Bret WeinsteinVerified account

Left - anti-capitalists, who think capitalism is the cause of oppression/inequality. Right - fascists (anti-capitalists, anti-socialists) and "pro-capitalist" libertarians. anti-capitalism = anti-business inequality = arbitrarily chosen, dysfunctional goal

Most people on the left support capitalism, and just want it regulated and supplemented with some safety nets and redistribution. It's good at creating wealth, but distributes it unfairly.

That's like a slave owner saying "I support employment!". Inequality is a poorly defined problem. It's not even an economically defined problem. A poverty line makes more sense. E.g. luxuries are incentives for people to organize and increase productivity - they have a purpose.

The Gini Coefficient is widely used to measure economic inequality. I don't get your analogy my friend, but mixed economies have been run by European leftists for a long time now.

Gini Coefficient measures relative wealth, not absolute wealth. It's an overly simplistic measurement, so it doesn't even allow conclusions. Besides that, "perfect equality" is a bad goal - e.g. pooling resources for investment is beneficial. Poverty line is more useful.

I disagree with the premise. Conservatives also want change of what needs changing while preserving what is fundamentally good, but recognize what cannot be changed (human nature). Big difference is liberals are utopians, conservatives realist.Utopia ends in the gulag.

In light of the rise of Socialist movements, a video of where Socialism / Democratic Socialism falls between this spectrum would be useful.. is it hyper liberalism or does it mean your ‘left’ vs ‘right’ analysis is missing something?

Seen this? (take the test) https://www.politicalcompass.org 

I’d like to see the IDW make more use of/assess the Political Compass framework

Yes, the Political Compass Test is good at showing us, as individuals, what we believe. The world is not just left and right. (The Test is not so good at providing labels, though.)

I used to tell my Psych students "Fools argue definitions, but we need to establish common definitions for rational discourse to get off the ground". This video is an excellent starting point for rational political discourse. Will subscribe. Cheers!

Under your definitions, no thinking person would be on the left or the right. They would identify areas that could be improved while seeking to keep what works. Left vs Right should be looked at as efforts in coalition politics to gain power, they are terms of manipulation.

Take abortion. The conservative position would be to maintain the Roe V Wade decision that has been on the books for 40+ years. And the liberals would be seeking to change it. This analysis is not predictive of the actual positions though.. so something else is going on.

Good question. I studied Poli-sci and continue to read and think about ideology. So I’ll try not to risk TL;DR and make this short, though it will miss a lot of things. The change/ conserve split is one way of viewing libs/conservatives. 1/x

Another is the classical definitions. Classically liberals value the individual and believe people will create a just society on their own. Classical conservative believe people are selfish and mean and society need morality enforced 2/x

From a power above. Think a powerful king, or the founding fathers of the US implementing the Electoral College for presidential elections. Today both libs and cons are a mix of bothe classical libs and con positions. 3/x

Sorry, this is 5/x. The reason modern ideologies don’t stay consistent in the classic sense is because we only have two competitive parties that must win elections by forming coalitions of various groups that are classically lib or con 5/x

On various issues. So it a game due to the two party system. There’s no reason the dems have to be classic con on economic issues but classic libs on social. Change/conserve does play a part but it isn’t the only thing going on. Hope that make sense 7/7