Naskra
Emperor
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2006
- Messages
- 1,312
Conservative is an umbrella term for a lot of political ideas
That's your problem right there. You need a conservative approach to language, one in which words have less flexible meanings.
Conservative is an umbrella term for a lot of political ideas
Conservatives don't really believe most of those things you mentioned. Mainstream republicans probably do, but they're hardly conservative. And mainstream democrats also believe a lot of the things you posted.
And stop comparing the US to Norway. The US is not, nor will they ever be, Norway. Policies that work in Norway won't necessarily work in the US. How come all the other liberal european countries like france, greece and spain don't have booming economies like Norway then?
My suggestion would be the Australian system or the UK system. One where even the police are largely not armed because the nation is that safe. Where they use highly trained gun-toting police units only when the rare instance of them being needed because someone actually was able to obtain a dangerous firearm and a lot of ammunition.
For the record, it's over-stating things to say that the UK has anything so clear or deliberate as "a system". What we've done is, over the course of a century, gradually banned different categories of weapon, tool or potentially-menacing implement when and as the tabloid press decided that we should.
I mean, this is a country that recently banned "zombie knives", a category of weapon which, according to the police guidelines on the subject, are of "varying lengths" and "no specific shape or style". It is deeply unwise to use as a model of anything.
Conservative means something different in the United States. It also can mean a lot of things.Haven't read everything yet but I generally I agree on your points Pizza. And it's an impressive bulk of musings you're sharing here. But I don't think I follow your generalisation of what conservatism is and all the specific stands in different matters.
No, it's like night and day. I have yet to run into anyone I would consider "conservative" by US standards. However I have heard of some laughingstock politicians who are trying to undo the progress that has been made here. Particularly the politician in charge of education who is extremely unpopular with the teachers at my wife's school.Not sure how close you've been following Norwegian politics during your stay here but I'm sure you've gathered that conservative ideologi isn't the same here as in the US.
Imagine PM Erna Solberg and her party Høyre (torys) forming a coalition government with US republicans. Would have been utterly inconceivable due to extreme differences over just about every aspect of politics. So can you apply all of your assumptions to Norwegian conservatives too? If not, does your premise still stand?
I'll just talk about two of them, but boy you are on fire with your assumptions.
Isn't that a wonderful thing that the consumers a subsiding big energy. I thought subsidies were bad for the government to do.
But also mentioned in the article is the massive fluctuations caused by renewable energy. The problem is that with wind and solar that when there is no sunshine and no wind, you get no power, so you need some sort of back up power so you don't have blackouts, then there is the opposite problem when you get too much power form those sources and because you have so much energy being produced you literally have to pay people to consume your power.
The reliance on fossil fuels has caused its fair share of economic disruptions as well, I assume you've heard of OPEC and oil prices.But this shows just how bad it can be when you only have to rely on renewable energy.
What happened in Tasmania was a farce because the dam level were massively mismanaged when electricity prices were higher, thus they produced more power so they could sell at a higher price, not making sure they properly managed the level so there would be enough for a rainy day, so to speak.
2. Embryonic stem cells.
I'll just leave you with this website. http://www.stemcellresearch.org/
You will notice that as of right now there are 73 successful treatment using adult stem cells and none using embryonic stem cells. Considering that both have been around for the same period, it should be time to stop the fantasy that embryonic stem cells will do any treatment. But apparently we're anti-sconce for pointing this out.
For the record, it's over-stating things to say that the UK has anything so clear or deliberate as "a system". What we've done is, over the course of a century, gradually banned different categories of weapon, tool or potentially-menacing implement when and as the tabloid press decided that we should.
I mean, this is a country that recently banned "zombie knives", a category of weapon which, according to the police guidelines on the subject, are of "varying lengths" and "no specific shape or style". It is deeply unwise to use as a model of anything.
Gun control can be a policy tool used for Conservative ends: The Netherlands instituted gun control in 1912 to prevent a Socialist revolution. Imagine the Red Scare prompting Gun control mania among US Anti-Communists!
