3 ms·

Ideas fly better if you don't slap emotionally loaded labels on them, like "liberal" and "Republican"

by judk 13y ago

bmelton 13y ago
I was presenting the schools of thought available, so I felt it fair to attribute the beliefs to their bearers as best I was able. There wasn't any malice presented, as there wasn't any intended, nor were there any attempts at backhandedness so often seen with those sorts of examples (E.g., party A wants to lower taxes, party B wants to raise taxes, and party C wants to make sport of killing the poor.) I'm not selling anything, nor trying to sell anybody on anything, so I didn't see the harm in being forthcoming.
- rosser 13y ago
  You weren't "being forthcoming", you were stereotyping. Even a casual read of your comment leaves one with little question which group you think are the "good guys", and which ones you think are full of shit. Simplistic analyses like that are a big part of why politics in America are as fucked up as they are: because we've been conditioned to generalize about huge numbers of people on the basis of affiliation with one or the other of a more or less completely "forced choice" between political parties. But, yeah, go ahead and assert that everyone in the progressive left wants to siphon money from investment accounts in Belmont and deposit it into checking accounts in Fishtown. Go ahead and suggest that all libertarians (note, small-l, per original) want to abolish the minimum wage, or Federal income taxes. That's what I'm talking about when I observe the breadth of your brush. It's impossibly broad.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    I don't think either ones are necessarily full of shit honestly. If the problem to be addressed is income inequality, or wealth distribution, or whichever particular categorization of the problem of "poor people are poor" you want to optimize for, they're both decent solutions in theory. If you'd like to know my personal preference, I'd be happy to discuss that offline, but spoiler alert, it isn't either of the solutions I presented. As far as the generalizations, if I miscategorized anyone's beliefs, then I'm sorry. None of what I presented was meant as a critique... really. But progressive taxation seems to be the prevailing theory coming out of the progressive camp, and tax abolitionism seems to be the prevailing theory coming out of the libertarian camp. As for the stereotype though, I will say that I relied upon the reader to reject the assertion that "all" of any demographic wants a particular thing, because I agree that is an impossibly broad assertion. Again though, if I gave cause for offense, I apologize.
    - judk 13y ago
      Sees it just works better if you say what you mean and leave off the useless labels that only serve to inflame readers one way or the other.
      - bmelton 13y ago
        I disagree. In the five years I've been posting here, what I've found is that anybody that wanted to get offended would be offended whether I referred to the parties by name or as abstract schools of thought. If I hadn't put the party affiliations, and had gotten something wrong, I'm not naive enough to think that anybody would have been fooled by that. Had anybody felt that I misrepresented either party, I'd have been corrected, labels or not, only instead of being able to respond directly, I'd have hard to parse through layers of obscurity to figure out which metric was even the topic of discussion. People are going to be pissed if they feel that their positions are slighted; I just figure the better tactic is to avoid insulting the position vs. obscuring which position I insult. And, as I stated, each of the positions I referenced is, to my knowledge, equally as likely of standing a chance at solving the matter at hand as the other.

Ideas fly better if you don't slap emotionally loaded labels on them, like "liberal" and "Republican"

by judk 13y ago

Ideas fly better if you don't slap emotionally loaded labels on them, like "liberal" and "Republican"

I was presenting the schools of thought available, so I felt it fair to attribute the beliefs to their bearers as best I was able. There wasn't any malice presented, as there wasn't any intended, nor were there any attempts at backhandedness so often seen with those sorts of examples (E.g., party A wants to lower taxes, party B wants to raise taxes, and party C wants to make sport of killing the poor.) I'm not selling anything, nor trying to sell anybody on anything, so I didn't see the harm in being forthcoming.

rosser 13y ago
You weren't "being forthcoming", you were stereotyping. Even a casual read of your comment leaves one with little question which group you think are the "good guys", and which ones you think are full of shit. Simplistic analyses like that are a big part of why politics in America are as fucked up as they are: because we've been conditioned to generalize about huge numbers of people on the basis of affiliation with one or the other of a more or less completely "forced choice" between political parties. But, yeah, go ahead and assert that everyone in the progressive left wants to siphon money from investment accounts in Belmont and deposit it into checking accounts in Fishtown. Go ahead and suggest that all libertarians (note, small-l, per original) want to abolish the minimum wage, or Federal income taxes. That's what I'm talking about when I observe the breadth of your brush. It's impossibly broad.
- bmelton 13y ago
  I don't think either ones are necessarily full of shit honestly. If the problem to be addressed is income inequality, or wealth distribution, or whichever particular categorization of the problem of "poor people are poor" you want to optimize for, they're both decent solutions in theory. If you'd like to know my personal preference, I'd be happy to discuss that offline, but spoiler alert, it isn't either of the solutions I presented. As far as the generalizations, if I miscategorized anyone's beliefs, then I'm sorry. None of what I presented was meant as a critique... really. But progressive taxation seems to be the prevailing theory coming out of the progressive camp, and tax abolitionism seems to be the prevailing theory coming out of the libertarian camp. As for the stereotype though, I will say that I relied upon the reader to reject the assertion that "all" of any demographic wants a particular thing, because I agree that is an impossibly broad assertion. Again though, if I gave cause for offense, I apologize.
  - judk 13y ago
    Sees it just works better if you say what you mean and leave off the useless labels that only serve to inflame readers one way or the other.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      I disagree. In the five years I've been posting here, what I've found is that anybody that wanted to get offended would be offended whether I referred to the parties by name or as abstract schools of thought. If I hadn't put the party affiliations, and had gotten something wrong, I'm not naive enough to think that anybody would have been fooled by that. Had anybody felt that I misrepresented either party, I'd have been corrected, labels or not, only instead of being able to respond directly, I'd have hard to parse through layers of obscurity to figure out which metric was even the topic of discussion. People are going to be pissed if they feel that their positions are slighted; I just figure the better tactic is to avoid insulting the position vs. obscuring which position I insult. And, as I stated, each of the positions I referenced is, to my knowledge, equally as likely of standing a chance at solving the matter at hand as the other.