Is Conservatism just NeoTraditionalism these days?

[Immanuel Can]

No, you're right: it just means there's a fair chance of it being right or wrong, depending on what the person does. But that's not remarkable: all of life is like that. When you start a football game, you don't know that the best team will end up winning every time. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. But football isn't, for that reason, "morally questionable." It's just how life works: there are wins and losses, and you work to make your wins greater than your losses, with no absolute guarantees in advance.

In fact, if somebody offers you a guaranteed win, they've simply lied to you, or else they've rigged the game.

That's Socialism: a lie that a rigged 'game' will work out better for everybody than a free one.

The same with the "free" market. Sometimes it needs to be less free than it really is. And sometimes it needs to be more free.

That depends what you mean by "free."

[Immanuel Can]

It seems to me that one of the basic principles of Conservatism is to hold on to your own advantages and privileges, at the expense of everyone who isn't in your club.

No, actually: that's a mischaracterization promoted by the Left. Even the idea of "privileges" betrays that -- as if whatever benefits you have cannot possibly have been earned or warranted by anything. And the "at the expense" idea definitely is Leftist, for they imagine that economics is a zero-sum game, in which anybody who "wins" must create a concommitant "loss" to somebody else who doesn't deserve to "lose."

That's just not realistic. Value can be added or created, and it is, all the time. It does not just have a limited amount of value that is already present in the world, waiting to be "justly distributed." And one person's producing of value does not automatically deprive some deserving "other" of value.

Socialism is just petty envy and bad thinking, elevated to the language of political ideology.

[Immanuel Can]

Well in what u describe i don't see any 'attack on the citizen' other than mask mandates, vaccines, higher taxes for Obama care type stuff and gun regulations. It's the conservatives who really fuck with personal liberties and restrict everybody.

I don't see that. Maybe you can give some examples.

But what u describe and call socialism there looks to me lika giant globalist techocorporatocracy where government and business merge to control the economy more directly. Far fewer private businesses and more yuge companies like amazon that monopolize entire markets and are subsidized, backed, by the government.

You're absolutely right. And that's why they will have no Socialism for themselves; but they will impose it on you.

They're like the old Malthusians, the "too many people on the planet" folks. I notice that with respect to the people they want not to reproduce, or the people they want to line up to be euthanized, they're never themselves at the front of the line.

Everybody will still have a job, but wages would flatten out becuz there was no competitors for these government corporations that employed everybody.

And yet, that's not what's happening at all. The Socialism they want merely gives them control of your possessions and your private life. It ends up not guaranteeing you a thing. And if it "flattens out" wages, it only "flattens them out" at poverty levels, with the majority of the value you create going to the politicians, big business, the military-industrial complex or big media.

Neither would the working class control any more of its circumstances than it does now as a wage worker.

At least the worker can say what he is willing to accept for his work, and can keep the value he creates, if he creates any. Socialism denies him any right to get above the poverty line, and holds everybody there.

[Skepdick]

That depends what you mean by "free."

I mean the same thing as any scientist.

degrees of freedom

[Harbal]

It seems to me that one of the basic principles of Conservatism is to hold on to your own advantages and privileges, at the expense of everyone who isn't in your club.

And the basic principle of Progressivism is to establish new clubs with new advantages and privileges, at the expense of everyone who isn't in your club.

Well I'll let you be the spokesman for "Progressivism", I was sticking to the thread subject of Conservatism.

[Skepdick]

Well I'll let you be the spokesman for "Progressivism", I was sticking to the thread subject of Conservatism.

Conservatism. Progressivism. What's the difference?

That was the point of the article I posted...

The left-right divide might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different political ideas.

If you are too lazy to read, here's the TL;DR

the principle of hierarchical coincidence (PHC): the idea that, in more or less every case and in the long run, political and economic hierarchies tend to coincide. Economic power leads to political power; political power leads to economic power.

[Harbal]

It seems to me that one of the basic principles of Conservatism is to hold on to your own advantages and privileges, at the expense of everyone who isn't in your club.

No, actually: that's a mischaracterization promoted by the Left.

And this is one of the other basic principles of Conservatism, or at least contemporary Conservatism; accuse the "Left" of anything and everything that's ever gone wrong. There are certain people on this forum that can't even tell you what they had for breakfast without having to slip a negative comment about the "Left" in.

My comments are based purely on my own observation, so if I am in error, I am the one at fault, not the "Left".

Even the idea of "privileges" betrays that -- as if whatever benefits you have cannot possibly have been earned or warranted by anything.

They can just as easily not have been earned, or warranted. If you have wealthy parents, with the right connections, and been given the best education money can buy, so that you are basically guaranteed a high position in society, in what way have you earned that?

