On Political Labels

[MachineGhost]

Honestly what I would do about ISIS if I were king for a day would be to basically carpet bomb them; forget about these lame targeted drone strikes. If ISIS takes a position, we just incinerate it from the air. If we find one of their troop columns, we napalm it into glass. If they take a city, we warn civilians to evacuate, then level the whole thing after a few days. It's not like we can't do these things. Giving weapons to weak factions and using piddly drone missiles is just dumb. These guys just need to be wiped out. ISIS is so unpopular that Arabs in the region really won't mind if we do these things, which actually makes it a good opportunity.

Using violence against evil ones is warranted, but we can't forget our role in helping this evil rise. That's the other part of ending their madness: ceasing to do things that makes people like them more likely to rise in the future once we've killed the current crop.

Another one!  Welcome to the club, brother! 

[I Shrugged]

I'm okay with the PS prescription except for all the civilian casualties.  Just their bad luck to be in the caliphate?  In any event, that is probably what is going to happen once ISIS get more set up.

[Pointedstick]

My general idea for the deployment of military force mirrors my criminal justice prescriptions: used very sparingly, but with overwhelming power when appropriate. King Pointedstick would probably not have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan, or actively supported regime change in Libya, or Egypt, or Syria… but with ISIS on the scene, he would be sending billions of dollars of high explosives to vaporize every one of those crazy suicidal death cultists and turn their holdings into smoldering rubble. And a happy side effect is without all the prior interventions, there might not have even been an ISIS in the first place, saving the U.S. government trillions of dollars that could have been spent on cutting taxes.

[MachineGhost]

I'm okay with the PS prescription except for all the civilian casualties.  Just their bad luck to be in the caliphate?  In any event, that is probably what is going to happen once ISIS get more set up.

There would be little to no civilian casualties under ISIS other than Christians that pay tax and agreed to be subjugated by Islam.  All the others would have been already exterminated.  It is a very intolerant theocracy.  Would you prefer to be crucified or would you prefer beheading?

EDIT: Well, there are the slaves and concubines.  Too bad for them.  At least death will be quick.

[Pointedstick]

I'm okay with the PS prescription except for all the civilian casualties.  Just their bad luck to be in the caliphate?  In any event, that is probably what is going to happen once ISIS get more set up.

There would be little to no civilian casualties under ISIS other than Christians that pay tax and agreed to be subjugated by Islam.  All the others would have been already exterminated.  It is a very intolerant theocracy.  Would you prefer to be crucified or would you prefer beheading?

EDIT: Well, there are the slaves and concubines.  Too bad for them.  At least death will be quick.

Death might even be mercy compared to what their captors are doing to them, from what I've read. When a bunch of psychologically damaged and sexually repressed men gain total dominion over a population of helpless captured women... well it's not pretty. Gotta kill these guys. Even Iran agrees with us on that!

[MachineGhost]

Death might even be mercy compared to what their captors are doing to them, from what I've read. When a bunch of psychologically damaged and sexually repressed men gain total dominion over a population of helpless captured women... well it's not pretty. Gotta kill these guys. Even Iran agrees with us on that!

I think that even ISIS has some morality when it comes to treating women.  It's not like Afghanistan with their rampant sexual perversion and pedophilia.  If you can't drink, fornicate or comitt adultery without whipping, lashings or death by stoning, they're not going to be gang-raping concubines.  At least, I hope not!

Sometimes I have to check myself that we're in 2015 and not thousands of years ago with these fucking whackjobs. 

[Reub]

Honestly what I would do about ISIS if I were king for a day would be to basically carpet bomb them; forget about these lame targeted drone strikes. If ISIS takes a position, we just incinerate it from the air. If we find one of their troop columns, we napalm it into glass. If they take a city, we warn civilians to evacuate, then level the whole thing after a few days. It's not like we can't do these things. Giving weapons to weak factions and using piddly drone missiles is just dumb. These guys just need to be wiped out. ISIS is so unpopular that Arabs in the region really won't mind if we do these things, which actually makes it a good opportunity.

