nearly in half when considering all the pots its hiding in), but I don't believe in word domination games. I think having a responsible budget is more important than (and comes before) cutting taxes. The government should strive to help the bottom 50% far more than the top 10% or 1%.

I don't like to argue.

I wish others could as easily understand that democracy is better than dictatorship as I do.

But it is something many raised in a dictatorial work system struggle with.

 

[ronburgundy]

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Coercion is where one person has more power than another.

It is not a situation where all people have the same power but some have the skills to form a majority.

IOW, you use blind ideology, devoid or reason and moral principles to arbitrarily restrict the standard definition of coercion to only context that suits your dogma.
If the majority use their collective power to control the minority, then that is coercion by any reasonable meaning of the term. That's why we have the phrase, "tyranny of the majority". Democracy by itself is not much better than a dictatorship, unless there is a strong constitutional protection of individual rights and liberties to limit the power of the majority. Morally, there is no meaningful difference between one person stepping on another's neck and 100 people getting together to put the same amount of pressure on a person's neck. Your position has no basis in any moral principles. It is blind dogmatic ideology.

 

[untermensche]

I describe coercion as one person having the power to command another.

You describe it as "not getting your way every time".

Coercion is where one person has more power than another.

It is not a situation where all people have the same power but some have the skills to form a majority.

IOW, you use blind ideology, devoid or reason and moral principles to arbitrarily restrict the standard definition of coercion to only context that suits your dogma.

You confuse having built a consensus of ideas with coercion. You confuse a democratic decision making process with a dictatorial decision making process.

If I have an idea and convince a majority it is a good idea where is the coercion? Who was coerced?

Coercion occurs when one has power to command another. If all people have the same power to build a consensus then there can be no coercion.

If a consensus must be built before anything can be done that is the opposite of coercion.

If the majority use their collective power to control the minority, then that is coercion by any reasonable meaning of the term.

The majority does not control the minority. It is a work environment where all have work to do.

If all some large group is doing is commanding others they will quickly not find others to command.

All the majority can do is make decisions about the direction the company takes.

They cannot turn some minority into their slaves.

That's why we have the phrase, "tyranny of the majority".

The empty rhetoric you mean.

It never happens.

When all people have the same power no majority oppresses a minority.

When blacks are not permitted to have fair representation then it is possible to oppress them.

Democracy by itself is not much better than a dictatorship

Not true at all but nobody says democracy alone.

Human dignity and autonomy and rights must always be protected against any desire of any majority to restrict them.

The best way to get people to treat their fellow man better is to replace dictatorship with democracy.

Everywhere.

Every dictatorial power structure that cannot show it is necessary.

 

[ronburgundy]

You confuse having built a consensus of ideas with coercion.

You confuse a majority opinion with a consensus, which requires virtual unanimity.

You confuse a democratic decision making process with a dictatorial decision making process.

It doesn't matter if the process of making the decision allows every person to have a say. If the ultimate decision goes against anyone's desires and impacts what they can and cannot do, then, by definition, coercion has occurred and the effect is no different for those who are coerced than if a single dictator made the decision.

If I have an idea and convince a majority it is a good idea where is the coercion? Who was coerced?

The 49% of people who don't agree, and the effect on them is the same whether it is the 51% or 1 person who is doing the coercing.

Coercion occurs when one has power to command another. If all people have the same power to build a consensus then there can be no coercion.

By creating a system where a majority are given the power to control the minority, you have created a system where the people in one group inherently have power of others. A vote is not power. It merely represents the possibility of power if you happen to be in the majority. If you don't happen to be in the majority, then you have no power.

All people having equal power in the decision making process does not mean lack of coercion. If a system determines the decision by mjority rule and that decision is enforced (notice the "force" inherent to the enforcement of any decision), then the result of the decision enforcement is coercion against the will of those who don't share the majority opinion.

If the majority use their collective power to control the minority, then that is coercion by any reasonable meaning of the term.

The majority does not control the minority. It is a work environment where all have work to do.

