Who is more likely to be able to live without the other? Liberals or Conservatives?

Great Debates
81

If you click on the icon for Fossil Fuels on the verdantlabs site linked above and expand that it does indeed show miners as one of the most conservative groups overall (indeed, only Cattle Feeder shows as a more conservative occupation) with about a 90% conservative tilt.

Starting society from scratch would require some resource gathering, including mining. Get some coal and iron ore and you are on you way towards substantially improved metal working.

There would still be enough miners and fossil fuel workers for a liberal society, but conservatives might have an early advantage.

Book publisher and Playwright clock in at 100% Democrat per that same link, but somehow Publisher is only 72% Democratic… leaving enough that the Conservatives can probably adapt and manage to publish something when the time comes though that may not be the complete works of the Conservative Shakespeare.

Otherwise the closest to 100% is Union organizer. Looks like conservatives will have to do without that particular profession for the most part.

Indeed, take software engineers (79/21 Dem/Rep) out of the mix and engineers are a reasonably equally divided. There would be plenty of Civil, Chemical, Mechanical, and Electrical engineers for both sides. Still, would be enough to go around of even those engineering positions more skewed.

Both societies would need to recruit more people into agriculture. I do think the Liberal Land would have to recruit more than the Conservative Land though perhaps only marginally so. Certainly not impossible. Both groups would definitely be motivated.

In more primitive societies there tends to be a greater percentage of the population engaged in food production. That a mere 2% of the current US population can feed all of the population of the United States with production to spare to export is a testimony to the power of technology and research. Only a few generations ago, around 1850, a full 50% of the US population was directly employed in agriculture.
Arguably both societies might be affected by bottlenecks of skill scarcity. But the most Democratic leaning (~90%+ ) occupations don’t seem to be as critical to early survival. Immigration attorneys, Union organizers, Public defenders, Astrophysicist, or Yoga Instructors just are not critical to a society’s survival.

82

Conservaworld : With all the deregulation of factory farms, mass produced food kills everyone via E. Coli.

Liberworld: With less drive for profit & economic growth, technological advancement slows at just the wrong time, and the Great Robot War ends with the robots victorious and humans become their slaves.
Result: Pyrrhic victory for Liberworld.

83

Chattel slavery was great for business! The only thing that ended it was those pesky liberals with their morals and such. Prior to that it was going strong, and has done so at various points throughout history.

Your idea of what liberals are like is completely alien to me. Remember, modern liberals aren’t like hippies or communists. We don’t eschew the ownership of property. I actually have lots of possessions, dozens of objects, which I like very much. What we scowl at is the selfish hoarding of property when other people are going without, but even that’s not really about wanting to rob the rich, not really. It’s about wanting to fill all the shot glasses from the big giant full barrel. The reason the rich are asked to contribute is because they can afford it. And anyway we ask them to contribute money, not property, because money is way more fungible.

Regarding your talk of the cruel and brutal shutting down of the poor helpless producers, your talk of “leftist mobs” is delusional, but I’m willing to concede that every single factory and business in the country regardless of region is being stalked by tortoises that just can’t wait to shut them down. That seems totally plausible - it’s just absolutely impossible to find a single square foot to run your business on that isn’t infested with rare endangered animals. Rare endangered animals are everywhere!

(Of course, if your business involves the wholesale destruction of natural land - strip mining, fracking, whatever, all the hyperbole drains out of that. At that point it becomes a difference of opinion about the relative merit of annihilating ecosystems for a buck, which reasonable people can have conversations about.)

Obviously not every person represents the extreme here. I’m talking about the general trends. And the general trend for the right in America right now is to very very aggressively want to shut down anything or anyone that is trying to stop them from doing the things they want to, which definitely includes the government.

This is one of the most twisted attempts to equate things I’ve ever seen. “Want not to be bound by scarcity”? Seriously? I think you’re saying that liberals wish people weren’t starving to death. I guess you’re saying that conservatives aren’t constrained by the need to eat.

In saying that you think that liberals want not to be bound by human nature, I think you’re saying that liberals don’t want to have to endure conservatives being selfish and abusive? That liberals want to force them to go against their nature and contribute their assets and not be racist bigots?

Seeying you say that you think liberals don’t want people to have to work makes me think you’re on drugs. That’s moronic. Unless you’re talking about aiding the disabled, the infirm, and children, who liberals do indeed think should be given support without requiring labor in return.

