The New Republican Populism (personal Trump references not allowed)

[doodle]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

Is it the pace then that is causing the issue? I don't see this train stopping anytime soon. I don't think it will ever stop.

In afghanistan and in parts of africa women are fighting for the right to go to school or not have their clitoris cut off. Here men are fighting for the right to identify as women. Where does it end? As I said, I looked at face tattoos for a few hours last night. It was a bit shocking at first but after desensitizing myself to it I don't think I would judge a person for it...anymore than I would judge someone wearing cowboy boots and a stetson or saggy jeans and dreads. I think we are going to have to get used to the fact that we arent going to be going back to an era where kids wear khaki pants and penny loafers and come home after school to a mom who has been preparing supper for the family. I'm not sure what the future will look like...I'm sure there will be more government regulation on the one hand...I think the natural outcome of a densely populated society, yet more personal freedom of expression on the other with less societal pressure and "regulation" to conform.

[doodle]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

What republican party are we talking about? To me the democrats more closely resemble the party of lincoln and teddy than the present day republican party does...which has become more similar to southern democrats of 60s from my perspective.

[pmward]

Immigration. Once again, similar tradeoffs to the above. Immigrants are a threat to blue collar jobs. So stemming the flow of immigration helps protect jobs. But what is the cost? The tradeoff? Well, there is no statistic that correlates more strongly to GDP growth than population growth. Our current young generation is not growing the population at a fast clip. This is why we are in a low growth era, and will continue to be in a low growth era until the population starts to grow again. So what is the best way to increase the population if we are not increasing organically? Immigration. These people do come and assume jobs, but they also become consumers themselves, which in turn creates more jobs, and more GDP activity. So it's not such a binary black and white "good for the people" vs "good for corporation" thing. There are tradeoffs both ways. One has to look at both the cost and the benefit of both. You cannot throw out one side of the tradeoff and only weigh the benefits of one vs the costs of the other. You have to look at both the costs and benefits of both to gain an accurate comparison. GOP used to be pro-immigration for the very reason I stated, which is the economic GDP growth argument. It's a very sharp change to suddenly have the party take a full on swing to anti-immigration. I think it helped them gain a lot of blue-collar votes in 2016, but I'm not sure it really helps the overall country.

It seems that you’re making a normative statement that increasing population is good and necessary.

Personally, I’d be thrilled if population stopped growing or even shrank. I’m not sure why it benefits me to have more people competing for the limited supply of single family homes I haven’t been able to afford without going massively in debt,

I am not sure why it benefits me to have longer wait times at the doctors office since a new influx of people moved in, none of them doctors licensed to practice in the US, so the number of medical offices are the same, but the number of patients has increased so my wait times are longer.

I am not sure why it benefits me to have more cars on the road and have traffic get worse.

I see no benefit in a bunch of people coming over from other cultures and demanding I conform to their culture, as mostly commonly seen with the religion of peace.

The only “benefit” I see is more people to pay into the Ponzi scheme of social security for me to be able to collect when I hit that age. But I think social security is an awful system that never should have started, never should have expanded into what it is today, and thus can’t argue that we need immigration in order to sustain a horrible Ponzi scheme.

Okay, maybe my stock portion of my PP is going up more because if GDP growth from more immigration, great, but housing prices have been going up much more than the SP500. So doesn’t do me any good when the largest expense in my life is housing at over 50% of my budget. And the more people, the more expensive housing gets.

I have nothing against immigrants, and I am from an immigrant family 100 years ago. I just don’t see how immigration benefits me personally at this immediate point in time. Especially given the massive welfare benefits we hand out in the form of Medicaid and public education for the most part.

Population growth always leads to GDP growth. More people = more consumption. Consumption is the bulk of GDP. That "limited supply" of single family homes goes up when there are more people here (demand) to bring supply on. Now, this may not happen in every state or locale, but there's plenty of unoccupied land in this country last I checked. Shrinking population necessarily translates into weaker GDP and in turn a weaker economy. So this is the cost you would have to be willing to pay in order to get better traffic and shorter waits at the clinic (though to be fair, more people would also mean more clinics so that one is probably moot). Also, you assume that medicaid and education "handouts" do not benefit the economy. They are consumption, somebody is being paid. A side question one could ask... if our population was actually growing, and our demographics were better, would we have as big of a need for these social programs? The economy would be better, so the comparison in this case would be a bit of apples to oranges.