Using violence against evil ones is warranted, but we can't forget our role in helping this evil rise. That's the other part of ending their madness: ceasing to do things that makes people like them more likely to rise in the future once we've killed the current crop.

Another one!  Welcome to the club, brother! 

[Pointedstick]

And here is a political chart that makes a lot more sense to me than the typical two-axis grid, courtesy of Nick Land (I am starting to like this guy's stuff):

http://www.xenosystems.net/coldness/




On this chart, I would place myself right around the word "separatism." It would be on the far-right edge as far as possible away from the "Communism" point or the "Totalitarianism" line.

[Xan]

On this chart, I would place myself right around the word "separatism." It would be on the far-right edge as far as possible away from the "Communism" point or the "Totalitarianism" line.

The only point that matches "It would be on the far-right edge as far as possible away from the 'Communism' point or the 'Totalitarianism' line" is the "Individualism" point itself, not over by the word "Separatism".

[Pointedstick]

On this chart, I would place myself right around the word "separatism." It would be on the far-right edge as far as possible away from the "Communism" point or the "Totalitarianism" line.

The only point that matches "It would be on the far-right edge as far as possible away from the 'Communism' point or the 'Totalitarianism' line" is the "Individualism" point itself, not over by the word "Separatism".

OK fine, well maybe not as far as possible then. 

[Mountaineer]

Interesting that Bush, Putin and Ron Paul are not that far apart.

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

I don't think that chart really gets it, either.

Communism as it is often supported by actual, real communist individuals has a lot of anarchism built around it.  It's more of a property norms system than a consistent governmental system IMO.

Here's Wikipedia's definition:

Communism is a socioeconomic system structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and characterized by the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state; as well as a social, political and economic ideology and movement that aims to establish this social order.


Similar to capitalism, I think it's important to mentally separate the belief about how property is established, and the belief about how the government (or lack there-of... perhaps just individuals (governments of one)) should enforce those norms.

Notice that this chart doesn't have "anarcho-communism."  It is attempting to equate communist property norms with totalitarian governments.  Of course, this is what we've always seen communism actually turn into, but one could say the same thing about capitalism... that it really always turns into a system other than pure capitalism into something more like a crony-capitalism or an extension of feudalism.  On this chart, the difference between "anarcho-capitalist" and how things ACTUALLY turn out (mixed economies) is laid out.  The difference between true anarcho-communism and Lenin/Stalin-style communism (which true communists will often point out is about as "communist" as China is a "Republic") is not laid out.  It assumes that commie beliefs about property are INHERENTLY totalitarian, when some versions of it are actually less-so, as they question established inherited property claims that were taken at the point of a gun.

This is what bothers me, because it's the difference in belief about how property is established that is at the core of so much disagreement (whether libs/conservatives or statists/libertarians realize it or not). 

If I'm an anarcho-communist (which I surely am not, though I think some of the arguments they bring to the table have a lot of legitimacy), where the hell do I land on this list?

If I were to design one of these, which I think is almost impossible in reality given the diversity of thought out there, it would probably have to be five-dimensional:

(the terms "right" and "left" in these examples are just place holders... they're not supposed to signify party or political beliefs today.)

1) Property Norms:

On the left end probably have very nomadic beliefs that property does not exist, or close to it.  In the middle you'd probably have real communism (not the Staliny shit)... the idea that we own what we produce and our personal affects, but owning land is questionable, and on the right you'd have something crossing over capitalism and eventually going into some sort of feudalism.

2) Government Defense of individual's (and government's (if applicable)) lives & property:

On the left you'd have no military and no police.  On the right you'd have totalitarian control and militarism.

3) Enforcement of non-defense social norms:

On the left you'd have social liberty. On the right you'd have things like homosexuality and "indecent" behavior punishable by death (often related to religion).

4) Infrastructural involvement:

On the left you'd have government leaving ALL of this to the private sector, on the right you'd have it running lots of things such as roads, rail, water, sewer, etc.  Not to "redistribute income," or to "help the poor," but because they are "too big" for the private sector to effectively handle.