If you’re saying that liberals want to be free from social judgment, I think you’re saying that liberals don’t want to be attacked and persecuted by racist bigots. But your choice of phrasing is hilarious, because modern conservatives are very very bothered by social judgement - the judgement that is leveled at racist bigots.

And regarding the theocracy thing, the conservative drive towards it is based in the belief that all right-thinking people share their beliefs, and thus a theocracy could be established without coercing or limiting any right-thinking people. Wrong-thinking people will of course be made to conform or be purged, naturally enough. Of course this particular conservative perspective requires a person to have forgotten things like the Troubles, but in america that comes naturally.

Conservatives seem hell-bent on eliminating all government-sourced limitations and demands on them; the fact that feudalism would rise from the anarchy they desire would be an unintended side effect - as unintended as the way fascists tend to take over old-school communistic states. Which, incidentally, is why modern liberals don’t want to attempt to create an old-school property-free communistic state. Like both they and anarchic states are unstable and devolve into some form of dictatorship - the former by leaving the assets unprotected from takeover by people willing to go outside the system, and the latter by enabling such a takeover by people working within the system.

I’m not at all sure that the models that work in modern reality would work in a collapsed anarchy turned fuedalistic oligarchy. But I’m willing to concede that there’s a possibility that the regional lord (read: the one who can afford the personal army) would possibly move his fiscally bereft serfs around and position them to all be productive despite limited resources and high efficiency in the consumption thereof. It’s in his best interest to do so, after all - idle serfs don’t generate wealth.

84

I guess pointing out that conservatives need liberals as much as liberals need conservatives to get things done would be silly, wouldn’t it?

This mentality that if type of worldview would to overthrow the other (or the other side would just conveniently go puff!) and then things would be just peachy is toxic.

Having said that, anyone who looks around will find that cultures become more and more conservative as survival becomes more difficult; the idea of natives being touchy feely hippy-likes is bunk.

85

The selective rapture model probably would have been a better set of initial conditions.

I mainly wanted to explore what the effects of a shift to the right and the left would do to society long term. Which version of America would be more prosperous in a hundred years? More technologically advanced?

86

Wait a minute. Are you claiming that all criminals and terrorists and other foreigners who attack us are LIBERALS? If they aren’t, then they wouldn’t be on the Liberal Planet, right?

Seriously though, this discussion isn’t really about what if liberals and conservatives split up. It’s about what if all the people who each side CLAIMS are their enemies all disappeared from their midst, what would happen?

One of the biggest impediments to ANY modern discussion of liberal versus conservative, is that the definitions of those terms are not agreed upon, even by all the fanatics on either end of the spectrum. It’s not just a matter of “social versus financial,” either. Both radical self-proclaimed liberals AND radical self-proclaimed conservatives, have been known to declare that the Federal Government should not be allowed to limit their personal behavior in any way. Both groups include lots of members who want the entire world to be changed, and for everyone to be forced to live in a way that pleases them, at the very same time.

From the time I was very young, I have been subjected again and again, to all sorts of people standing up and declaring "Freedom and Justice for ALL!"  and shortly thereafter, witnessed the same exact people turning to one side, and saying "oh, except for those guys there.  Screw them, they don't count."  

How the hell are you going to predict what would happen to people, when you can't define who they are?
87

I think it depends a lot on initial conditions.

If you’re talking about picking up people in small groups and dropping them off Serenity style (nothing but a backpack, blanket and shovel), I think you’d find the conservatives suddenly being a whole lot more or cooperative (read: socialist) in trying to survive.

Any group that stuck to the idea of not supporting anyone but their own would quickly devolve into starvation and murder.

88

I read that as “The particular US faction are the only humans around”, not “only humans are around”

89

That wasn’t the point of my comment - it was that only coal is really of use in a from-scratch economy - it doesn’t really matter if there are a greater proportion of oil-and-gas people in C-world over L-world, because those are near-useless professions in a subsistence economy that:
a) doesn’t have the machines that use fossil fuels
b) doesn’t have the machines the oil and gas people are used to using to extract and refine the fuels in the first place.

Again, do you think a modern miner, used to rock drills, ventilation, explosives, shit like this, is at any advantage in starting from base zero?

Assuming they could find the minerals in the first place. Although if the OP’s twin worlds are Earth-clones, they could go by historic locations. But if not - do you think exploration geologists fall under “miners” or “scientists & academics”?

Remind me, which US states have net outflows vs inflows of cash from the Federal teat…?

90

Your link doesn’t like my ad-blocker even when whitelisted so I’ll just have to take your word for it that it’s some variant of blue=good, red=bad study.

Then there’s this.

