The rejection of large government in the 80’s was not solely based on selfishness. It was based upon the fact that we had an example of maximum government in the form of the Soviet Union, which despite its stated goal of improving things for everyone, in fact just destroyed the lives of virtually everyone.
There’s more income mobility in France than in the United States:
Sorry, the former.
The stated goal was irrelevant really, it was a totalitarian state. The “workers” never were in charge (not saying that would have worked either.)
This is an area where I think conservatism can be healthy: conservatives are very skeptical of a state with the power to control the entire economy and view that as inherently leading to tyranny. This is a healthy skepticism in my view, as power corrupts and absolute power over the economy is a hell of a lot of power. On the other hand, my view is that we don’t need to completely eliminate government control over the economy: it’s a matter of balance, of finding that “sweet spot” for the best size of government. But I do think it’s healthy to have conservatives saying: “Hey, woah, that’s a regulatory bridge too far” b/c power can corrupt gradually, incrementally and insidiously,.
Right now, we are seeing what is probably a “worst case scenario”, at least the worst we’ve seen thus far in our nation’s history, in terms of a totally corrupt and malevolent government.
It should highlight the danger of giving the government too much power.
Ah, right. Well, as I said, this quote was very odd for many. The press ran all sorts of interesting reactions to it!
I was under the impression that scientifically speaking all CO2 emissions were pretty much equally bad. I’m really not sure what you’re getting at here.
(well I suspect you saw “conservative” and “climate change” and didn’t bother to actually read my post, but whatever)
No
A party based on an opposition to change is antithetical to a society progressing forward both culturally and technologically.
And in terms of fiscal responsibility. You don’t have to be a republican to balance a checkbook. And the GOP of today can’t do that anway either.
And we have myriad examples of the inverse, the dangers of giving corporations too much power. And that’s kind of the rub, there are instances where greater government power and regulation can increase individual liberty, look at the example of the late 19th early 20th century to see that.
Even today there are cases where lack of government would decrease individual liberty. Healthcare would be my example here. A government program, the ACA, saw in the aftermath an increase in entrepreneurship, as people who had greater access to healthcare could more easily leave a job to start a new one. How the costs of healthcare, and the previous anti consumer practices like pre existing conditions, had massive impacts on people.
Which is where I broke from Libertarian thought. I’ve always felt that the ideology was one that is a nice ideal, but not always realistic. But it is a good coutnerblance to evaluate positions from. But it needs to be always considered from the fact that sometimes lack of government can decrease individual liberty just as much as too much government intervention may.
I’d offer that, from my perspective, the government does not “give power” to anyone. The government merely restricts rights.
Sure, but this can be argued from a purely economic perspective. The market doesn’t function for healthcare, because of inelastic demand. This doesn’t really require you expand the concept to other things that are much less clearly established.
Power exists on a continuum. And while it is not strictly zero sum, it is also true that increasing power often comes at the expense of decreasing power of another entity. In the balance I was alluding to I am referring to the power of corporations versus the power of the workers.
In the gilded age corporations could wield tremendous power over their workers. Being as you live in Pennsylvania, you are probably familiar with the mining towns, scrip, and all the other ways the mining corporation wielded such power over their workers as to basically control their lives. Paying workers in scrip meant they had such high power that their workers had effectively none. They didn’t even have power to shop in normal economic transactions, since the scrip meant their earning were only good within the company shops, they could not negotiate for better prices with outside merchants.
So the government restricted the rights of corporations to engage in certain behaviors. Work hours, safety conditions, payment in currency not scrip, and so on. This restriction on the rights and powers of the companies de facto granted power to the workers. And because power is a non zero equation this reduction of liberty on companies increased the net liberty of the system because the workers were granted far more power than the companies were restricted.
This is something I debated with Rywill (who used to be this forum’s standard bearer for libertarianism/small government before Timex) about 10 years ago or so. Ignoring the semantic issue of how you define “rights”, government can, as a practical matter, increase the freedom of some by decreasing the freedom of others, and in some cases, this will end up as a net increase in freedom.
For example, think of a society where government does not (or cannot) restrict the freedom of citizens to commit murder and violent crime. Or think of a government that does not (or cannot) enforce contracts, or a government that does not (or cannot) tax some citizens in order to pay for a universal education for all children. In all of these cases, restricting the freedom (or taxing) some creates a net increase in freedom for society.
A society that does not or cannot stop murder and violent crime is a society that my be “free” in terms of no government restrictions, but as a practical matter to the average citizen, that’s a terrifyingly un-free society. If you knew that there was no government to prevent murder, would you even leave your house? I guess you could form clans and threaten others with blood vengeance for transgressions, but your obligations to your clan would almost certainly be more restrictive than a government of laws, and hey, you would still face potential threats of murder depending on the tactical situation between the clans.
A society that does not restrict the freedom of citizens to lie, cheat, and break contracts is a society that is never going to amass any capital and will live in mud huts, basically. It’s also a society where, as a practical matter, the citizens are not going to feel free to save, invest, innovate, start businesses, etc.
A society that does not tax citizens to pay for a universal education is a society that suffers a net loss of de facto freedom in two ways: 1)the fraction of children whose parents simply cannot afford a private education will be deprived of the basic education necessary to be a citizen and to enjoy all the freedoms of a society and 2)society as a whole will have less freedom b/c they have to bar their windows and carry weapons all the time to defend against the desperate adults that the uneducated children have become.
There are obviously limits to this. But the issue is finding the sweet spots for the balance of freedoms, rather than saying the actions of government can not increase freedom.
Note: I’m using “freedom” instead of “rights” b/c IMO freedom is the practical reality and “rights” is a semantic concept.
I’ve never really thought of the Atlantic as a bastion of conservative ideology. Where does Vox fall on the progressive spectrum? More of their climate articles don’t seem averse to a carbon tax. Maybe on issues like climate they are more technocratic than for typical social issues?
I’m not sure under which of these many threads to file this:
By Nick Timothy, Therasa May’s former policy guru.
There have always been major ideological differences in the Conservative party - they are a large tent united by a willingness to follow their chosen leader. When the leader becomes weak there is little to unite them.
If it wasn’t for the poisoned chalice of Brexit May would have been sacked by her MPs immediately after the 2017 election, but noone wants to be the PM who has to deliver it.
There have always been major ideological differences in the Conservative party - they are a large tent united by a willingness to follow their chosen leader. When the leader becomes weak there is little to unite them.
So, like orcs then?
This sounds like you’re arguing that conservatism - at least as it has existed in the conservative party - isn’t a unifying ideology? There’s ‘little’ in that word that really brings the party together?
It’s interesting, because nobody would say this about any of the other parties in the UK with MPs.
I’m not sure that’s true. In opposition there is always opposition to unite you. Only the tories have been in government with a weak leader since 79 (Major and May).
If there is anything uniting he Labour MPs, it certainly isn’t ideology.
I think you are much more sceptical than I am about both parties!