5) Individual Economic Protections:

On the left you'd have absolutely NO social safety net (provided by government).  On the right you'd have a VERY strong economic floor below-which people are not allowed to sink below without government support.



Try to put that on a graph :/.


Obviously, you have some overlap.  The social norms trying to be enforced in #3 are probably taught to children in schools in #5.  The property norms are obviously not only defended by the government, but the government will build those norms into its "position" on what kind of infrastructure the government should build.

I realize this seems like it's too complex, but 1) the other chart contains anarcho-capitalism as a corner of its own, but how many anarch-cap societies do we actually see?  And how conflatable is anarchy to capitalism and statism to communism? (not very, IMO) and 2) if you don't separate property norms from the preferred degree of enforcement of said norms, I think you're always going to end up with a crappy chart.  They're totally different vectors of political thought.

[Pointedstick]

There is no society that has ever existed where there was no property, and none will ever exist. This is the thing I think you get hung up about. The lack of a philosophical home for "non-property" is deliberate; property is a necessary construct for society. The only way to abolish property is to abolish society and return to the "law of the jungle." I do not believe that the far left consists of people who reject property. Even people who claim to do so don't actually do it in reality. The far left consists of people who believe the current distribution of property is unjust, immoral, or based on theft. They advocate returning much of this property to their former owners, not abolishing the whole concept. Communism was the same. There was property in Comunism; it simply belonged to the state, not you.

This is why anarcho-communism has no home on that map; it's an impossible contradiction. A society with no property norms cannot exist. It is a delusional fantasy. And don't claim that anarcho-capitalism is the same kind of delusional fantasy, because its proponents expend endless time trying to work out the details of how such hypothetical societies' social and property norms might work. You can argue that it wouldn't work, but you can't claim that the very concept of it is impossible, the way I am claiming right now that anarcho-communism is nothing more than a self-contradictory fruitcake fantasy.

[Pointedstick]

I would also argue that elements of western civilization has been tending towards anarcho-capitalism  as the confluence of the forces of deregulation, globalization, materialism, and extreme social tolerance. Cyberpunk explores this all the time. Ghost In The Shell, Transmetropolitan, The Diamond Age… it's clearly a trend that has not gone unnoticed.

By contrast, there is no society moving towards anarcho-communism, because it is a visibly undesirable intellectual dead-end that clearly offers no advantages over any extant form of government.

[moda0306]

There is no society that has ever existed where there was no property, and none will ever exist.

This is true.  However, the basis for the establishment of property, and what can be made property, can be VERY different in different societies political theories.

I do not believe that the far left consists of people who reject property.

First off, I'd avoid the whole "left vs. right" thing here... we're trying to get away from that with more nuanced vectors/models to show political diversity.

Secondly, check out anarcho-primitivism.  It's pretty damn close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

The far left consists of people who believe the current distribution of property is unjust, immoral, or based on theft. They advocate returning much of this property to their former owners, not abolishing the whole concept.

To some degree, yes, but remember, the reason they think it is "stolen" when capitalists see it as "legit property" is because of the very disagreement in terms of what ESTABLISHES property in the first place.  Some think that what capitalists of the Americas have deemed to establish property is essentially theft from the community.

In fact, Thomas Paine himself, if you read the quote in my signature, believed something quite communistic about the establishment of property...

"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

This is why anarcho-communism has no home on that map; it's an impossible contradiction. A society with no property norms cannot exist. It is a delusional fantasy.

Anarcho-communism is not a society without property norms.  It's a society with different property norms than capitalism.  It's one built on occupation and use.  It is one that skeptical of feudalistic style land ownership, where people own stuff simply because they were powerful enough to put a fence around it.

When I talk about models that are nearly-devoid of property, I'm talking about very nearly primitive cultures, where you perhaps own the clothes on your back and a few personal items.  Obviously, THIS is a model that is disappearing, but it's on one end of the property spectrum, because land/resources that aren't claimed as owned by one can still be used by the community to form some semblance of a society.

So anarcho-communism isn't really any more self-contradictory than anarcho-capitalism.  I think you're confusing communist property norms with primitivist property norms. 



