SDMB prides itself on Ignorance Fighting, but it’s very seldom that opinions change on political topics in Great Debates.
@ R3d Anonymous — Have you learned anything in this thread? I notice you’ve not responded to any of my posts. Are my points unclear? Do you have answers? Surely you’re not so wedded to the opinions you want to hold that you simply reject facts and arguments that are too uncomfortable.
Or do you still think all your detractors are “idiots”? 
Many of your points are still factually wrong. It might be nice if you tried to debate some of the arguments made, since you did post this is Great Debates.
I first saw this a couple of years ago, when Jeet Heer tweeted it (with attribution). The more I’ve thought about it, and the more I’ve seen over the intervening two years, the more I’m convinced that it’s an accurate summation of conservative values.
The reason the working class vote GOP is because they oppose libertarianism. They want a society with social heirarchies, not one with racial egalitarianism. Its only white working class people who vote GOP, and there is a reason for it. Also its not really so much about class as about education. Poor college educated whites are to the left of financially stable high school educated whites. Its because education is a proxy for authoritarianism and bigotry, both of which libertarians oppose.
I really don’t feel you understand the GOP base. They want more welfare for themselves, a more authoritarian government and more prejudice against out-groups. All things libertarians oppose.
Generally the base of the GOP is socially conservative and fiscally liberal. The base of the democrats is socially and fiscally liberal.
People who are both socially liberal and fiscally conservative are fairly rare from what I’ve seen of studies of political makeup.
The base of the GOP love medicare, medicaid, social security, etc.
As a society we aren’t anywhere near wealthy enough for the masses to want true libertarianism. Most people can’t function without government assistance and regulations.
This one is easy, people live beyond their means. They don’t save, we spend spend spend.
Blame the media.
Right. There’s no reason they should be frittering their money away on healthcare, food, and a roof over their heads.
Fiscal conservatism most certainly is a sincere belief, because I hold it.
You spouting off this kind of nonsense is why you fail to be understood, and more importantly fail to understand others.
This board man, bash bash bash, it’s no fucking wonder why the 2 political “sides” fucking hate each other. It’s people like you , among others, who perpetuate this shit and I am sick of it.
I think the excluded middle is over there , somewhere -------->
Nope, this is not an excluded middle situation. If you think that the majority of low income Americans are living beyond their means then you’re not paying attention.
I think most people DO live beyond their means, and I AM paying attention.
If beyond their means includes adequate health care, living conditions, and work life balance, then the system is failing.
I think most corporations, banks, and financial institutions live beyond their means because they know that the consequences of doing so are minimal.
Unfortunately, if ordinary working people live beyond their means, the consequences are frequently drastic.
Is believing in regulated capitalism left, right, or in the middle?
The Invisible Hand spends most of its working day giving the proletariat the finger. It spends the rest with its thumb on the scales in favour of the scions of privilege. That’s all the Hand does.
Libertarianism is just “Fuck you, I got mine” in a fancy coat.
Yeah I got that.
Dude, they have refrigerators. If that’s not living the luxurious lifestyle, I don’t know what is.
But seriously, if it were only poor people living beyond their means, only poor people making poor economic decision, then people like Kearsen1 might have a point.
Everyone lives beyond their means, and everyone makes poor economic decisions. If we didn’t then capitalism would have failed the first time someone realized that they really don’t need an inflatable BBQ grill.
Why should we hold these least fortunate among us to a higher standard than anyone else? Why are only the poor expected to live lives of austerity, and to solve the NP problem of maximum economic efficiency?
I like that: Libertarianism is when you can see that the invisible hand is flicking you off.
Yeah the conservative attitude that poor people having cellphones means they are actually rich is like saying that those living five to a rundown apartment are better off than Louis XIV because they have indoor plumbing. One of the more bullshit right wing arguments.
I grew up before VCRs, DVRs, computers and cellphones, and I never missed them and was not underprivileged in not having them.
The biggest thing that gets glossed over in the glibertarian rhetoric is the issue of private ownership. Because “tragedy of the commons” and all that. To have private ownership, you have to have strong government support for it, which kind of defeats Grover’s “drown it in the bathtub” glurge.
Perhaps free market economics would work well if we massively reined in the finance industry and restricted businesses to you-can-own-this-one-right-here-and-if-you-need-more-form-a-non-profit-co-op-with-others. But as long as “freedom” is allowed to be exclusive of honor, the free market, and really the system in general is going to remain broken.
Yeah.
And it doesn’t even have to be a commons. As soon as neighbor-1 decides to do something on his private property that neighbor-2 does not like there will be friction and they will run to the local government, such as it is, and a law will get passed and maybe even a government entity to oversee this issue (e.g. maybe neighbor-1 was diverting almost all the water for his use because he was further upstream from neighbor-2).
Rinse and repeat with millions of people for a few decades and you get what we have today.
Libertarians are the most delusional of all…by a long shot.
We are not actually socialist. Socialist countries are places like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Places like the Nordics are capitalist, and by many measures more capitalist than the US.
Where we are different from the US and to a lesser degree the UK model of capitalism is that our capitalism is more symbiotic with the middle classes, which receive a far larger share of the benefits of a capitalist economy than they do in the US. As you point out, the benefits in the US are flowing towards the upper sections of the income pyramid. US capitalism appears to me to increasingly shade towards being parasitic on the middle classes.
There’s really no point in just relabeling everything to suit yourself.