Under your system, the majority controls what work everyone does, how they do it, and what is done with any resulting products, resources, and wealth. If one person wants to reinvest in their work activities for long term gain while anotherspe prefers to expend the earnings now on immediate pleasures, they don't get to do that. A majority decides what everyone must do b/c a worker controlled workplace cannot operate unless all workers are forced to have identical input and output into the system.

If all some large group is doing is commanding others they will quickly not find others to command.

Not if they use violent force to prevent the others from leaving, which is what any large scale non-capitalist system leads to.

All the majority can do is make decisions about the direction the company takes.

They cannot turn some minority into their slaves.

Not "slaves" in the sense that they get paid, but are still controlled in how they work, how much they work, and what they can do with the products of their labor.

That's why we have the phrase, "tyranny of the majority".

The empty rhetoric you mean.

It never happens.

Wow.

When all people have the same power no majority oppresses a minority.

When blacks are not permitted to have fair representation then it is possible to oppress them.

So, then if the all whites (who are a numerical majority) vote to enslave blacks, then so long as the blacks were allowed to vote against it, the resulting slavery is not coercive or oppressive in your philosophy.
I'm sure they'll be thrilled to hear that.

Democracy by itself is not much better than a dictatorship

Not true at all but nobody says democracy alone.

Human dignity and autonomy and rights must always be protected against any desire of any majority to restrict them.

Oh great. So then you oppose restrictions on people choosing their own work arrangements, how much they work, what they personally do with the fruits of their labor, etc.. So, you are all in favor of a person having the freedom to work for another person for a set amount of compensation requiring no investment or reinvestment of the fruits of their labor into the infrastructure of the company rather than the uncertain compensation of being an owner with limited control over how any fruits of the production are utilized (e.g., reinvestment vs. dividend to owners).

Or do you arbitrarily declare that restrcition on these basic rights to control one's labor and property are magically not really rights when they are restricted as part of majority rule collective control of production?

 

[untermensche]

You confuse a majority opinion with a consensus, which requires virtual unanimity.

Consensus just means agreement. It in no way implies unanimity.

A democratic consensus can be many things. It can be less than 40% of the eligible voters voting for somebody, like US presidents. Or it can be 60% of eligible voters voting for something like many Congressional votes.

All that is required to remove coercion is for all individuals to have equal power to build a consensus.

It doesn't matter if the process of making the decision allows every person to have a say. If the ultimate decision goes against anyone's desires and impacts what they can and cannot do, then, by definition, coercion has occurred and the effect is no different for those who are coerced than if a single dictator made the decision.

The definition of coercion is not the inability to get your way in all matters.

If some minority wants to go around killing people is trying to stop them coercion?

Not being able to get your way in all things is called life.

It is not created because decisions are made democratically with all individuals possessing the same power to build a consensus.

Coercion exists only where one or some have more power than others.

If I have an idea and convince a majority it is a good idea where is the coercion? Who was coerced?

The 49% of people who don't agree, and the effect on them is the same whether it is the 51% or 1 person who is doing the coercing.

How is the 49% coerced?

They had equal power to make their case and build a majority.

They failed to get their ideas accepted.

Failing to do something is not coercion.

By creating a system where a majority are given the power to control the minority

They don't command the minority.

An idea wins out because it wins a majority.

And another idea loses.

Not being able to convince others your idea is better is not being controlled. It is failing at some task.

Under your system, the majority controls what work everyone does

They control the direction a company takes. But not what work individuals do.

That would be the same as today. You get hired to do a necessary job withing a company.

The necessity defines the job. The need for the garbage to be picked up defines the job. The need for a materials engineer defines the job. The need for leadership and motivation defines the job.

Not a majority vote.

If one person wants to reinvest in their work activities for long term gain while anotherspe prefers to expend the earnings now on immediate pleasures, they don't get to do that.

All workers are free to do with their earnings as they choose. The idea of personal property is not altered.

And with employee owned and operated businesses you will have some businesses more appealing to some than others. And workers will make more without deadwood "leadership" taking the lions share and doing nothing.

Nothing will stop a person from seeking a job of their choosing.

These objections are desperate.