[pmward]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

Is that not what "conservatism" is by very definition? Go back through our history and you'll find that today's liberal ideas are always tomorrows conservative ideas. The conservatives of 2080 will basically be the liberals of 2020. Let us not forget Abraham Lincoln himself was a far left liberal at the time, though conservatives today try to claim him as theirs.

[pmward]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

Is that not what "conservatism" is by very definition? Go back through our history and you'll find that today's liberal ideas are always tomorrows conservative ideas. The conservatives of 2080 will basically be the liberals of 2020. Let us not forget Abraham Lincoln himself was a liberal at the time, though conservatives today try to claim him as theirs.

Maybe the left is just moving too fast and too far left. Baby steps would be more palatable.

I wholeheartedly agree. Reminds me of a discussion in another thread from a couple of days ago, about how you can pull the rubber band gently left or right and hold that for a period of time. But when you yank the rubber band super hard and fast in one direction its natural reaction is to snap back super hard and fast in the opposite direction. This is where we have been stuck for the last 12 years since the GFC, a rubber band snapping back and forth violently.

[Tortoise]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

Social pressure always exists. Sometimes it's applied with physical force (e.g., government, theocracy, or mob rule), and other times it's applied without force, with mere disapproval and criticism. It's important to distinguish between the former and the latter.

The offenses in Afghanistan that you listed (female genital mutilation, etc.) are examples of theocracy, so they fall into the former category of physical force. They may not be officially codified in Afghanistan's government's laws and regulations, but they are still based on force -- a sort of parallel government. So I would call that actual authoritarianism, not just "soft authoritarianism."

Now, to the extent that any type of government other than pure anarcho-capitalism relies on the use or threat of force to at least some extent, one could probably argue that they are all "authoritarian" to some degree. But I definitely think some types of government (such as the New Republican Populism suggested by sophie) are less authoritarian than others.

[pmward]

Regarding immigration:

Tom - I disagree with you about the downsides of immigration in general. It's unskilled/low-skilled immigration that's the problem. Educated people who can contribute meaningfully and will create new jobs, increase the GDP, pay into the tax base while remaining a net financial positive etc. What you're thinking of are the people coming in from (say) Central America with zero education, no English skills and no intention of ever learning English, able to take only unskilled jobs thus creating downward pressure on wages and job conditions, and of course immediately becoming a drain on state budgets because they consume free healthcare and other welfare bennies.

So a key aspect of the New Republican Populism (NRP???) is a revision of the immigration system to use a scoring system like the ones used in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and virtually all other First World countries to prioritize desirable immigrants.

If Cortopassi had been able to bring himself to stay in the conversation, he would also have seen that I actually do support DACA - simply because there really is no humane alternative. But, I would propose that the parents of those children should be assessed fines or other civil penalty for their crime, and that DACA should be tied to a conversion to a point-based immigration system as per above. And, abolish the lottery, chain migration, H1b and birthright citizenship.

Unskilled jobs are not a problem. The more that immigrate here, the more we need unskilled labor. And someone needs to do these jobs, Americans currently don't want to. If we make immigration here easier then it allows us to at least flip these workers to documented status (ie paying taxes and the like).

Also, it's not just the first generation that matters. These people have kids. Immigrant families tend to acclimate into normal American society within the very first generation of kids. Take my family for instance. I'm second generation born here on both sides. My grandparents on both sides immigrated here. My grandfather on my fathers side was a boot maker. He had a small boot shop in Detroit where he made and repaired boots for the local factory workers. My grandfather on my mothers side joined the Army because it was the best option for him in the early years. In later years he became a Detroit factory worker. On both sides I have some extremely well educated and successful aunts and uncles. Likewise my generation, lots of well educated and successful kids. So from two poor families that came over here (and only 1 of the 2 moved here being able to speak English at first) doing manual labor jobs, we have a couple Dr's, a few engineers, a couple business owners, and even the CEO of a mid-cap public company. The countries decision to allow both sets of my very poor working class grandparents to immigrate here has continued to pay off exponentially for our economy, even 70-80 years later. Sure not every one of my aunts, uncles, or cousins is successful. My parents for instance weren't. But either way, that's a whole lot of economic activity that was brought here just in those two families alone.

[Tortoise]

Unskilled jobs are not a problem. The more that immigrate here, the more we need unskilled labor. And someone needs to do these jobs, Americans currently don't want to.

Most Americans currently don't want to do those jobs because they pay peanuts, and they pay peanuts because there are so many unskilled workers competing for them.