Socialism is just petty envy and bad thinking, elevated to the language of political ideology.

What's that got to do with what I said? I never mentioned socialism.

[Harbal]

Well I'll let you be the spokesman for "Progressivism", I was sticking to the thread subject of Conservatism.

Conservatism. Progressivism. What's the difference?

Why ask me? Just google it.

[Immanuel Can]

It seems to me that one of the basic principles of Conservatism is to hold on to your own advantages and privileges, at the expense of everyone who isn't in your club.

No, actually: that's a mischaracterization promoted by the Left.

And this is one of the other basic principles of Conservatism, or at least contemporary Conservatism; accuse the "Left" of anything and everything that's ever gone wrong.

No: just of getting this wrong. That's enough.

My comments are based purely on my own observation, so if I am in error, I am the one at fault, not the "Left".

Well, strangely, your wording reflects the propaganda favoured by the Left. So you may imagine you're not affected by them, but it's one heck of a coincidence, if you're not. More plausibly, you're maybe not just aware of how much their rhetoric might have shaped your own thinking.

Even the idea of "privileges" betrays that -- as if whatever benefits you have cannot possibly have been earned or warranted by anything.

They can just as easily not have been earned, or warranted.

If they're earned, they're not "privileges." They're what you're owed. You did the value-add, and you get the value of it. Fair is fair. No privilege is involved.

If your benefits are not earned, and just inherited, there's still nothing whatsoever sinister about that, since you had nothing to do with arranging it. Why shouldn't somebody have every right to pass on his value-adds to his children?

It's only if you have advantages which you got illegitimately and undeservedly that they are "privileges." And only if you took them away from somebody else is it unfair that you got them. Equality is not a fact of nature anywhere, so it's not obvious that everybody deserves to get the same things. And achievement always deserves its rewards, just as lack of achievement naturally produces disadvantages.

[Harbal]

No, actually: that's a mischaracterization promoted by the Left.

And this is one of the other basic principles of Conservatism, or at least contemporary Conservatism; accuse the "Left" of anything and everything that's ever gone wrong.

No: just of getting this wrong. That's enough.

These things are not black and white, but I think my comment was broadly right in principle. Whether the view I expressed is a commonly held one by the "Left" is not my responsibility.

My comments are based purely on my own observation, so if I am in error, I am the one at fault, not the "Left".

Well, strangely, your wording reflects the propaganda favoured by the Left. So you may imagine you're not affected by them, but it's one heck of a coincidence, if you're not. More plausibly, you're maybe not just aware of how much their rhetoric might have shaped your own thinking.

Has it not occurred to you that it might be the "Left" that has been influenced by my thinking? And what about you? Your own thinking seems to have been shaped by the propaganda and rhetoric of the Right, to me. You certainly appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet as all the other misguided Conservatives that the internet seems peppered with these days.


I am, of course, above all the left/right nonsense, myself, and despise both equally.

[Immanuel Can]

My comments are based purely on my own observation, so if I am in error, I am the one at fault, not the "Left".

Well, strangely, your wording reflects the propaganda favoured by the Left. So you may imagine you're not affected by them, but it's one heck of a coincidence, if you're not. More plausibly, you're maybe not just aware of how much their rhetoric might have shaped your own thinking.

Has it not occurred to you that it might be the "Left" that has been influenced by my thinking?

And what about you? Your own thinking seems to have been shaped by the propaganda and rhetoric of the Right, to me.

Well, I pointed out the specific markers, the turns of phrase, that show your association with the Left. You should be able to do the same for me, were that so.

I am, of course, above all the left/right nonsense, myself, and despise both equally.

If you say so...

[Harbal]

I am, of course, above all the left/right nonsense, myself, and despise both equally.

If you say so...

Down with the workers.

[godelian]

I am, of course, above all the left/right nonsense, myself, and despise both equally.

If you say so...

Down with the workers.

Factory workers are now less than 10% of the population. Why should they and their Soviet councils be allowed to dictate everybody else's approach to the matter?

By the way, the first thing the factory workers did after the Bolshevik revolution was to forcibly, at gunpoint, reorganize the unwilling farmers into kolchozes in order to better facilitate the confiscation of their harvests.

If you hand over power to the factory workers, the first thing they will do, is to oppress everyone else. So, thanks but no thanks.

[Immanuel Can]

I am, of course, above all the left/right nonsense, myself, and despise both equally.

If you say so...

Down with the workers.

[Immanuel Can]

That depends what you mean by "free."

I mean the same thing as any scientist.

degrees of freedom

Can't be. Your article is about statistical variance, not about freedom of will or free markets.