What IS liberalism? What IS conservatism?

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Silly things like factory sites, machines, technology, engineering expertise and such like. The things necessary to produce the goods on which masses of people will spend their wages.

Before one can consume, one must produce.

ruveyn

Nobody is going to bother producing more if there's not enough people capable of buying what's being produced. When there is a prospect for profitable production, producers don't just sit on their profits. I really don't think there's any shortage of investment capital in this country. The very rich are loaded with money. It's just that there's no reason to produce more when nobody is interested in buying more. They just aren't interested in investing it to create jobs that aren't needed. Having a big pool of desperate unemployed is no skin off their back.

I agree with much of what you say.

"Conservative" and "liberal" are relativistic terms. Through the orwellian aparatus of the corporate run media though, they've taken on new, overly simplistic connotations that do nothing more than engineer a culture war.

"Conservative", in the truest sense of the term, means to "conserve" the status quo. Liberal, on the other hand, means a willingness to change it,

In the USSR, people who wanted to do away with censorship and central planning were called liberals durring parastroika, as they wanted to liberalize the economy, as well as liberalize the social contract and, ultimately, change the established order. Those who wanted to conserve the 70 year tradition of Marxist-Leninism were called conservatives.

Certain positions that are considered "conservative" or "liberal" in current, American politics are, imo, falsely labeled. Someone, for example, who wants to privatize the postal system would be called conservative or neo-conservative. In reality, this is a radical policy change that would go against more than a century of the established norm. On the other hand, a position like wanting to preserve social security, would be called liberal-progressive, when that individual is wishing to "conserve" 60+ years of New Deal legacy.

There's downsides to both liberalism and conservativism. They really shouldn't be these divisive labels or team names that they've become, because, in reality, were all liberal on some things and conservative on others. It can be really dangerous to radically change things because of how it can destabilize peoples lives. For example, regular, ordinary people who worked in state run cooperatives in the USSR lost pensions they worked their whole lives for, while former, state officials sold out assets to foreign companies and cashed in to become modern olligarchs. With all this talk of privatization and social security reform in the US, a similar pattern could occur where the powerful are enriched by the disenfranchement and upheaval of everyone else.

It can also cause stagnation and keep bad policies on course to not do anything and keep everything the same. For example. State censorship behind the Iron Curtain was very oppressive and needed to change, just as Jim Crowe in the US south was very oppressive and needed to change.

Last edited by JNathanK on 10 Feb 2012, 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Huh?

You deleted most of my post in your quote so that you can ask me that when clearly if you read my post I'm arguing for the exact opposite.

Did you bother to read my post or are you just pulling out a bit of it so that you can disagree with me, I don't get it?

What do you call yourself if you´re a national conservative with a very large dose of classical liberalism? Clearly, the ideologies of "liberalism" and "conservatism" are somewhat obsolete and redundant. One can be conservative in that they wish to preserve their liberal traditions and that they do not want them to be subverted by more authoritarian elements.

I like how the original poster points out that some concepts aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

IMO, the whole left/right paradigm is the epitome of the bifurcation fallacy.

They sure do-- in India, in China, in Latin America, and wherever else there is a population willing to work on the cheap in conditions that would make Upton Sinclair roll in his grave. In principle, you're right; investing in the people in charge of businesses was a smart idea back in the 1950s, when Europe and Asia were still trying to rebuild from WWII, and the American economy was pretty much an isolationist domestic system. These days, though, with the internet underpinning a global economy, laissez-faire capitalism no longer works to the advantage of the American labor class. The Chinese have factory working conditions that any American worker would call barbaric, and get paid for a fraction of our minimum wage-- yet, because of that, American companies have outsourced their manufacturing there because (surprise, surprise) it's the most cost-efficient option for them. The result is a market of cheap, substandard, and potentially unsafe foreign products, and a struggling middle class that no longer has money to spend freely. The heads of the companies have made themselves immensely wealthy by slashing their overhead costs, but they've also devastated their own consumer base.