Further, your examples of micro-anarcho-capitalism are odd.  Simply "exploring elements" of a political philosophy within a Western Democracy can be found in hippy communes.

That's the nice thing about free-ish societies.  You can rely on all the stability on the macro scale around you to test ideas that would never really be possible without all that stability... or at least not long before the Mongol hordes come to rape your women & make slaves out of your children.

[Pointedstick]

Let's say we live in an anarcho-communist society. We are all small producers living on our half-acre lots in houses we built ourselves. We are all content and there is no government and we all get along.

One day I decide I want to own a whole bunch of farmland, so I go out into some land nobody else seems to be using and I say, hey, I'm gonna farm here! So I build a fence around it and I start to till the land.

Then you walk over the fence and say, "hey, I want to walk through here! What gives? There's a family of rabbits that often come through here that I wanted to hunt!"

How is this conflict resolved without any social organizations that can recognize or deny the existence of property beyond immediate possessions? Remember, there is no government. And I assume there are no large corporations either, a corporation being an imaginary construct that one can no more own than the wind.


Society evolves to be more complex, not less. My problem with anarcho-communism is the regressive nature of the way it delineates property. Now that we have the ideas of landlording, absentee ownership, intellectual property, and corporate shells, we can't just go back and delete these things from human consciousness. If anarcho-capitalism was ever possible, it would have been in the distant past before these things existed.

[moda0306]

PS,

Your problems with anarcho-communism are mine as well.  It's a weak model on so many levels.

At least anarcho-capitalism has big manipulative, monopolistic corporations (aka, makeshift governments) that keep things on the level, but now we're getting back into contradictions again.

Dude... any model of society/government is going to be filled with logical contradictions, and many are simply not going to work, or are going to evolve to something different.  That doesn't mean that there aren't vectors of debate that aren't being properly considered here.  Many models of totalitarian government are simply unsustainable long-term... that doesn't mean we don't recognize their philosophical position on the political map.

In my 5-vector model, too extreme of a view on any topic is going to get you likely unsustainability and tons of contradictions.  Raise a social safety-net too high, and you get economic collapse, let it go too low, and you get rebellion of the unwashed masses.  Enforce property norms too loosely, and you get high crime and low production.  Enforce them too strictly, and you have a militant police state.

I'd say the Stalinist version of Communism is unsustainable long-term.  Monarchism obviously is (as it has evolved to other things, over and over again)... but we still allow those on the "political map."


And further, because we ARE dealing with human beings here, who spit out logical contradictions like it's their job,  I'd be surprised if you could find a political philosophy for me that didn't contain contradictions.  Kshartle tried, and gave up before he proved anything.  We all pretty much acknowledge now that we're sort of just making these things up to fit our subjective preferences.  So I just tried to organize those subjective preferences into property norms, defense/enforcement models, infrastructure models, social norms enforcement, and economic safety nets.

I think those hit most of the big areas of debate in government that fall into different categories, but I'm kind of a rookie here.  All I know is that a model that shows anarcho-capitalism as the cornerstone of "human freedom" is assuming a conclusion that capitalism is (falsely, IMO) trying to convince us of in the first place.  The entire argument of actual communism is that capitalist property norms are NOT legitimate, and do NOT signify freedom.  Your chart, even though I think it's better than many I've seen, assume's capitalism's philosophical conclusion to be true. 

[Pointedstick]

Heh, we agree after all!

It's true I guess that this political map is incomplete; every model is necessarily an incomplete abstraction I suppose.

The thing I like about this one is that it really outlines the battle between individualism and multiple schools of collectivism rather than lumping all the collectivisms under the sane general "un-free" umbrella. Historically, civilizations basically started off in the Absolutism corner, which says "you the individual are only important inasmuch as you fit into this complex hierarchical social system and help to further the whole unit."

This makes a lot of sense in a primitive time where resources are scarce. Focusing on yourself would selfishly endanger the whole community due to the paucity of resources.

Then along comes Communism and says, "No, you have it all wrong. All those social systems are repressive; they are all abolished! The only collective you need to belong to is the centralized totalitarian state!"