Reduce the number of unskilled workers competing for those jobs, and watch what the law of supply and demand will do to their wages and the resulting number of Americans willing to apply for them.

[Don]

I'd like Biden's name removed from the conversation as well.

[sophie]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

Is that not what "conservatism" is by very definition? Go back through our history and you'll find that today's liberal ideas are always tomorrows conservative ideas. The conservatives of 2080 will basically be the liberals of 2020. Let us not forget Abraham Lincoln himself was a liberal at the time, though conservatives today try to claim him as theirs.

Maybe the left is just moving too fast and too far left. Baby steps would be more palatable.

Baby steps to what? As far as I can tell, the Democratic party is firmly on the path to pure socialism.

Socially, the baby steps idea works fine for me. That's how civil rights, women's rights, freedom of religion etc all came to pass. The whole transgender thing is too new for people to wrap their heads around. Plus I suspect it is, in fact, a craze, with a strong element of social pressure on kids especially that I abhor, so it's not clear exactly how best to handle it yet.

In the meantime, keep in mind that the framers of the Constitution were quite socially liberal for their day. Freedom of and from religion? Freedom of speech and of the press? All men are created equal? Absolutely incredible, even radical ideas for that period. And yet, a constitutionalist judge is now seen as far right. Go figure.

[sophie]

I'd like Biden's name removed from the conversation as well.

He isn't reviled as Trump is (as tomfoolery says), but that's fair enough. Agreed, let's keep this discussion at the party level. There's way more interesting stuff to hash out than any one person, no matter how important they may seem right now.

For example, anyone want to talk about the amazing, wonderful phenomenon of increased Republican support among Hispanics and blacks, due to NRP? If that trend continues, I bet Democrats will suddenly lose their love affair with illegal immigrants.

btw...Welcome to the discussion Don!

[pmward]

Unskilled jobs are not a problem. The more that immigrate here, the more we need unskilled labor. And someone needs to do these jobs, Americans currently don't want to.

Most Americans currently don't want to do those jobs because they pay peanuts, and they pay peanuts because there are so many unskilled workers competing for them.

Reduce the number of unskilled workers competing for those jobs, and watch what the law of supply and demand will do to their wages and the resulting number of Americans willing to apply for them.

There are plenty of jobs out there that pay more than peanuts. This is the whole idea. The immigrants in first generation come and humbly work the low paying jobs (whatever those are at the time), usually as a means so that their kids can grow up and have more opportunities than they had. Meanwhile, this encourages current Americans shift their skills into roles that pay more. This is how free markets work. There is nothing wrong with this. Sure, you're going to have some people upset that their jobs have become obsolete (or at least deprecated), but this is how things have always worked here. Today's hottest careers are tomorrows stagnating careers. You adapt or you stagnate.

[sophie]

Unskilled jobs are not a problem. The more that immigrate here, the more we need unskilled labor. And someone needs to do these jobs, Americans currently don't want to.

Most Americans currently don't want to do those jobs because they pay peanuts, and they pay peanuts because there are so many unskilled workers competing for them.

Reduce the number of unskilled workers competing for those jobs, and watch what the law of supply and demand will do to their wages and the resulting number of Americans willing to apply for them.

+1000.

The usual argument I hear from Democrat friends & family is that raspberry farms in California can't find enough Americans to pick raspberries. Well, that's because they pay something like 25 cents an hour. Increase that to, say, $10 an hour and people will be migrating to the raspberry farms to pick up jobs in season - just like what used to happen before the era of cheap illegal immigrant labor. So then, says they, raspberries will get more expensive. True enough. But then, your taxes won't be so high because you're no longer subsidizing the illegal immigrant's health care, care & feeding of children born in the country, family members who come in via chain migration etc. At the same time, a bunch of Americans now get jobs and earn money to support themselves, and form them to spend and put back into the economy. Win, win, and win. Net cost to you: probably negative, because the free market is a whole lot more efficient than cycling that money through government bureaucracies.

[pmward]

Unskilled jobs are not a problem. The more that immigrate here, the more we need unskilled labor. And someone needs to do these jobs, Americans currently don't want to.

Most Americans currently don't want to do those jobs because they pay peanuts, and they pay peanuts because there are so many unskilled workers competing for them.

Reduce the number of unskilled workers competing for those jobs, and watch what the law of supply and demand will do to their wages and the resulting number of Americans willing to apply for them.