A desperate need to cling to dictatorship.

Why?

 

[SimpleDon]

I'm curious what political ideologies are common on this forum. What's your ideology? What other ideologies do you see around here a lot?

If you don't have a coherent ideology, presumably you still have some sort of loosely floating set of ideas that you use to organize your thoughts about politics, so maybe you could describe those instead.

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists. We will see if I am right or wrong about that.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

I try to avoid ideologies altogether. I had my run in Republican politics on the local level and did some fundraising for the Republicans. I called myself a conservative when I was younger, but like Barry Goldwater I watched the Republicans move relentlessly to the right to the point that I am now considered to be a liberal.

The Republicans catered to the lunatic fringe of theocrats, racists, xenophobes, gun nuts, etc. primarily to cobble together an electoral coalition in support of their neoliberalism, the idea that the economy should be run to benefit the already rich, and neoconservatism, the idea that the US can impose its will on the world wherever and whenever it wants.

I now vote a straight Democratic ticket. No realist can support the Republicans and their movement conservatism. I say this fully realizing that the Democrats have embraced both neoliberalism and neoconservatism. But they practice a "neoliberalism-lite" and a "compassionate neoconservatism" if you will allow me some rhetorical latitude for brevity with understanding. Neoliberalism-lite because they don't think that there is an alternative after Citizens United to accepting Wall Street's support and the strings that come with it and compassionate neoconservatism because they hedge it as necessary to spread democracy around the world. A thin gruel I admit, but I don't see any practical alternative. A realist has to support one of the two main parties.

We are in uncharted waters here. The elites of both parties are in agreement on basic economic and foreign policies, and the base of both parties are opposed at the very least to neoliberalism, especially to its globalization and to its negative impact on the budget deficit. They only feel its negative impact on their incomes and the economy in general and don't fully realize that it is policy decisions dictated by the tenets of neoliberalism that have caused it. The liberal base of the Democratic party is opposed to neoconservatism of course. And the base of the Republican party is isolationist and xenophobic as we have seen with their support for Trump.

I oppose post-modernism and its identity politics. I have a life long interest in the study of economics and believe that it has been corrupted by neoliberalism to benefit the already wealthy. That the often cited self-regulating free market is a complete and unobtainable fantasy and that most economists realize this, but they don't dare voice it because virtually all of the research funds for economics come from the already wealthy and the wealthy hire all of the economists. This is not as limiting as it sounds, 98% of all of the economists and their work is in microeconomics, the study of the economics impacting individuals and not macroeconomics, the study of how the economy as a whole operates, the economics that we discuss here. I am a post-Keynesian if that helps you.

I am a committed capitalist and believe what should be evident to all that the best economic system that we can have is the one that we have now, the time tested partnership of the private sector and government with the government policing the private sector. The same dynamic has the government policing society to reduce criminal behavior is applied to our economy. We don't need to change our economic system to a socialistic or a self-regulating free market. That our current system is a very robust and adaptable system that can and must be manipulated to produce any reasonable outcome on which we can agree. And I would propose that the elimination of poverty instead of tolerating it and making sure that the income distribution becomes more equitable instead of maximizing the incomes of the wealthy.

That there are two groups of people divided in their attitudes about government's laws and regulations, those who feel constrained by them and those who think that the laws and regulations protect us from those who feel constrained by them.

You should be warned not to ask me open-ended questions. I can produce volumes on any subject that interests me. I am disabled and can no longer type using a keyboard. It takes me a long time to produce anything. Perversely it means that I drone on and produce these long posts in which I try to cover everything about a subject because I can't participate in the normal give and take of the discussion here.

Most of the people here are atheists. It doesn't matter in the political section. I am a natural atheist, an atheist raised by atheist parents. I don't do the atheist vs. theist discussions. I have never believed in a god so I am kind of handicapped in these discussions and frankly I am not very interested in them. I don't know much about those forums.

 

[Emily Lake]

No real “ism”. I’m pretty much socially liberal, but relatively conservative fiscally. I saw a bumper sticker that kinda captured it well. It said something like “I want gay married folks to be able to defend their marijuana fields with guns”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[untermensche]

...I am a committed capitalist and believe what should be evident to all that the best economic system that we can have is the one that we have now...