Meanwhile (earlier, in fact), Republicanism is saying, "Yes, all those social hierarchies were indeed repressive, but so is the totalizing state! We're not going to replace those institutions with anything. Make your own institutions up! You're free! Do whatever you want socially within the framework of government power!"


This seems to really reflect western history a lot better than the two-axis economic-and-social freedom model. It shows you the historical progression from collectivism to individualism that we're still on the path of, and how we got sidetracked during the 20th century to a different form of collectivism that was arguably worse than the one it replaced. It shows why Republican societies are so atomized and have such high levels of social unrest; Republicanism has dismantled and denigrated historical social institutions of all sorts but didn't have anything to replace them with like Communism did, so people invented their own new institutions, and it's leading to fractured, disunited societies as people migrate into whichever camp they like the best.

[MachineGhost]

And here is a political chart that makes a lot more sense to me than the typical two-axis grid, courtesy of Nick Land (I am starting to like this guy's stuff):

The problem I have with your chart is it conflates social and economic ideology and looks to be all economic.  It's not a hard and fast rule that when you move to the right economically you are in favor of more social restriction, even though the current system is setup that way.  A true chart should have Anarchy and Totalitarianism the opposite of each other.  I think this one makes more sense for 21st century ideology:

[align=center][/align]

The Democrat needs to have Progressives carved out in a similar manner as Conservatives, although I think their relative positions should be inverted.  I mean, really, all Republicans are more socially intolerant than Conservatives?  Maybe I misunderand the meaning of the term.  I would also move up Fascist and carve out a Theocracy section below it similar to Communism, i.e. ISIS.

And on this map, compared to the one I posted before where I couldn't figure out anything, I'm on the paintstripe of Centrist-Libertarian, because A) I no longer believe in open borders and B) unregulated capitalism is a recipe for disaster.

[moda0306]

Heh, we agree after all!

It's true I guess that this political map is incomplete; every model is necessarily an incomplete abstraction I suppose.

The thing I like about this one is that it really outlines the battle between individualism and multiple schools of collectivism rather than lumping all the collectivisms under the sane general "un-free" umbrella. Historically, civilizations basically started off in the Absolutism corner, which says "you the individual are only important inasmuch as you fit into this complex hierarchical social system and help to further the whole unit."

This makes a lot of sense in a primitive time where resources are scarce. Focusing on yourself would selfishly endanger the whole community due to the paucity of resources.

Then along comes Communism and says, "No, you have it all wrong. All those social systems are repressive; they are all abolished! The only collective you need to belong to is the centralized totalitarian state

Meanwhile (earlier, in fact), Republicanism is saying, "Yes, all those social hierarchies were indeed repressive, but so is the totalizing state! We're not going to replace those institutions with anything. Make your own institutions up! You're free! Do whatever you want socially within the framework of government power!"


This seems to really reflect western history a lot better than the two-axis economic-and-social freedom model. It shows you the historical progression from collectivism to individualism that we're still on the path of, and how we got sidetracked during the 20th century to a different form of collectivism that was arguably worse than the one it replaced. It shows why Republican societies are so atomized and have such high levels of social unrest; Republicanism has dismantled and denigrated historical social institutions of all sorts but didn't have anything to replace them with like Communism did, so people invented their own new institutions, and it's leading to fractured, disunited societies as people migrate into whichever camp they like the best.

THIS I can agree with. 

[moda0306]

And here is a political chart that makes a lot more sense to me than the typical two-axis grid, courtesy of Nick Land (I am starting to like this guy's stuff):

The problem I have with your chart is it conflates social and economic ideology and looks to be all economic.  It's not a hard and fast rule that when you move to the right economically you are in favor of more social restriction, even though the current system is setup that way.  A true chart should have Anarchy and Totalitarianism the opposite of each other.  I think this one makes more sense for 21st century ideology:

[align=center][/align]

MG,

The problem with your chart is kind of two fold... what PS is saying to some degree, and what I'm saying.