Companies can't be faulted for cutting corners and saving money. That's what a company is supposed to do. But commerce in the 21st Century is a different ballgame than it was back in the Cold War. Unless we are firm in regulating what companies can and can't do with our investments in them, that money will disappear down a hole, either to China or into the CEOs' personal Cayman Islands accounts, never to be seen again by the American worker. The only entity with the authority to do that is the government.

@Chevand

+100

Corporate investment is done according to the vote of the stockholders (proportional by shares owned) or their proxies. How much of the companies to the Workers own? Only the Owners have the say, not the employees (as employees).

ruveyn

Irrelevant. I already acknowledged that companies can't be faulted for cost minimization. I know they're beholden to stockholders. I'm not arguing that executives of the companies don't have responsibility to stockholders, or authority to run their companies the way they see fit. I'm arguing that, in a globalized economy, what is best for them isn't necessarily best for anyone else in America anymore. For any economy to work, it has to be a cyclical system-- the money has to keep changing hands, indiscriminately of class. After WWII, when most of the international competition was blown to bits, the United States was the strongest manufacturing base in the world, and the pool of labor was pretty much all domestic; American companies hired American workers, because it made sense financially, and the American workers were able to afford all sorts of luxuries and goods manufactured in-country. There was a domestic ebb and flow. But in the 21st Century, American workers and Chinese workers and Indian workers and Honduran workers all have to vie for the same manufacturing positions, and there's no way the American workers can compete. The money that companies invest abroad stays abroad, and since the American labor class doesn't see any of it, they can't spend as much anymore. There is ebb, but no flow. Our current iteration of "capitalism" has ceased to be cyclical, and has become a linear system. Ask any ecologist-- linear systems are unsustainable.

CEOs have obligations to their shareholders, that is true. But they also have obligations to their employees, to their consumers, and to the American taxpayers who have funded the public infrastructures they all use with all the rest of us. In fairness, many of them, such as Warren Buffett, understand this. But many of them do not, and seem to have no ethical qualms making decisions that put entire communities of their fellow Americans into financial and bodily jeopardy. If the economy is ever going to really recover, that has to change-- and it's quite obvious that the only way is to force those uncooperative executives with government regulation reinforced by stiff penalties. Accountability for recklessness, failure, and catastrophe has to be built back in to the system. The consequences of lack of accountability are far too grim for the rest of us.

As far as I'm concerned, the notion that liberals are anti-religion is propaganda invented by Republicans to get the vote of evangelicals by demonizing the left. After all, the leftists who led the Civil Rights movement were in many cases black ministers, who had organized resistance to segregation in their churches. But because Democrats believe that civil rights should be extended to homosexuals, and have allowed atheists into their ranks is used by the right to make their case. Republicans have created this myth that true Christians have to sanctimoniously drone on about their faith and their personal virtues, all the while pointing an accusing finger at everyone else who doesn't fit their definition of a true Christian. If anything, by their affiliation with the political right, the religious right has lost touch with Christ's true message.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Not that I disagree with your sentiments, but how exactly do we accomplish the goal of preventing the expatriation of wealth in a fair and equitable manner that respects everyone's individual rights? Just curious.

You are talking about privately owned money. It is up to the stockholders or the owners of a company to decide where to invest the money. If companies want to invest abroad, why should they be prevented?

The "expatriated" money is the private property of the companies and not of the people (collectively) of the U.S. or the government.

Do you know the difference between what is yours and what is not yours? I wonder.

ruveyn

On the contrary, I have a complete understanding of the concept of personal property.

Perhaps I should just get to the point. How far does Chevand believe the state can encroach on the rights of individuals in the name of "public interest" and the "common good" while still remaining within its Constitutionally-limited powers?

People seem to think that indiscriminately soaking the rich is the justifiable answer, but things aren't that cut and dry. Incidentally, I don't subscribe to the idea that perfectly free markets hospitable to liberty are possible while moral hazards and perverse incentives for misbehavior exist.

No one has yet mentioned NeoCons or NeoLiberalism.

There are liberals (definbition 1), liberals (definition 2) and liberals (definition 3)

I am a liberal (in one context of the word "liberal") in that I believe in the importance of intergovernmental organizations. I am also socially liberal (in a completely different context of the word "liberal") in that I believe that marijuana should be legalized, prostitution should be legalized, and abortion is a right.