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Sure, there is no "center". But I think most of both sides are generally inclined toward fiscal conservatism and free market solutions while ensuring people in

by heurist 10y ago

Sure, there is no "center". But I think most of both sides are generally inclined toward fiscal conservatism and free market solutions while ensuring people in poverty are taken care of. It's just that vocal Republican voters think all liberals want to take all their tax money to spend on abortion and welfare recipients while vocal Democratic voters think all conservatives are power-hungry and severely intolerant of variable social perspectives. Both sides have some truth but moderates of all stripes mostly just want a safe, stable, healthy economy in which to grow their businesses and families. They're willing to work with each other to achieve that. There are other reasons that our democracy is not functioning properly. (I don't personally believe the two parties produce solutions of equivalent quality at this point. Democrats have demonstrated much greater awareness of the deep problems in our governance. But I spend a lot of time trying to understand the Republican perspective and I can generally understand where they are coming from, even if I disagree.)

dragonwriter 10y ago
> But I think most of both sides are generally inclined toward fiscal conservatism Only in the trivial definition where "fiscal conservatism" means government should spend money only on those things that are important for government to do, and tax no more than is needed to do that. OTOH, the left and right (even the moderate left and right) have fairly divergent views of what government should do. > and free market solutions Even moderates on both the left and right tend to favor wide areas of government-run programs for "good" things, and of absolute prohibition of "bad" things (with overlapping, but conflicting, definitions of what is "good" vs. "bad"), rather than market-based solutions. ("Free market based solutions" is somewhat incoherent: "free market" is a single, universal state; were it achievable by policy at all, it would be exactly one solution, you can't have multiple of them.) > while ensuring people in poverty are taken care of. Even moreso than "fiscal conservatism", this is only a point of disagreement if it has no coherent definition, so that it is equivocation. Sure, the and the right would agree with the phrase, but mean radically different things by it.
- heurist 10y ago
  No one wants to spend money that doesn't have to be spent. The argument is over what has to be spent. I agree that there are differing definitions at play. The free market can be contained and guided. Governments set the platforms on which the free market operates, and it can be manipulated much like water can be poured into different shape cups. Water doesn't stop being water when it's poured into a different container... The free market can absolutely be leveraged into efficient solutions for societal problems. We do it all the time. If you want to think of the free market as a singleton then you'll have to include all interconnections and energy exchange throughout the entirety of the universe, which happens to include the human forces which are capable of regulating small parts of itself the way any other sustainable system does.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > The free market can be contained and guided. A market can be, but a free market is specifically one that is free of government intervention to "contain and guide" it.
    - heurist 10y ago
      There's no such thing as freedom. Everything that exists is constrained somewhere by something. The economy is no different.

by heurist 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> But I think most of both sides are generally inclined toward fiscal conservatism Only in the trivial definition where "fiscal conservatism" means government should spend money only on those things that are important for government to do, and tax no more than is needed to do that. OTOH, the left and right (even the moderate left and right) have fairly divergent views of what government should do. > and free market solutions Even moderates on both the left and right tend to favor wide areas of government-run programs for "good" things, and of absolute prohibition of "bad" things (with overlapping, but conflicting, definitions of what is "good" vs. "bad"), rather than market-based solutions. ("Free market based solutions" is somewhat incoherent: "free market" is a single, universal state; were it achievable by policy at all, it would be exactly one solution, you can't have multiple of them.) > while ensuring people in poverty are taken care of. Even moreso than "fiscal conservatism", this is only a point of disagreement if it has no coherent definition, so that it is equivocation. Sure, the and the right would agree with the phrase, but mean radically different things by it.

heurist 10y ago
No one wants to spend money that doesn't have to be spent. The argument is over what has to be spent. I agree that there are differing definitions at play. The free market can be contained and guided. Governments set the platforms on which the free market operates, and it can be manipulated much like water can be poured into different shape cups. Water doesn't stop being water when it's poured into a different container... The free market can absolutely be leveraged into efficient solutions for societal problems. We do it all the time. If you want to think of the free market as a singleton then you'll have to include all interconnections and energy exchange throughout the entirety of the universe, which happens to include the human forces which are capable of regulating small parts of itself the way any other sustainable system does.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The free market can be contained and guided. A market can be, but a free market is specifically one that is free of government intervention to "contain and guide" it.
  - heurist 10y ago
    There's no such thing as freedom. Everything that exists is constrained somewhere by something. The economy is no different.