Democrats and liberals: Why are you not more liberal?

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http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/theoryof.htm

No. I'm a college student.

There! I have won the debate! I get the cookie!

I can answer this question:
Why aren't we more liberal? Because we'd be radical, and that would be interesting...

What are you asking?

Damn.

And for a moment there I thought this was going to be fun.

The following are directly from Wikipedia. Official, no, but a pretty good litmus test for common usage, I think.

On Anarchy:

defined:
" * "Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."[1]
* "A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)."[2]
* "Absence or non-recognition of authority and order in any given sphere."[3]"

and

"Although anarchists share a rejection of the state, they differ about economic arrangements and possible rules that would prevail in a stateless society, ranging from complete common ownership and distribution according to need, to supporters of private property and free market competition. For example, most forms of anarchism, such as that of anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, or anarcho-primitivism not only seek rejection of the state, but also other systems which they perceive as authoritarian, which includes capitalism, wage labor, and private property. In opposition, a political philosophy known as anarcho-capitalism argues that a society without a state is a free market capitalist system that is voluntarist in nature."


On "free market" (a definition which I like)

"A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers."

My particular brand of anarcho-communism does not deny private property, only private ownership of capital.

Not really. I am assuming mainstream anarchism(oxymoronic to some extent but whatever)


Interesting, however, the issue I see is just working this out as a market. I would assume that labor itself is not considered a service. As well, I would think we would run into issues with the independence of sellers as if all capital is public, how do we have their usage assigned to independent sellers without some system to privatize it?

Not sure what you are saying here.




Interesting, however, the issue I see is just working this out as a market. I would assume that labor itself is not considered a service. As well, I would think we would run into issues with the independence of sellers as if all capital is public, how do we have their usage assigned to independent sellers without some system to privatize it?[/quote]


You assume labor isn't a service? Than what on earth is it?

Economists in general define it as such; this is why they decry minimum or living wage as an offense against the free market--it's a price floor for labor.

I think ownership of capital should go to communes of about 50-400 people, with a lid--possibly a per-capita lid--on how much capital a commune is permitted to hold, as a percentage of the total capital that exists in the market.

More.
Everyone has a reason why they haven't (yet) become more liberal than they currently are, and I'm interested in those reasons. Since most liberals continue to drift further left over time, what determines your pace of drift? Why isn't it faster than it is, if your destination (the far left) remains the same? You're all becoming far left, just at different rates. So I'm asking why the different rates? Moral discomfort with some far left extremist policies?

Last edited by Ragtime on 15 Apr 2008, 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know, I was assuming for the purposes of your system. If there is a market for labor then there will be a difference in labor price outcomes, and thus inequality. I would assume labor is a service and I agree economists define it as such.

Well, then where is the anarchism if there is an overgovernment regulating how much capital each commune can possess? It would prevent self-determination within communes for such a thing to happen.

I used to be a really strong liberal (moderate now), and I think it comes down to fear. The media (esp. cable news) comes down on liberals hard for the slightest things, and they are afraid that an actual opinion would induce a torrent of hate.

I can tell you're about ready to burst, so why dont you just come on out with it and tell us all why we shouldnt drift more quickly to the left. Theres no reason to make this personal. Im sure you have ammo left (in your ultra arrogant right wing fanaticism gun) to group together and bash all liberals in general so what are you waiting for? Are you having more fun reading what liberals dont like about liberalism? Do you enjoy being in a position where you can just sit back and let liberals degrade themselves and expose their doubts regarding liberalism? Makes it easy for you doesnt it? Are you so lazy that you wont pick apart someone elses diametrically opposed opinion, but instead wait for them to punch holes in it themself so you can stand over them and say "I told you so"? Well say it already, make your claim. Wheres the coup de grace?

All anyone would need to do to turn the table on you is ask you why you dont lean more right and what is keeping you from being as right as possible. Of course your answer to this would be that you are already about as far right as humanly possible.

The only intention behind this thread was to illustrate that it is far easier to use the weapon of "Introspection" to drag those, whos feet arent firmly planted left, toward the right. Dont forget this works both ways and that the right is every bit if not more befuddled. Watch your step, your intentions are more transparent than you think.

Did I say anything about an overgovernment?

That's how I would run things, but more fundamentally, I believe that it's not for any one (or even any small group) to run things. . .

I am open to the possibility of overgovernment, if that's really what more people want; the fundamentally anarchist part of my position is a refusal to recognize any innate athority structure. . . and a belief that the world as a whole would go much better if others also refused to recognize any innate athority structure. .. you know--


I also said nothing about eliminating inequality, though I'd prefer to reduce it substantially. I'm happy to let the market distribute resources as they are produced.

It's when those resources get into absurdly huge ranges of quantity and when they start to pile up that I think we should limit things.
Incentives don't need to be several orders of magnitude over what an unskilled worker can make in order to function as incentives, and allowing resources to pool in that way creates:

a) an unbalance of power in the society at large, particularly dangerous when the entities with greatest mandate to accumulate resources (in the case of modern US, those entities being corporations)have no other mandate, such as to protect public safety and resources to even a minimal degree. I feel that when a democracy of individuals looses the power to place reasonable limits on the market that should exist to serve them, the entities that drive that market have come to have too much control.
and
b) an unbalance in the market--it takes money to make money, and having such large quantities of it allows certain entities to create market conditions that favor them even more than this initial bias of capitalism ensures. . . i.e., NAFTA and US farm-subsidized goods destroying local markets across the third world.

strange how when people joined unions and faught for a lviing wgae things improved and government hasn't yet to lift people out of poverty, just keeps them passified enough not to revolt and join unions

unions are basically paid protection and force labor costs above market value.

i'd figure you'd be against unions since you're conservative.

edit: also, if you saw how the los angeles teaching union is run, you'd see the other reason why it's so bad: it's impossible to fire people who are bad workers because they're protected by the union.

I'm a non-Marxist socialist and I vote Democrat because they are by far the lesser evil, I'd rather have a government of centrists then a government of quasi-fascists and religious crazies. I don't associate with any socialist minor political party because they are predominantly Marxist. The Greens are too anti-technology for me to stomach. Anarchists, though I have some sympathy towards them (especially mutualist anarchists and geo-libertarians), are, in the end, utopian fools.

I think government unions should be against the law considering the workers have a monopoly for their services and the government should have to compete against private industry for labor and be real with wages and working conditions.

Private industry unions are nothing more than groups of people pooling their money to hire an agent to represent them and if they get to greedy they will put their employer out of business. So there is a system of checks & balances and no employer has some right to exploit labor to their hearts content without any fear of them grouping together to revolt against the pay & working conditions.

Unions in private industry can't protect the workers because at some point the company will fail if it collects too many slugs. WE THE PEOPLE should control the country, not the CORPORATIONS which are given a permit to exsist by the PEOPLE in form of a business license of some type.

You assumed because I bashed dems i was some total neocon type, but reality is todays dems are nanny state thugs worse than the corporate thugs, at least I can get in on the corporate stealing it's open to everyone who can save up the capitol to get in on the action. The government theft is resticted to people with inside connections and I don't have one.

Neither party represents the working man in private industry and we can't all work for the government, that system has been tried and has failed. France is a example of unions getting too much power, so there needs to be checks & balances, boss gets too greedy and people join unions, the unions get too greedy and new companies start up and undercut them putting an end to the greed of labor. The workers in the country have to be smart enough to keep industries union enough to influance wages, but not get carried away and ruin their deal by creating excessive demands and unionising a whole industry to the point they have everyone else by the balls and think they can demand too much.