Neither Red Nor Blue

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

After arguing that a productive conversation with the-others (whoever those others may be - Republicans in this case) begins first by being respectful, I was bizarrely accused of being a Republican. Because we all know that to say Group X deserves basic respect, one has to belong to Group X. Only black people can ever argue for black rights, for example – no white man has ever done such a thing.

Ok, all sarcasm about that ridiculous and amazingly idiotic accusation aside, this post is my perhaps attempting to make my political position – or non-position – more clear than it currently is.

I was raised by a democrat father. He voted for Clinton. Didn’t vote in the 2000 election. Educated guy – bachelor’s in engineering. When I first started thinking about philosophy, I naturally just believed that probably democrat was the way to go. Seemed more sympathetic to me, sympathetic to the poor, disadvantaged, etc. I was never any sort of bleeding-heart – I was just sort of humbly liberal, not really thinking or arguing about it too much. I just took my mild liberal-ness for granted, I suppose. Being an atheist and thus considering myself a ‘free thinker’, ‘liberal’ naturally felt like a good word to describe myself as well.

I then got into extreme libertarianism for quite a while. Read a couple books on Austrian Economics, it made a lot of sense to me. Was basically for the abolishment of government. And then the philosopher who got me into libertarianism…all of his philosophy started crumbling once I really read one of his books. I had only listened to his podcasts, you see, and he’s one of those guys who’s an AMAZING speaker, really persuasive, but in written form he’s really quite weak. Prone to a lot of very transparent fallacies – fallacies much less transparent in spoken form. So, I read his book, and the philosophy therein sucked, and I realized, ‘Hey, I’m…you know…not into this guy anymore. Fuck this guy.’

But I was still mildly libertarian for a long time afterward. Despite having rejected the philosopher, I didn’t bother rethinking any of the philosophy I had learned from him, other than the stuff that I saw as transparently fallacious of course. In retrospect, I should have analyzed the beliefs I picked up from him more thoroughly once I realized he was really quite a poor thinker – obviously just because a bad philosopher supports IdeaX doesn’t mean IdeaX is wrong – but anytime you’re convinced about IdeaX by a philosopher you later come to view as bad, it’s probably a good idea to revisit IdeaX just to make sure…

Anyway, the entirety of my time as a libertarian, of course the idea of redistribution of wealth and that sort of thing seemed absolutely out of the question for me. It took a lot of internal effort to convince myself to reconsider it – seriously, when something like that becomes so internalized, it’s an amazing feat not even to change your mind, but just to consider changing your mind. It’s easy to fall into this habit of, once you start thinking of an idea that you already don’t agree with, you immediately start thinking of retorts – I had to force myself not to think of all the retorts I had learned, all of the quick and easy ways to reject this idea. I had to force myself to really, really understand, ‘Maybe I’ve been wrong for the past x amount of years – Maybe I REALLY was wrong’.

I’m not sure what I believe about a lot of political issues. By and large, both sides of most political issues have good points. No position is wholly good, with an opposite viewpoint being wholly bad. Both sides are championed by real humans, who have a real desire to really improve the world. Obviously they can’t both be right (though they can both be wrong) – but they can both be understandable.

And this is something I guess I was trying to impart in my conversations about being fair to the other side in recent threads. If you’re coming into the conversation thinking that there’s no way the other side could even have a comprehensible human motivation for supporting the policy they support, you might as well shut the fuck up in the first place because you’re not going to get anywhere with that as your starting point. You’re talking to a human, and even if their idea is wrong, the best way to correct them is often to understand their mistake. You’ve got to come into the conversation with the belief that the other side believes what they believe, if not for fully justified reasons, at least for vaguely understandable reasons. That’s the first step into having a productive political conversation with the other side. It’s a necessary step.

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“No mountain has ever become great (or even significant) without greatness within.” - SomeSmartDude

Both sides of any nation’s political front WILL have excellent points and concerns… ALWAYS.

If you aren’t smart enough to see whatever good they represent, then you aren’t smart enough to be engaging them.

And FJ, I could have told you that you weren’t a Republican, but 98% of the people, especially online, that you run across will assume that anyone trying to make a logical point is a conservative and thus a Republican. Liberals/Democrats (not that those are identical) avoid logic arguments as much as possible.

3

It is interesting that people,including me, cannot understand that opposites attract and connect deeply, that velcro sticks, male female make a partnership etc etc. The trick is finding the key to the lock. Perhaps itemizing issues then listing opposing attitudes or answers, the key can be found by scrutiny? Where is the connection? Start simple to get the hang of it then work your way up.

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Actually, I believe it to be much easier than that, but is a different topic.
The homosapian family that overcame the ruthless jungle didn’t study quantum physics in order to accomplish reign over the chaos.

