Divide & Rule/Wouldn't it be Nice?

The trouble with liberals is, in addition to increasing regulations and taxes on the overclass, either they don’t reduce regulations and taxes on the middle class, or they increase them.

The trouble with conservatives is, in addition to reducing regulations and taxes on the middle class, either they don’t increase regulations and taxes on the overclass, or they reduce them.

This leads to liberals being perceived as the party of the working class, about 49.5% of the population, and the conservatives as the party of the middle class, also about 49.5% of the population, and it keeps both classes fighting with one another in a zero sum game, your gain is my loss.

either way, the overclass wins, because regulations and taxes hurt small business more than they hurt big business, their competitors, and much of our taxes get wasted on dumb things like space, the phony war on drugs and terror, and the overclass often manage to evade taxes anyway.

This unfortunate state of affairs is of course no accident, it is by design, the more liberals and conservatives perceive each other as enemies, or women and men for that matter, blacks and whites etcetera, the more the real enemy of the people is never even identified, let alone dethroned, exorcised.

There is no such thing as white male privilege, the only real privilege is that of the overclass.

I think both the middle, and even the lower upper class should pay the same percentage of income tax as the working class, which should be very, very low, next to nothing, and the overclass, the 1 10th of 1% should be much more heavily taxed.

I also think small business should be deregulated, only big business should be subject to a minimum wage…and price ceilings, especially/particularly for essential goods and services like food and housing.

And of course postsecondary education and healthcare should be socialized, and diversified, in addition to making food and housing cheap.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a party around like that, that promised the aforementioned and delivered?

Capitalism for small business, socialism for big, libertarianism on social issues, no ‘nation building/peacekeeping’, restrict or eliminate immigration, more direct democracy, holistic healthcare and education, protect national parks/nature reserves?

That’s the kind of government I’d like to have, but of course in all likelihood it’ll never be realized, because democracy in practice is by and large a farce, and our civilization probably won’t survive another century or two of this madness.

Best proposal I’ve heard in a long time.

I suppose my main reaction is that such a proposal needs some clause about freedom of information. Not that I have anything remotely to propose about how to secure that.

Thanks.

I agree, freedom of speech is perhaps the most important freedom, and both liberals, and conservatives have been guilty of promoting different, and similar forms of censorship.

Yes, I think Chomsky helped me here, though oddly I wish he understood just how important his insight was, since I think he can be quite gullible. In Manufacturing Consent he talks about how in the West, in theoretically non-dictatorships or open societies, you don’t need to censor, you need to marginalize. And obviously some people and organisations are much more in a position to marginalize positions they want to. Just as Chomsky and whatever equivalent on the right would tend to be marginalized. Positions even more challenging to power than his and theirs will be subject to even more marginalization.

Another way to couch the whole thing is to look at education. Another lefty, Postman, thought teachers should not teacher answers, but questions. Get their students extremely good at questioning, at getting behind the answers people give them. Sort of Socratic, but I think Socrates was always pushing his agenda and beliefs while claiming not to know. This is a an old book and I think Postman as a left was thinking of things like the Vietnam war and corporate manipulations. But his pedagogy should be just as appealing to the right. Since students would be allowed to and forced to question everything including liberal and left beliefs.

In all the fact checking hysteria, I just never see newspapers going after mainstream media consensus conclusions. Just as skeptics organizations tend not to be skeptical about people on their teams, politically and paradigmatically.

So we could look at it in terms of freedom of speech.

Or we could look at in terms of educating people to be questioning and critical and not see the role of teacher to fill kid’s brains.

There are likely other ways we could come at the problem

And all these patterns tend to reinforce each other.

But you can’t make kids sit still, train them that success is regurgitation facts they have been given by authority figures and expect them to be good citizens. Unless your version of good means something akin to easily guided. [I write such that it might seem like I think you need to hear this. I’m sure you’ve thought similar things yourself, given what you write. I am often thinking out loud when I post, finding what I believe or might come to]

Yea, our economy is rigged to favor big business, and big business took over the internet/social media/social media became big business, and they’re working with government to curtail politically incorrect speech/thought.
But it’s also our fault, we have to stop using google and so on.
Support alternative search engines, social media venues and outlets.

Yea, and teach your kids to be critical thinkers, can’t expect the state to teach them that.

Sounds like you could get behind Ocasio-Cortez for president.