Conservative politics are generally speaking a set of unsupported or already debunked assumptions, made into policy by those with power, often at odds with basic science, logic, or economics. These policies are supported through a combination of things, namely: (1) apathy (2) lack of empathy (3) self-centered focus (4) discrimination and cliquishness.
As far as I see, Conservatism is the ideology of giving more to those that have most, on the premise that they somehow deserve it. That position has gotten less popular over the years, so they've had to mask in in different ways, usually by form of traditionalism and nationalism
I would have to disagree with you. If anything, facts show that socialism and the so called in US liberalism (real liberals believe in free market) have failed while states which follow free market economic policies are more successful and tend to be stable democracies with low corruption.
States with high economic freedom do by far better economically than states with big government. One has to see Chile, to use an example. Due to high economic freedom, Chile has the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America, a stable democracy in a region where populists are the rule, has more than halved poverty rates and has low corruption. Compare Chile with socialist hellhole Venezuela.
You can also compare South Korea, which also has free market economy, with North Korea.
You can also see the failure of big government policies in southern EU states like Greece, which funded a overgrown public sector with loans and eventually bankrupted.
Polities which high degree of economic freedom tend to do better than socialist ones and this is a fact. Not to say that free market reforms have lifted millions of peoples in India and China from poverty.
Economic freedom is also vital to political freedom. When the individual is dependent of the state for living, he is powerless before it. This is not the case when the individual does not need state assistance to make a living.
There is a reason why dictatorships which enforced free market economic policies transformed into stable democracies (Chile, etch).
Conservatives and libertarians are not apathetic (mostly at least); they just believe that the big government socialist policies leftists support lead to economic downturn and have more negative consequences than positive for the people.
As for discrimination, there are some far right racists but a large number of conservatives and some of the libertarians simply want a stop to illegal immigration because it breaks the law. I do not believe that it is racism to want the law to be enforced (there is a reason illegal immigration is called illegal).
How exactly it gives more to the rich? Do they subside them? Nope.
Unlike socialism, it does not steal people of their income because its believes that rich people need to be punished for being successful. In fact, overtaxing the rich sends a message: do not make it to the top, do not strive to be successful because it is considered immoral and bad.
choxorn said:Fun fact: Chile's current stable democracy had a center-left coalition leading it for the majority of the time since Pinochet's dictatorship ended. Its current president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist.
choxorn said:Well if you can make a magical force field that can keep illegal immigrants from entering the country, go ahead and build one, but walls and fences don't really do the job. And what would you do with the illegal immigrants that are already here? They work (often dangerous jobs for low pay that nobody else is willing to do), and, this may shock you, buy things and pay taxes on those things, which contributes to the economy a little bit.
choxorn said:Most of the things a government does benefits everyone, rich or poor. The rich need the government to fund roads, and police forces, and electricity, and tons of other things, just as much as the poor do, and probably benefit more than the poor do from stable economic and political situations- if your country is going to hell with no strong government and constant rioting, you're going to have a lot of trouble making money or protecting the money you do have because the police don't have the manpower to stop someone from breaking into your house and stealing your stuff or the ability to investigate who did it and help you out with your monetary losses
Bachelet is not a socialist at all, and her government is heavily repressing Chilean protests.
There's also the fact that free movement is a right, and restricting where people go because of some imaginary lines on a map is ridiculous.
Poor people don't need the police at all, since the police has only one function, and that is to protect the interests of the rich. As for stealing things, the police has stolen things from me (no, they weren't illegal), and they constantly steal things from many other people, so saying that they prevent robberies or theft seems rather counter-intuitive. There's also the fact that police around the world are hugely discriminatory against people who don't fit the demographics of those in power (e.g. white people in the Americas), and when given guns, are brutally murderous.
<citation needed>
As to why Venezuela is currently in the toilet, that's partly because of years of their government's corruption and mismanagement and partly because they became very over-reliant on oil exports, and OPEC decided to overproduce tons of oil, making the price go way down and making a huge chunk of Venezuela's economy become half as valuable.