+1000.

The usual argument I hear from Democrat friends & family is that raspberry farms in California can't find enough Americans to pick raspberries. Well, that's because they pay something like 25 cents an hour. Increase that to, say, $10 an hour and people will be migrating to the raspberry farms to pick up jobs in season - just like what used to happen before the era of cheap illegal immigrant labor. So then, says they, raspberries will get more expensive. True enough. But then, your taxes won't be so high because you're no longer subsidizing the illegal immigrant's health care, care & feeding of children born in the country, family members who come in via chain migration etc. At the same time, a bunch of Americans now get jobs and earn money to support themselves, and form them to spend and put back into the economy. Win, win, and win. Net cost to you: probably negative, because the free market is a whole lot more efficient than cycling that money through government bureaucracies.

For what it's worth, my arguments and support of "immigration" are in the realm of stepping up legal immigration. I do agree that illegal immigration is a problem. But I think stepping up on legal immigration is one of the most effective strategies in combating illegal immigration. It won't solve the problem by itself, but it's the best place to start, imo. There of course is always the elephant in the room of if all these under min wage jobs became documented legal min wage jobs there would be a quick rip up in inflation and cost of living, as illegal immigration has enabled our cost of living to stay really low. Are the Republicans really willing to rip that bandaid off, or is it just a show to try to get votes? It's sure easier to stomach throwing billions of government dollars away building a useless wall which really doesn't change anything, than to watching the price of groceries go up 5x overnight. The "wall" is a magic trick, it's a distraction to keep your eyes away from the fact that nothing actually changed.

[doodle]

And another question...is New Republicanism just another type of soft authoritarianism? What is more oppressive? A society where the government regulates everything or where societal pressure tells you that you have to stay at home and have babies, and can't come out of the closet and dress like a woman and get face tattoos? Afghanistan has very little in the way of government regulations but is orders of magnitude more oppressive and authoritarian...but it's socially driven.

I would think you would be happy. The Republican Party has moved so far left it is now what the Democrats of the 70s were.

Is that not what "conservatism" is by very definition? Go back through our history and you'll find that today's liberal ideas are always tomorrows conservative ideas. The conservatives of 2080 will basically be the liberals of 2020. Let us not forget Abraham Lincoln himself was a liberal at the time, though conservatives today try to claim him as theirs.

Maybe the left is just moving too fast and too far left. Baby steps would be more palatable.

Baby steps to what? As far as I can tell, the Democratic party is firmly on the path to pure socialism.

Socially, the baby steps idea works fine for me. That's how civil rights, women's rights, freedom of religion etc all came to pass. The whole transgender thing is too new for people to wrap their heads around. Plus I suspect it is, in fact, a craze, with a strong element of social pressure on kids especially that I abhor, so it's not clear exactly how best to handle it yet.

In the meantime, keep in mind that the framers of the Constitution were quite socially liberal for their day. Freedom of and from religion? Freedom of speech and of the press? All men are created equal? Absolutely incredible, even radical ideas for that period. And yet, a constitutionalist judge is now seen as far right. Go figure.

The entire world is on a path to socialism...it's coming, step by step. For the most part we already live in a socialist nation. Kids play on public playgrounds, they go to public schools, people rely on public social security pensions, and disability, and medical coverage in old age. We have public universities, and highways, and parks and police and fire departments . Within my lifetime we will see Universal Basic Income, a national healthcare system, and probably publically funded higher education.

It's not going to stop. It's as if conservatives want to freeze frame an era while history marches on. When the framers wrote the constitution, "men" meant literally white men....that definition has been expanded by "activist" judges and legislators to include women and minorities. Certainly the framers didn't mean black men when they wrote "all men" if they had we wouldn't have had to fight a civil war regarding that issue..a hundred years later.

The idea of Universal Basic Income...(welfare for all) dates back to Thomas Paine. When automation continues to strip away the need for workers this will eventually become the solution in order to save the beneficial elements of capitalism. You can't sell products to people without jobs. Adam Smith would have opposed intellectual property protections for life saving drugs. I'm sure many of these protections will fall to the wayside.

Conservatives reach back to these monumental figures of the englightenment but cherry pick ideas and cobble together a "conservative" world that is in many ways a radical departure from their hero's beliefs and actions.