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i suppose it’s besides the point of your post, but if you’re willing to say, i’d like to know how you consider redistribution of wealth now in your post-libertarian way of thinking. It’s interesting that it became a pivotal question for you. And who’s the guy whose book let you down?

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True but, the sheer mass of human bodies raised in vastly different ways creates a new issue. Its easy to keep a few happy, try running a class of fifty kindergarteners. Then double that within two weeks. Oh and they were all raised differently… yea, its spelled Valium for the adult.
And that is simple compared to millions of adult children.

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I didn’t say that you can fix everything by not changing anything.
I was saying that the essence of the “fix” isn’t about complex formulas, but unpleasantly simple necessities that even primates can figure out. They just don’t get carried away with it (because fortunately for them, they can’t).

…and btw, I have taught “special ed” children (not “kids”), so don’t think you have to explain that issue to me. :confused:

8

Yea I have an idea about those unpleasant fixes and selling them would take a genie of lore.
Oh and you have my respect for caring for special needs kids, its rough as hell but, the rewards stick with you.
You want to explain how you figure on selling those fixes? Cuz babe I see a 5’ thick brick wall ahead.

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We are more than a little off topic here, but until someone gets on the topic… (sorry FJ)…
Who said that I figured on selling them?
Back in the 90’s (and actually even back in the 70’s) I demonstrated something rather remarkable concerning a failing 2nd grader. She went from making zero on almost every spelling test to making 100% on every spelling test… in a matter of only 2 weeks. Online I have explained how that was done (and I think even on this site) but I won’t go into it here. In effect, I gave her a photographic memory. But back then, I found it a bit disturbing that the school was only interested in proving that she must be cheating and not anything about how it was done. Online, I found the same kind of response. No one cares how to fix the problem, not even to the level of being curious. Think about why that might be.

Should I be interested in selling something to people who don’t want it? But let’s not get any more into it here.

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Well, I used to be morally opposed to income redistribution based on the argument that it’s basically stealing from one group to give to another. And I suppose I still fundamentally agree that that is an accurate description. But I also entertain the very possible idea that, even so, it will be overall good for people (if done in the right way to the right degree, etc etc). I’m not certain of anything, by any means, just entertaining possibilities. I haven’t made up my mind, and I’m not sure I ever will (or have to).

The guy’s name is Stefan Molyneux. An excellent, excellent speaker and debater – a much less excellent thinker and writer. Beware great speakers. A sufficiently good speaker could convince you, literally, of just about anything.

(You know sometimes when you write or say a phrase or word and it doesn’t feel quite right, but you’re not sure? ‘…convince you of…’ is tripping me out. Is that a correct phrase?)

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You can say that again.
I know… from experience.

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redistribution of wealth is an excellent idea. Both Karl Marx AND Adam Smith
thought it was a good idea and approved of it. The means for such redistribution
is taxes. The GOP despite it rhetoric loves this idea of redistribution of wealth
via taxes because during the last 30 years the redistribution has been from
bottom and middle to top. The top 1% has seen its wealth gain by phenomenal
amounts and this has come from this redistribution of wealth in taxes. An example
of this is Warren Buffet has said his taxes by percentage is lower than his secretary.
His tax rate is 12% and his secretary was 32% and this is on his income of over 60 million
dollars a year. My father in law who was a CPA once told me that if you make a million
dollars a year and paid taxes, you clearly blew it because the tax laws are set up
to avoid taxes if you make a million or more. Look at Mittens during his presidential run,
he even admitted that paid 12% but that was conditional on his tax breaks and that could
have changed his tax rate a lot, downwards BTW. I believe this country current economic difficulty
comes from the change of giving rich guys tax breaks instead of the middle class.
During the high tax years of the fifties and sixties before JFK, we had no problem
building an entire freeway system and funding the space program and conducting
war operations in Korea and vietnam. Look at the facts and it becomes clear
that giving tax breaks for the rich does not create jobs, scrub jr. proved that and
giving tax breaks to the rich doesn’t improve the economy as the market in 2008 proves.

We are going about it the wrong way and the evidence proves it. Getting the rich
to pay their fair share is just the start.

Kropotkin

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“Redistribution of wealth” was (and is) a con game.
You might want to note that the wealthiest people on the entire planet are Marxists (aka “socialists”).

The idea was to inspire the people into the idea of redistribution of wealth because you gain a whole lot more popularity simply because there are always far more poor people than rich people. And as you gain momentum, you are inherently distributing money out of the hands of those proven to know how to handle money and into the hands of the people most likely to not know how to handle money. And then you simply take advantage of their ignorance by many diverse schemes wherein they lose that money to you.