I'll take "South and North Korea have way more differences than just their economic systems" for $500, Alex.
Spain, Portugal, and Greece spent decades ruled by Fascist dictators, is it really surprising that they're not as wealthy as France or Belgium or Germany? Then the global economy crashed in 2008 and the wealthier EU states forced the poorer ones into tons of austerity measures that would only cause economic recovery for the rich. But who cares about poor people when the stock market is doing well, right?
And into jobs with horrific working conditions.
Also, there were plenty of other political reforms in China, liberalizing the market a bit was hardly the only one that led to its current situation.
Right, because having to work 60 hours a week to be able to afford a cramped apartment and just enough food to survive doesn't make an individual powerless before the state or other powerful entities.
Fun fact: Chile's current stable democracy had a center-left coalition leading it for the majority of the time since Pinochet's dictatorship ended. Its current president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist.
Whaaaaa? But I thought that the free market would lead to more freedom for the country! How can it be that Chile was an oppressive dictatorship with right-wing economics for decades and then became a free democracy with left-wing economics! How can that be?
Well if you can make a magical force field that can keep illegal immigrants from entering the country, go ahead and build one, but walls and fences don't really do the job. And what would you do with the illegal immigrants that are already here? They work (often dangerous jobs for low pay that nobody else is willing to do), and, this may shock you, buy things and pay taxes on those things, which contributes to the economy a little bit.
But there literally are tons of tax breaks and subsidies, for things like oil companies, which are, in effect, giving things to the rich so that they can continue destroying the environment and wrecking the planet.
Most of the things a government does benefits everyone, rich or poor. The rich need the government to fund roads, and police forces, and electricity, and tons of other things, just as much as the poor do, and probably benefit more than the poor do from stable economic and political situations- if your country is going to hell with no strong government and constant rioting, you're going to have a lot of trouble making money or protecting the money you do have because the police don't have the manpower to stop someone from breaking into your house and stealing your stuff or the ability to investigate who did it and help you out with your monetary losses.
And yeah, there are also welfare programs and food and healthcare assistance for the poor, because generally people think that it's not okay to let people starve to death or die from illnesses or injuries just because they don't have the money to afford food or water or medicine.
Someone making $10,000,000 a year can spare that income that would otherwise just be invested into a bank or buying them another beach house or a luxury car or a swimming pool made of solid gold.
choxorn said:That's what I get for taking Wikipedia's word for something without actually checking more than the description saying she's from the Socialist Party.
Which is still more research than christos did, but I guess I still have much to learn about Latin American politics. And heavy repression, you say? Maybe Chile isn't quite as free as christos thinks it is.
The "Chile spent decades under a center-left coalition" part was more accurate, I hope.
choxorn said:I guess your country's cops are even worse than my country's cops. At least here they won't constantly steal things from... oh wait, right, civil asset forfeiture is a thing. Well the brutally murderous... oh yeah, they kind of do that, too, and they carry guns all the time because America really loves guns and refuses to enact any sort of gun restriction even the conservativest of conservatives would agree is a good idea, like, say, universal background checks or keeping guns out of the hands of terrorism suspects or domestic abusers, so the cops kind of have to carry guns all the time for their own protection and they're very trigger happy, especially if you happen to have the wrong skin color. So yeah, I guess my country's cops are as bad as yours, they just aren't as blatant about it.
christos200 said:Compare economies with high degree of economic freedom to the ones with low.
christos200 said:The reason why Venezuela is a hellhole is because of its statist socialist policies. Without them, Venezuela might still have been in bad shape due to the lowering oil price but it would not be the hellhole it is today.
christos200 said:I guess the Indians and Chinese before the economic reforms were living an excellent life and had decent jobs
christos200 said:Illegal immigrants should be deported. They are called illegal for a reason
christos said:In Greece our previous right wing government increased patrols in the border, arrested a large number of illegal immigrants with police raids, jailed them in camps and deported them. It worked and despite the Syrian Civil War, there was no large scale migration. When Syriza came to power, it opened the borders and closed the camps and that's how Greece flooded with illegal immigrants.