[doodle]

I guess I don't understand conservativism as a philosophy. It seems to me like trying to drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror. Sure, there are lessons from the past that can be carried into the future, but our world has fundamentally changed...we have satellites, and nuclear bombs, and nearly instantaneous global travel and trade and communications. Vast corporate power and influence, a burgeoning population and global environmental and resource issues. These are issues that from my perspective require new problem solving ideas. The enlightenment philosophers projected a radical new idea onto humanity to solve issues with entrenched monarchies and feudal societal structures. They were hardly conservative. Likewise, we need to look to new ideas today to solve the issues of today....issues our founding fathers could have never conceived of.

[Tortoise]

The core philosophical divide seems to be between individualism and collectivism.

New problems in the world created by new technology and social trends can be solved in innovative ways even if one's core philosophy is individualism. Solutions to the new problems can be considered in the context of maximizing individual freedom. They are not mutually exclusive.

[pmward]

I guess I don't understand conservativism as a philosophy. It seems to me like trying to drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror. Sure, there are lessons from the past that can be carried into the future, but our world has fundamentally changed...we have satellites, and nuclear bombs, and nearly instantaneous global travel and trade and communications. Vast corporate power and influence, a burgeoning population and global environmental and resource issues. These are issues that from my perspective require new problem solving ideas. The enlightenment philosophers projected a radical new idea onto humanity to solve issues with entrenched monarchies and feudal societal structures. They were hardly conservative. Likewise, we need to look to new ideas today to solve the issues of today....issues our founding fathers could have never conceived of.

There are always those that desire change (liberals) and those that resist change (conservatives). I think you do need both to balance each other out in a way. It's kind of a yin and yang when it's functioning properly. We always will move forward. Change will always happen. We will never go back to the way things used to be. So in a way, the battle is already won. *Spoiler Alert* the liberal side always has and always will win eventually. You can go back to any point in history and see this is true. But the words liberal and conservative are moving goal posts relative to the present day. Todays conservatism is yesterdays liberalism, and todays liberalism is tomorrows conservatism. So while the liberal view point always will win out eventually, I think the conservatives when they are doing their job properly help keep the dreamy ideological change makers from getting too carried away, help to slow the process down, help to bring up lessons learned in the past, and in turn help to ensure a safer transition from point A to point B.

[pmward]

The core philosophical divide seems to be between individualism and collectivism.

New problems in the world created by new technology and social trends can be solved in innovative ways even if one's core philosophy is individualism. Solutions to the new problems can be considered in the context of maximizing individual freedom. They are not mutually exclusive.

this..
the future is isn't as the liberals suggest destined for collectivism. we have a choice
and as old fashion and out of date (200+yrs) as individual freedom seems to the progressive, collectivism is seen as moving backwards toward tyranny to others

You need balance, imo. You need a mix of both individual freedoms and collectivism. You need a mix of both top down and bottom up. If you go to either extreme you wind up with oppression. The answer is not black or white, it's grey.

[pmward]

i have no problem with a mix, i disagree that it must be top down however, bottom up collectivism is far more in keeping with the American individualism ethos.. if we take care of ourselves, our family, our friends, our neighbors, our community, our towns and city's, the need for some uncountable, far away, and more often than not misguided (if not incompetent and criminal) bureaucracy would largely vanish..

Right, but the whole thread we had last week was my argument about why full on individualism did not work in the past and would not work in the future. You need the top down aspect as well. We can even step out of government and look at companies. What well run super successful company only has a bottom up structure? None. They need the top down direction to make sure each team in the company is functioning properly within the whole. Now you also need your bottom up, this is where a lot of innovation happens. You want the individuals to be empowered and able to create. But you need the top down to ensure they are spending their valuable innovation time on the things that benefit the company as a whole, make sure there's no redundancies, make sure nobody is stepping on each others toes, that everyone is playing fair, that everyone has equal benefits, and that everyone is following the mission statement and ideals of the company. Any well run company has a good mix of top down and bottom up. Likewise, any good government has a good mix of top down and bottom up. You go all bottom up, or all top down, and bad things happen... usually in the form of tyranny and oppression. We spent a great deal of time last week talking about the tyrannies and oppression that existed back when our country was a small mostly bottom up country. That's really all the proof I need to prove that point. It's just like how people can point to the failures of communism in the past for why a full top down approach also fails. On paper, both extremes can sound quite compelling. In actual practice, far from it. Now the real interesting question that is just stuffed full of wonderful nuance is not the black and white which is better, but what is the proper mix of both? What shade of grey is ideal? At what point is the grey too dark, and at what point is the grey too light? I don't think there is a definitive answer. I do know that neither extreme is good. I don't know what the exact Goldilocks mix of both is.

tom covered a bunch of my answers to this in his post, but in addition to the differences he mentioned between corporations top down and government top down, there is also the underlying argument by comparing the two that you seem to be making, which is... what we need is organization ( your description of the function of leadership in top down corporations) and i don't disagree..

but organization can be achieved in many ways, under the threat of force being the most dangerous one by far..

government i would rather have a phone app...