91

So, <300 million or so transported to a world with current level of natural resources, and not 7 billion people? As liberal as I may be, I think I’d instantly channel my inner Heinlein: guns, privacy, and militant self-reliance. It’s foolish to think that today’s liberal/conservative split isn’t wholly conditioned on today’s world, and I’m happy to adapt, and Libertarianism makes sense if you’re in a true frontier.

That said, I’d have to choose the liberal world, because outside of the economic liberal/conservative axis, I’d be the first one burnt at the stake for witchcraft or other non-Christian behavior. Unfortunately the social and religious side (of any group) is less prone to adaptation and more prone to mobs, and I’d be rather stupid to go where I was such an outsider.

92

Sure, but the Republican side has the home builders - which more shows that there is enough of a spread spectrum that both sides will have the necessary key skills.

I also don’t think you can really separate out fiscal & social spectrums that easily.

93

Imagining a world exactly like the current one, considering the US only (because that’s all I know), using US definitions of Liberal and Conservative, and exacting the change by just taking the existing people and changing their political leanings without removing the people or losing their knowledge and skill, what would happen? What would each society lose?

Libertopia:
There would be a rapid shutdown of coal mining, and much oil drilling, including fracking, accompanied by an aggressive shift towards fuel-efficient (at first) and eventually electric cars. After some infighting, construction of nuclear power plants would be fasttracked, alongside other greener energy sources. Economic regulations would be enacted and enforced. The effect of this would be a temporary dip in the economy, along with the shutdown of certain industries, but business would adapt to the new regulatory environment and find ways to stay profitable within the new boundaries.

Immigrants would be allowed to come in and work on work visas, much as they do now, and they would overstay them, as they do now. Border security would remain much the same as it has been for decades.

The tax burden would be shifted as much as possible to weigh on large businesses and people who have surplus wealth, proportionate to their wealth. The rich wouldn’t like it, but (pretending for a moment they have nowhere else to go), they would stick around and still be much more wealthy than everyone else. The poor would be subsidized into adequate housing (possibly government provided) with adequate food and free education. Most people would also seek gainful employment to be able to afford perks, better housing, food, and so on.

Medical would be paid by the government, with a small industry serving the wealthy and frivolous for cash. There would be no such thing as medical insurance, beyond the free government coverage.

All these government outlays will cost money - besides the tax increase, the military budget would also be greatly, greatly reduced to save cash. The military-industrial complex would shrink quite a lot, but adapt just fine, since if you can make a tank you can make a truck.

Very few people would own guns, and nobody would carry them.

Racism and bigotry will vanish. Ha ha, just kidding - but at least expressions of them would no longer be accepted by society. Even online! Religions will still exist but will have relatively little government influence and gasp will actually pay taxes. This won’t make them go away, of course.

All in all - the economy might be slowed somewhat, and it will probably take a while to fine-tune the balance of the various programs the government is funding. But things should truck on with no significant difficulty indefinitely.
Now, Conservatopia. I will try to be fair here, but it will be difficult.

Businesses will be completely deregulated, and the environment will be consumed and despoiled with reckless abandon. Within fifty years all costal cities are destroyed and agriculture becomes largely untenable. The end. Also, net neutrality is abolished, monopolies form, and business start treating people as consumable assets. Slightly more than they already do, I mean. The wealth disparity explodes. Slighty more. Okay, nothing changes too much or in any surprising way on the business front.

Immigrants and people with dark skin or strong tans will be forcibly deported. This will quickly extend to ones that have had family in the country for generations. This will create a void in the job market, where workers willing to do the dirty work before will not be present in sufficient supply. This will be compounded by:

Taxes would be cut on businesses and the wealthy, with the bulk of the tax burden pushed to the poor and lower class. Sucks to be them, especially since:

The government would get entirely out the health care game. Medicare and Medicaid would vanish; people would have to rely on unregulated private insurance to help pay the bills set by the unregulated medical community. The poor and lower class will get no medical care at all and die in droves. The middle and upper class will get insufficient medical care, be bankrupted by it, and (briefly) become the underclass. The rich, as in all other things, will do fine.

The sharp decrease in tax revenue - dead poor people don’t have a lot of money to squeeze out of them - would result in cuts being made. Road and infrastructure maintenance would suffer. However business subsidies (life for farms) and military pork spending would be maintained as long as a single penny is left to share. The police would also be as well-armed and funded as possible, but prisons will be privately owned hellholes which spend the minimum on the incarcerated and none on rehab. The death penalty will be legal but rarely carried out because more living bodies means more money.

