/townhall/ - Townhall

>>9764
I think I understand the degree of concentration of power in the state.  What do social and economic left and right mean?

>>9765
If you squash things down to two dimensions, you can think of this as being akin to the classic 'Nolan Chart' in which personal versus collective views on 'liberty'/'social values' and 'property'/'economic values' are separated out.

I think things unsquashed because you can better see the distinction between subgroups that're somewhat similar but disagree about fundamental 'means' as well as 'ends'.

>>9768
I don't know that I agree with that chart.  Hate speech is typically a left wing thing.  Isn't regulating the prostitution industry in the same domain as professional licensing?  Drugs and guns seem to both be property.  More questions than answers.

>>9769
I suppose the core question between 'economic left' and 'economic right' is more along the lines of "Who controls the means of physical production and determines physical consumption?", with the choice being powerful non-state actors such as mega-corporations versus the state versus small, independent actors deciding for themselves.

And then in terms of 'social right' and 'social left' it's the exact same thing only cultural, non-physical goods and services. And the question of "Who decides who is free to do what" varies between "the state", "everybody", or "the powerful outside the state".

It's rather hard for me to phrase this in an unbiased way, though. I'm probably not doing a great job.

A relevant point I think especially in Europe and in US as well:
right wing and Extreme right are becoming the biggest political contender again.

And, as we have seen here, it can raise the question about what it says about you when you vote extreme right. does that mean you're a bigot or a racist? If right wing people push against LGBTQ+ stuff, does that mean that a lot of people voting for them are against LGBTQ+.

It doesn't help that when I scour social media, the outspoken people for extreme right are also inclined to be very caustic about gay people or immigrants. Or have very conservative views on the way people should live their lives, while also being pushy about freedoms and such.

At the same time, it is easy to put people in brackets based on their political orientation, while there are so many points to have an opinion on in so many ways , that it is hard to capture everyone's formed opinion within a low number of political brackets. In US in particular with there being only 2 noteworthy parties.

I've never liked the political spectrum model all that much. It implies that people select their beliefs based on their ideology and not the other way around. Most people get their political beliefs à la carte and then pick an ideology that lets them easily defend their views. I'm suspicious of the same thing in a lot of the social sciences, there is a causality implied when all that's been done is that somebody made data and then they made a graph number line.

Somewhat related is the relation of certain scientific beliefs to political beliefs.  For example, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to believe that anthropogenic global warming exists.  As another example, there is a correlation between how people answer the scientific question "Does the gap in average IQ between whites and blacks have a non-negligible genetic component?" and belief in white nationalism.  IMHO, it is rather unfortunate that scientific beliefs are often taken as proxies for political beliefs.  One can believe that global warming exists while opposing particular policies to mitigate it.  Likewise, one can believe that genetics explains some of the racial IQ gap while opposing racial discrimination.

For those curious of where the OP image came from and the context, please see: https://www.quora.com/Is-anarchism-right-wing-or-left-wing-Explain-your-answer

>>9764
>I suppose the core question between 'economic left' and 'economic right' is more along the lines of "Who controls the means of physical production and determines physical consumption?", with the choice being powerful non-state actors such as mega-corporations versus the state versus small, independent actors deciding for themselves.

Ok, I think I get that.  I'm not quite sure which is right and which is left, but I imagine in a cross-section of your cube where social is the same.

You have corners:

1) Total government control
2) Total government control
3) Individual/small business control
4) Non-state large corporation control

>>9781
I believe that that I'm trying to conceptualize things like that, yes.

Admittedly, I'm not the best at three dimensional mathematical thinking even in the most generous circumstances.