Taxation is merely one of the very many con games involved in that process. The fundamental intent of redistribution of wealth and/or power, is to take advantage of the ignorance of those just learning. Keep switching it all around, “taxing” (stealing) at every turn, and you end up with all of the power that had been the King’s power/wealth. You become the king as long as you stay hidden.

The “good guys” ARE the “bad guys”.
The real problem is that the bad guys are also the bad guys.
Hence, “Neither Red nor Blue”, because they are both after the same thing… power and control over all life… hence the only actual life being their own.

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Many/most wealthy people will cheerfully give to help the less fortunate in their community if it's the right kind of community and the giving is handled in the right kind of way. I think the Government can even play a role in facilitating this.  We just go about it all wrong by trying to leverage poorly-thought out moral imperatives and the condemnation of wealth in general. 
 I like this thread, it's nice to have a little common sense.  I share some of your sentiments about agreeing with a lot of libertarian sentiments but feeling that something is missing.  Libertarianism reminds me a lot of socialism in the sense that they are both heavily ideologically driven, and can take rationally appealing-principles to extremes that make them completely immoral/impractical for governing an actual society full of human beings.
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Wealth is continually redistributed in every economic system that involves exchange.

Trade is redistribution of wealth.

But somehow when it’s centrally decided to make things fairer, and openly and honestly so, it’s stealing.
Yet when it’s privately crafted such that things become less fair, in a non-transparent and disguised way, it’s innocent…

16

I Think, at root, most arguments for redistribution see the current situation as a from of redistribution already. It seems natural and that people simply get ‘their money’ but in fact the flows are a form of distribution already and not based on something innate or right based. It’s just a habit and only seems like people are getting theirs because it is also a habit of mind.

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“Somehow?” Trade is you offering me money in exchange for a service. Taxation is me telling you you HAVE to give me money or I will throw you in prison. The comparison to theft shouldn’t be that mysterious, even if you ultimately don’t agree with it. I suppose extortion is a little more precise of an analogy.

18

I think this post was naively dismissive of the stealing argument.

In my post I said that income redistribution can be compared to theft, and I think you perhaps overlooked the (to most people obvious) fact that I wasn’t talking about ALL forms of income redistribution, like when I distribute my wealth to you of my own choice in exchange for something I want. So your argument was basically, ‘TECHNICALLY trade is redistribution as well.’ Yes, it is, TECHNICALLY. And I don’t oppose trade, and I don’t compare it to theft. And I don’t necessarily oppose government-mandated redistribution either, but I do think it’s comparable to theft. Regardless of whatever technicalities of the semantics involved, regardless of the fact that you can say that they’re TECHNICALLY both redistribution, me choosing to give you my money in exchange for something I want is different from somebody else choosing to give you my money in exchange for nothing. Regardless of your technicalities, I see the former as not comparable to theft and the latter as comparable to theft.

Just possibly justifiable theft.

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The point was that trade is a form of wealth redistribution, so it’s a ridiculous term to use against the left - as though it were some inherently bad thing.
Stop using it (everyone).

Not all wealth redistribution is trade (e.g. theft, which is “one way”).
Crucially, not all trade is fair.
And not all trade is entirely consentual.

Somehow, in the minds of most, taxation is “one way”. If it was, it would be stealing, but it goes towards so many essential things that people just seem to take for granted. It’s as though they have a sense of entitlement to what tax pays for - it should somehow “just be there” anyway. So anything they pay towards it seems like one-way theft - especially since taxation is open and honest about what it’s doing and how much it’s taking (so you can fairly claim it back if you pay too much).

It’s not theft - at worst it’s not entirely consentual.

Yet somehow the way that the hidden machinations of private business redistribute wealth to inconspicuous employers and away from employees, that’s “entirely consentual” and much less “theft” than taxation.
It’s a psychological ploy that appears to have duped pretty much everyone.

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It’s not ridiculous, it’s how language works. Just like how we use ‘discrimination’ to mean this bad thing that people shouldn’t do, when technically selecting a flavor of ice cream because you like it the best is ‘discrimination’. We’re pretty adaptive when it comes to understanding new applications of language.

I don't see how that in and of itself makes it not stealing.  if I break into your house and take  your money, but spend your money on something [i]super important[/i] like my Mom's kidney transplant, I still stole from you.  I'm operating under the assumption that your typical wealthy person benefits in no way from most of the money that is taken from him in taxes. A portion, yes. But not most. 

 I still don't understand why this is mysterious to you.  Yes- a business charging X for a product and paying X-Y to it's employees is entirely consensual, and in no way theft.  That doesn't in and of itself make it fair or right, but if business/wage practices are unfair or wrong, it's for some reason other than it being theft.