Nearly everybody will be armed. Aside from the fact there are no flower-weilding hippies anymore, I wouldn’t expect this increase in gun owners to change much. Lots of suicides, yes, lots of gun crime, yes - but not too much more than America sees in reality. There will also be no appreciable reduction in crime due to these guns, though criminal types will be a bit more inclined to shoot preemptively and thus gun fatalities may go up a bit.

Racism and bigotry will be rampant and unchecked. Minorities will tend to band together for strength. Women will find themselves getting the short end of the stick regarding wages, harassment, job options, rapes… so little change there. Christianity will become the state religion and strongly influence law. Practice of other religion will be illegal, though it will still occur underground somewhat. Atheists will keep their heads down. Abortion will be illegal but still occur in back alleys. Contraception will be illegal but people will still have sex, and thus more back alleys. Divorce will be TOTALLY legal (there are limits).

All in all, the economy will probably do okay, as long as the middle class can still afford to buy things, but the government may find itself unable to afford basic services like police and farm subsidies. Intergroup violence will result in many fatalities. But it will all become moot within a generation or three as the damage to the environment wipes out the cornstarch fields and the coastal cities flood.

94

:smack: This was your attempt at fairness?

Personally, I suspect with ~half the country suddenly gone, our greenhouse gas emissions would plummet by a similar amount.

Now if I could just convince liberals of this plan to save the environment … :stuck_out_tongue:

ETA: and besides, in the scenario we’re discussing those coastal cities are already largely depopulated.

95

No, it’s more nuanced than that, but it’s pretty clear that* on average*, more conservative states - your Mississippis and Alabamas - get more in federal money than they pay in, whereas your more liberal states -your Californias and New Yorks - pay more than they get. Please spin that into how it’s liberals who are the ones sucking at the entitlement program teat for me…

96

I’m not denying there are *some *useful skills on the red side, but looking at it as a whole, I’d argue that looking at jobs alone, “Insurance” is way, way below “Academic” on the Telephone Sanitizer usefulness totem pole.

*What *“fiscal spectrum” is going to exist in a from-scratch situation?

97

Post snipped. Bolding mine.

This is funny. My father was, for the bulk of his career, in the top 2 or 3 in the world when it came to nuclear reactor safety. He has a B.S. in physics, a PhD in math (both earned with a 4.0 gpa) and ran a nuclear reactor safety research division at a national lab for the vast majority of his career. When Three Mile Island happened Mondale, the freaking Vice President of the United States, called my house asking for my Dad because he was the go to guy in the U.S.*. So Dad got on a military jet (think F-16) and was flown out to PA to figure out what was going on.

My Dad is conservative. Most of the guys and gals he worked with were conservative or libertarian leaning. They all tended to be fiscal conservatives. They would end up in Conservatopia. None were, to my knowledge, particularly religious.

Your bias is blinding you. Not all conservatives are stupid, nor even most.

Slee

  • I know this because I answered the phone when the call came in. I was 9.
98

Not in the scenario I was discussing. :slight_smile: I believe the consensus of the thread is that the consequence of the OP’s “suddenly teleport all people in X group to a new place and dump them there with the clothes on their backs” is “everyone dies, quickly, of starvation.” I established a slightly different scenario at the top of my post because I felt it better served the discussion the OP appeared to want to have (in my opinion).

And, based on my limited understanding of the science of it all, the american conservative approach to the environment (ie: suck it dry) is functionally suicidal. Without the braking effect caused by liberals and their annoying protests and regulations I see no plausible outcome that doesn’t lead to runaway greenhouse effect and its assorted side effects.

It was much easier to be “fair” on the remaining points, where conservative stupidity isn’t actively working to kill us all.

It’s not a matter of all conservatives being stupid. It’s a matter of what the current thrust of american conservative thinking would lead to if pursued in the long run. And the current conservative thrust on the subject of environmentalism is, of all the insane things, burn more coal. I don’t think that conservatopia would end up pursuing nuclear simply because in conservatopia unregulated businesses would rule, and burning coal and oil has a larger profit margin than building expensive nuclear plants. And I’m pretty sure the environment would start making aggressive inroads into killing everyone before that business perspective changed.

99

If you ignore his hypothetical that all the people are still there, just with new political leanings, it’s easy to win the argument…

100

You do realize, don’t you, that he whole ‘burn coal’ thing instead of the ‘build nuclear’ thing is because liberals with little to no understanding of nuclear effectively killed nuclear in the U.S. You understand that, don’t you?

Slee