Hi Liz, You may be right. I am surely not going to debate that there are a lot of people who were lucky enough to have been born in optimal conditions and feel superior to people who were just less lucky. For this reason, they will support ideas that are just self-serving rationalizations.
The problem with left/right polarization, in my opinion, is that it kills critical thought. It is possible to agree with everything you said, but also believe that the strategies traditionally proposed by the left do not work. There are many interesting ideas that are not taken seriously because they fall outside of this dichotomy, for example: - Guaranteed flat income for everyone, no exceptions, no special rules; - A return to a resource-based currency and the end of central banks, thus preventing they highly leveraged investments that generate economical crises and only widen the gap between the rich and the poor; - Deregulation of medicine, recongnizing that there is a trade-off between the protections provided by regulation and the pricing-out of people out of medical care due to barriers to competition introduced by said regulation; - Confronting the lobbies that prevent modern technology from being used to create dirt-cheap, comfortable housing. I'm not sure if these ideas work in practice, but I am sure that they are not given serious consideration because of the traditional left/right lock-in on critical thought. Telmo. On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 12:15 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > After enough online discussions in which I've been called a leftie for > various reasons, I have come to the conclusion that someone calling you one > means, roughly... > > That they have no sympathy for any of their fellow humans who might be > unfortunate enough to be born into the wrong socio-economic group, and who > therefore haven't had the chance to get a decent education (and perhaps not > even enough to eat) > > And because *their* ancestors came from the same continent that first > developed science and had an industrial revolution, they consider > themselves superior to people whose ancestors came from other continents > ("the Africans achieved nothing until the Europeans arrived" etc etc) > > And that they refuse to acknowledge how lucky they are to have been born > into the socio-economic group they were, in the country they were, to the > parents they were, and to have the education and genes they have, which > they consider to somehow be something they have "achieved" rather than the > sheer luck it actually is. > > And that, despite their entire lives having been blessed by the good > fortune of having been born the right person in the right place at the > right time, they don't wish to share anything with anyone less fortunate > than themselves, because those people haven't "earned the right" to partake > of their privileges. > > That appears to be the position of people who call you a leftie. It's > basically their excuse not to act like decent human beings. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