[Tortoise]

It's incorrect to say or imply that individualism means there should only be individual freedom and no collective constraints, or vice versa. (That's not meant to be a strawman, pmward. It's how I interpret the "black or white" accusation in your last couple of posts.)

Individualism simply means the priority should be on individual freedom as much as possible. In some cases, yes, individual freedom has to take a back seat to a collective constraint in order for society to function properly and smoothly.

One example would be the fact that even the individualistic founders of the U.S. knew that some collective constraint was needed. It's why they formed a government and not just a private business agreement.

[pmward]

It's incorrect to say or imply that individualism means there should only be individual freedom and no collective constraints, or vice versa. (That's not meant to be a strawman, pmward. It's how I interpret the "black or white" accusation in your last couple of posts.)

Individualism simply means the priority should be on individual freedom as much as possible. In some cases, yes, individual freedom has to take a back seat to a collective constraint in order for society to function properly and smoothly.

One example would be the fact that even the individualistic founders of the U.S. knew that some collective constraint was needed. It's why they formed a government and not just a private business agreement.

For definition in my black and white analogy. When I say individualism or collectivism I'm looking at the most extreme form of both. So basically, the most extreme individualism would be that fully "bottom up" libertarian/anarchist like government with no Federal government and all local bottom up governance. Collectivism at its most extreme is basically communism. Complete top down, master planning, and all the inflexibilities and fragilities those bring.

So what you've described as your ideal is a shade of grey. It's probably a lot of white and just a little smidgen of black mixed together. I still personally think it's too light of a shade of grey, but this is where all that wonderful nuance I mentioned comes in. Also, there's the fact that both bottom up and top down systems have complimentary strengths and weaknesses. Neither strategy is all strength or all weakness. So how do you mix the two together just enough to negate the weaknesses of the other, without also watering down the strengths? It's a very complex subject.

[pmward]

As far as needing a balance, that sounds as ridiculous as smoking one cigarette each morning with a multivitamin so you can balance the healthy with the unhealthy since too much healthy will make you less healthy.

Well considering that once again nobody has yet refuted the problems I identified in the other thread about the issues in our countries past when it was more bottom down... you can't really call it healthy. Was slavery healthy? Was the genocide of the native Americans healthy? Was the discrimination of women healthy? Would any of those things existed if there was enough top down enforcing the actual words of the constitution to balance out the bottom up? No it wouldn't have.

[glennds]

It's incorrect to say or imply that individualism means there should only be individual freedom and no collective constraints, or vice versa. (That's not meant to be a strawman, pmward. It's how I interpret the "black or white" accusation in your last couple of posts.)

Individualism simply means the priority should be on individual freedom as much as possible. In some cases, yes, individual freedom has to take a back seat to a collective constraint in order for society to function properly and smoothly.

One example would be the fact that even the individualistic founders of the U.S. knew that some collective constraint was needed. It's why they formed a government and not just a private business agreement.

I think that's a valid point i.e. not one in lieu of the other, but a hierarchy of one having priority over the other. The two are not always in a tug of war.

[pmward]

It's incorrect to say or imply that individualism means there should only be individual freedom and no collective constraints, or vice versa. (That's not meant to be a strawman, pmward. It's how I interpret the "black or white" accusation in your last couple of posts.)

Individualism simply means the priority should be on individual freedom as much as possible. In some cases, yes, individual freedom has to take a back seat to a collective constraint in order for society to function properly and smoothly.

One example would be the fact that even the individualistic founders of the U.S. knew that some collective constraint was needed. It's why they formed a government and not just a private business agreement.

I think that's a valid point i.e. not one in lieu of the other, but a hierarchy of one having priority over the other. The two are not always in a tug of war.

Right and I think we have that in the bill of rights. There is a clear priority to individualism. But if there was no need for collectivism they never would have created the federal government to begin with. Not to mention without any top down there would be nobody there to ensure people actually followed the bill of rights.