Molson Hart

I'm skeptical of this. Theoretical vs practical does not account for the fact that people are divided based on the ideal society they pursue, ie values. Some of those divides are ancient (how to relate to outsiders, tradition vs progress, authority vs freedom, property rights).

Of course each group has theoretical and practical people but even if we have 100% "Romans" they'd still pull society into different directions.

Maybe that's a false assumption. I would argue that some fields are wholly "Greek." For example, I don't think it's possible to be long term successful entrepeneur without being or becoming Roman.

What's a false assumption exactly? Not sure I follow you.

My main counterarguments are 1) lots of people care more about symbolic stuff 2) even if we were totally practical we wouldn't agree which society to build soberly, so politics would default to values.

I wasn't clear. Left: top-down, no one left behind, high tax, pc Right: bottom-up, life isn't fair, low tax, less pc If you live a life with skin-in-the-game, it's hard to see value in many of the left's positions. Many self made rich leftists are wolves in sheep skins, IMO.

So, the possible false assumption is that there are romans scattered amongst the left and right and that greeks are the same. When in reality, greek skews heavily left and romans heavily right.

Oh i see so you mean the divide wont change because left and right is already more or less greek roman. There is domain dependence though. You only focus on money. E.g. historically the american right is extremely greek when it comes to sexuality.