Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Can't you allow for people to hold different views because they sincerely believe them, and not just because they are fools or knaves?

For instance, it seems to me that the attitude of most people towards the govt is that they favour it when it reflects their values, and they don't when it doesn't. I would say that that's fairly universal--and not at all hypocritical or irrational.

OK, it's not necessarily hypocritical, but it is at least very selfish: "Tax people just enough to afford the things that benefit me, but not a cent more to support spending that doesn't benefit me but might benefit someone else."

The subsidies that American farmers receive are particularly egregious. Surely the very concept of subsidies is contrary to the ideals of free enterprise and the free market? And look at the effect it has on farmers in other countries - particularly poor ones, of course.
 
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vimothy

yurp
But you're just making a bunch of assumptions about a hypothetical person and then being outraged at his bad form. How much does this hypothetical person actually coincide with reality?
 

Leo

Well-known member
pretty much every republican congressperson has signed on with grover norquist's tax pledge and his group's goal to "shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub." i just question whether they really believe that, or do they also still, as you say, want a little bit of government healthcare thrown in on the side. the two seem at odds. personally, i do think there's legitimate claim for a middle ground: a smaller, better run, more efficient government that provides services to citizens. there's a difference between something being ill-focused and inefficient and it being broken and useless.

my issue isn't with differing political views, god forbid if everyone was a liberal! i've just encountered too many tea party types who profess an extreme position yet don't walk the walk, too many cases of "do as i say, not as i do." maybe it's an american thing. and for what it's worth, there are certainly liberals who are guilty of essentially the same thing in the opposite direction.
 

vimothy

yurp
Fortunately or unfortunately, it turns out that politicians are completely powerless to affect this kind of change.

The people in the Tea Party are just generally upset that they don't have any control over the direction that their country is going in and that its final destination is not one that they want to visit, much less live. They're on the losing side of history and they know it. Why expect them to be happy about this?
 
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luka

Well-known member
this thread is now inane. i liked my bit though. talk to us about the evolution of your views vimothy. i regard you as an exotic species. do you even regard yourself as being of the right? i doubt it. craner is a member of the labour party and you seem to find a lot of common ground with him.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
what I also find completely odd is the amount of people who come from lower and middle class backgrounds being for small gov't / lower taxes and therefore fewer social programmes or gov't subsidised health-care. Some millionaire being for that - that's one thing, but the very people who would benefit from better public schools and better medical care?

That's how conservative generally get into government. I think a systematic campaign of propaganda explains why people think in objectively self-defeating ways. In Britain now, a proportion of people who vote Tory will do so even though their policies are making them worse off. Most people won't believe things are happening until they experience their disadvantages personally - hence the relatively small outcry against NHS 'reforms'.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
That's how conservative generally get into government. I think a systematic campaign of propaganda explains why people think in objectively self-defeating ways. In Britain now, a proportion of people who vote Tory will do so even though their policies are making them worse off. Most people won't believe things are happening until they experience their disadvantages personally - hence the relatively small outcry against NHS 'reforms'.

There's also the general point that people like to believe that they're the hardworking types who are getting exploited by something-for-nothing welfare scroungers and hence that shrinking the state will generally be to their advantage...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
For instance, it seems to me that the attitude of most people towards the govt is that they favour it when it reflects their values, and they don't when it doesn't. I would say that that's fairly universal--and not at all hypocritical or irrational.

How do people's 'values' get formed though? That's the question - it is the job of political parties to form and reform them, and they're rather good at it, according to how much media control they enjoy.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There's also the general point that people like to believe that they're the hardworking types who are getting exploited by something-for-nothing welfare scroungers and hence that shrinking the state will generally be to their advantage...

Yep, the amount of times I have heard such nonsense from people who apparently are 'educated', is just depressing. The thing that gets me is that they never have any figures to back up their case, and yet are frequently people with degrees/qualifications that would have required them to have basic statistical/mathematical/scientific knowledge. Clearly tax avoidance is financially a much greater problem than 'benefit fraud', and yet people deny this cos it's easier to criticise people with less power than you. Story of the world, sadly.
 

luka

Well-known member
How do people's 'values' get formed though? That's the question

how did vimothys views get formed? lets talk about a real person that actually exists. i doubt hes been duped by fox news.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
how did vimothys views get formed? lets talk about a real person that actually exists. i doubt hes been duped by fox news.

we are talking about generalities/models of how people act as a matter of course in this thread, cos it's a relentlessly depressing thing that a lot of people do vote in completely right wing assholes, and no-one can seem to explain it if we presume people are rational

but if we're taking vimothy's values as an example (but as you say i doubt he's emblematic of that many people), i'd have no idea, he'd have to tell us
 
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luka

Well-known member
yeah but when its a load of left wing people just saying 'o god theyre so dumb' it becomes a bit nauseating. its not a good discussion. we dont get anywhere interesting.
 

luka

Well-known member
dont you find olivere and vimothy interesting? i do. im fascinated. not so much with oliver cos i know him personally and i know he just got scared of muslims in 2001. thats why his blog as called a time for fear.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i agree with the writing it off as stupidity being boring. I think rather it's fear and irrationality - fundamental assumption with a lot of arguments is that human beings act in a rational way, which is patently untrue most of the time.
 

luka

Well-known member
i think also craner is aesthete and objects to the shabby snivelling nature of left wing activists. they always seem inadequate in some way.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In Britain now, a proportion of people who vote Tory will do so even though their policies are making them worse off.

This is just what I was talking about a couple of pages ago - people on average or even slightly under-average incomes who've been conned into thinking a Tory govt is going to benefit them. How much good is a small tax break that benefits you to the tune of a few quid a week if you fall ill and can't get the treatment you need because your local NHS trust has been 'streamlined' and you're still a long way from being able to afford private health care?

People also lose sight of the fact that policies that directly benefit a demographic they don't belong to can indirectly benefit them as well. Even if you don't have an empathetic bone in your body, it's not hard to see that closing youth clubs, trashing the EMA, cutting already meagre funding for treatment of mental health and drink/drug problems etc. is going to lead to a big rise in crime and ASB, which is detrimental to everyone who doesn't live in some fucking gated mansion with private security goons.
 

vimothy

yurp
Luka, I'm pleased that you've taken such an interest--"the only thing worse than being talked about..."

I find the question of where people's views come from interesting. Notice that it's always somebody else that is at fault here. No one ever says, ignore me, I only believe this shit because I read it in the NYT or the Guardian, because I inherited this perspective from whoever ended up rising to the top of the pile about the same time I came into existence, because I'm completely conventional and have no desire to think for myself--but surely that's the obvious implication.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I find the question of where people's views come from interesting. Notice that it's always somebody else that is at fault here. No one ever says, ignore me, I only believe this shit because I read it in the NYT or the Guardian, because I inherited this perspective from whoever ended up rising to the top of the pile about the same time I came into existence, because I'm completely conventional and have no desire to think for myself--but surely that's the obvious implication.

It's not at base a question about being conventional or otherwise*. Everyone is influenced by others, obviously, in coming to think in a certain way.

It's a question about why some people are such assholes that they support ideas that actively lead to the oppression of other people, most of whom they have obviously never met in their lives. Why do they hate people they don't know so much? And moreover, a large chunk of such people come to support such ideas even when those ideas also do not benefit them. Why?

*We also (mostly?) live in societies where right-wing thought is extremely pervasive. If it made sense to brand anyone 'conventional', it is those who follow this line of thought. I don't think you'll ever see the Guardian at the top of the pile, in terms of sales or influence, whenever you grew up.
 
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