That is pure ideology.

And crazy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ideology is the death of thinking.

It translates into nothing more than party loyalty.

What I believe in are moral principles.

Like: Any system of power and control has to justify itself. It has to show how the power and control is legitimate.

They have to make a moral case why the power over others and control of others is legitimate.

Controlling another because they cannot find an available means of survival without submitting to a kind of control, a dictatorial top-down control, is not legitimate control.

It is a form of generalized societal coercion. A forced return to the jungle where the strongest have control.

Is this an attempt to construct some sort of extinction event weapon out of irony meters? You're the ultimate victim of the bolded part.

You confuse morality with ideology because all you have is ideology and no morality.

You defend immorality constantly.

You defend the immorality of violent oppression and the immorality of dictatorship.

All the time.

Spouting ideology in response to my pointing out that you use ideology instead of reason.

 

[untermensche]

You confuse morality with ideology because all you have is ideology and no morality.

You defend immorality constantly.

You defend the immorality of violent oppression and the immorality of dictatorship.

All the time.

Spouting ideology in response to my pointing out that you use ideology instead of reason.

Again, all you can do is confuse morality with ideology because you have no conception of morality.

Nobody with even an inkling of morality could defend the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Nobody with any morality would be blind to the double oppression of the Palestinian people. Oppressed by the Israelis and oppressed by the gang the Israeli oppression has created.

Nobody with any morality would keep saying the absolute nonsense that the result of oppression is the cause of it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists. We will see if I am right or wrong about that.

I think you nailed it. There's a correlation between a high education level and being liberal, as well as a correlation between high education levels and being an atheist. So that should be reflected in this forum.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists.

I favor gun ownership, a standing military, personal responsibility, and I salute the flag. So all my liberal friends think I'm conservative.

I support same sex marriage, abortion rights, limiting gun proliferation, taxing churches, and I believe in ghosts. So all my conservative coworkers think I'm gay...

Do with that what you will.

 

[untermensche]

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists. We will see if I am right or wrong about that.

I think you nailed it. There's a correlation between a high education level and being liberal, as well as a correlation between high education levels and being an atheist. So that should be reflected in this forum.

Or is there a correlation between being a liberal and seeking more education?

To me it seems many on the right only get an education as a way to enter the business world. They do not care about education for education's sake.

While many on the left see education in itself, even if you can't make money with it, as valuable.

That is why you get many on the right wanting to cut funding for "useless" things like the arts.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have a hypothesis that people here will mostly be liberals (i.e., leftists), with a handful of conservatives and libertarians, and maybe one or two Communists. We will see if I am right or wrong about that.

I think you nailed it. There's a correlation between a high education level and being liberal, as well as a correlation between high education levels and being an atheist. So that should be reflected in this forum.

Or is there a correlation between being a liberal and seeking more education?

There's no difference. Correlation does not imply causation. You're inferring a causation from a correlation. I didn't do that. You did that.

To me it seems many on the right only get an education as a way to enter the business world. They do not care about education for education's sake.

While many on the left see education in itself, even if you can't make money with it, as valuable.

That is why you get many on the right wanting to cut funding for "useless" things like the arts.

Did you, by any chance, pull these numbers right out of your arse? I don't think it matters what you study. The numbers don't support it. Studying any higher education subject will make you more liberal, because whatever study you study, you'll keep coming up against evidence that human lives and career outcomes have less to do with your actions and skills, and more to do with context. Yes, even business degrees. If you want to become rich, live in a rich country. You'll get more opportunities. This is true for hard science as well. It expands your world and demonstrates how infinitesimally small you are, ie i insignificant, in the big picture. Liberals arts educations are basically liberal propaganda machines. Which I don't like btw. If your theory about the world is true, you shouldn't need to have to brainwash people into believing it. Just studying reality should do that job for you. If it doesn't, that means you are wrong.

The uneducated constantly overvalue their own importance, and skills in the world.