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American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we n
by maxaf 7y ago
American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we need cheaper housing - but not here. Yes, guvment must build better jails - but not here. Yes, please run more buses - but not down my street. Yes, we must accept more refugees - but put them somewhere far away, certainly not anywhere near my child’s route to school.
Liberalism and NIMBYism are joined at the hip. Liberalism is loud and ostentatious, while NIMBYism is prosecuted quietly via the court system, lobbying, and political donations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to how both seem to coexist in the same group of people.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fallingfrog 7y agoHumanity must come at someone else’s expense? Just meditate on that thought for a minute. Think about it carefully. In your mind, on whose backs do you suppose that wealth was built?
- maxaf 7y agoYes, that's what the liberals are saying. They're yelling for more humanity, but they want it to come at someone else's expense. This isn't my principle; it's the liberals'. I'm not the one who should be meditating on anything, as I'm also not the one preventing affordable housing from being built.
- fallingfrog 7y agoWrong answer. The wealth of those you want to protect from taxes is and has always been built on the backs of the poor who you want to deprive of public services. They built your homes, they tend your gardens, they raise your children, they guard you while you sleep. Yet you whine and complain when they want buses that run on time and a place to sleep.
- maxaf 7y agoWho am I protecting from taxes again?
- roenxi 7y agoThere is a two-step process here for your builders, gardeners, nannys, security guards, etc. First the things they want must be produced, then they have to secure access to those things. There is no question that tax-and-redistribute can make step 2 happen. However, the problem is that the plan for step 1 is usually some variant of 'Massive taxes aren't going to change what gets produced. What's gonna happen, people gonna stop working on important things?'. That plan often doesn't work because it turns out massive taxes change what gets produced, often much for the worse. You can get morally outraged if it makes you feel better, but your comment inspires no hope in me that you've thought your solution through. There is substantial evidence that, economically speaking, going for a big pie unevenly shared is a much better solution than going for a small but evenly sliced pie.
- NCWV 7y agoThey won't stop working on important things. What is their alternative? Sell everything they own and move to Canada? Just sit around and drink beer all day?
- maxerickson 7y agoTrade workers in the US aren't poor.
- acollins1331 7y agoBroad brush strokes that have no basis in reality are a great way to see the world. You think there aren't conservatives who are just as shitty as the liberals you talk about? A: there are
- jakelazaroff 7y agoI’m not sure where you get those ideas? Where I live in NYC, they recently shut down a major street to cars so buses could run more easily — and the furthest left want to expand that. The left leaning people I know want to close jails, not build better ones elsewhere. We opposed an Amazon campus in our backyard specifically because it would drive up rents — and the furthest left want rent control. Liberals are obviously not a monolith of only ethically consistent people, but I definitely don’t see the pervasive NIMBYism.
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoThe Left in New York City are largely socialists by now, who had enough of a long-standing working-class tradition to avoid allying with liberal NIMBYs. He's honestly pretty spot on about liberals, as the spot on the spectrum in between conservatives and social democrats.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoMaybe so, but I don’t read the original comment as a critique of centrist Democrats in particular. (I also don’t think centrist Democrats are alone in the gap between their professed values and their actual ones.)
- maxaf 7y agoI live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Here the same people who yell for affordable housing also go to court to block construction of new towers. The same people who complain about buses stuck in traffic on W 86th St also prevent the introduction of universal metered parking and congestion pricing. But my original comment was mainly addressing the NIMBYism in California. Look at SF: it's a low-rise city of sky-high demand and prices. Who's preventing new construction? The same local NIMBYs who enjoy rising property values due to severely restricted supply of land that can be built on.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoI until very recently lived downtown, where congestion pricing would actually take effect, and the people most in support were again the furthest left. SF does seem to be more NIMBYish, but I’m not sure why you think it’s a microcosm of liberalism.
- jtmcmc 7y ago"Liberalism" is the "hipsters" of modern leftist politics...
- dmode 7y agoI think you are conflating entirely two different concepts. NIMBYism is a unique California value and closely related to California history rather than a true left ideology. In fact, leftist policies are for more denser urban development, public transit etc as you can see in European countries