Social freedom is certainly a measuring stick, but when you put social freedom on one axis, you're sort of ignoring the whole caste vs equality statism move that has happened over time, and when you have only one definition of "economic freedom," you're accepting the entire argument of capitalism (if you put anarcho-capitalism in the super-free corner (PS's chart)), or you're not properly delineating the difference in what is interpreted as "economic freedom."

So you end up with weird idiosyncracies like:

1) Your chart has anarchism in one corner, but there are VASTLY different types of anarchism models (I tried explaining this to K-Shartle).

2) Your chart has "fascism" as 100% economically free.  That is not true, historically or philosophically.  Just because Hitler HATED communists, doesn't mean he wasn't for some control over the economics of his country.

3) Communism, on that chart, is labelled 100% socially free.  Do you think we can say that about North Korea & the former U.S.S.R.?


I like PS's model for how it illustrates these splits in terms of what has REALLY developed over time from the standpoint of developing western civilization.

I think I like my 5-factor model to really just get down to the main variables of political belief.  I split "economics" and "social" into what I think are more legitimately dissected variables.

Even though I think this is fruitless... I've met hunters who are avid libertarians when you're talking about most forms of pollution or climate change, but when it comes  to preserving water-foul habitat, they're the biggest hippies you'll find.  There's really no way to this perfectly.

[Pointedstick]

Moda, the idiosyncrasies you point out are things that bothered me, too. It feels like overall freedom generally rises, but the social institutions within the differing societies are what change dramatically.

Basically, what I like about my chart is that it implicitly recognizes that the details in the particulars of the social systems in question (hierarchy vs dictatorship vs state worship vs vs make-your-own institutionalism vs individualism) are what matter, with Communism being a large detour to explore another angle of total collectivism.

[MachineGhost]

1) Your chart has anarchism in one corner, but there are VASTLY different types of anarchism models (I tried explaining this to K-Shartle).

You can't split Anarchy into Left Anarchy and Right Anarchy subgroups?

2) Your chart has "fascism" as 100% economically free.  That is not true, historically or philosophically.  Just because Hitler HATED communists, doesn't mean he wasn't for some control over the economics of his country.

Fascism ranges from 100% economically free to 60% economically free on the chart.  The Nazi's didnt practice Fascism, the Italians did.

3) Communism, on that chart, is labelled 100% socially free.  Do you think we can say that about North Korea & the former U.S.S.R.?

Communism ranges from 100% socailly free to 60% socially free, and should extend the extra 10% into the Totalitarian paintstripe.

I like PS's model for how it illustrates these splits in terms of what has REALLY developed over time from the standpoint of developing western civilization.

I like it for that too, but its useless a compass for current political ideology.  It's a statism vs non-statism perspective.  "We are all statists now."  And I really strongly vehemently disagree with Ron Paul being in the center of that map implying centristism.  The guy is a socially restrictive fucknut!

I think I like my 5-factor model to really just get down to the main variables of political belief.  I split "economics" and "social" into what I think are more legitimately dissected variables.

Yes, a proper political map would definitely ask a lot more variables for correct positioning, than just two dimensions like the world's smallest political quiz which asks overly broad questions.  Because of that, I'm still labeled as Libertarian.

How about the loaded question of "Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more" which is incompatible with Monetary Realism. 

[moda0306]

MG,

You can split anarchy into sub-groups, but one of those is anarcho-communism, which has you overlapping the FAR opposite end of your page.  In fact, the first popular anarchist uprisings were ones built on communist property norms.

Ron Paul = socially restrictive f*cknut?  Could you elaborate on this?

And if Nazism wasn't a form of fascism, what was it?


Part of this is the fact that most forms of goverment labelling are some degree of fraud...

Nazi's weren't really "socialists" in a lefty sort of way.

China isn't a republic.

The Democratic Republic of Congo isn't a Democratic Republic.

The U.S. isn't really a "capitalist" country (depending on how strict you want to be). 

The U.S.S.R. was NOT really communist, if you were to ask a philisophical communist back then (as it was rooted in much more anarchistic ideology).  And as much as they liked to USE the idea of collectivism... how concerned, really, were all the bureaucrats and heads of state with the collective vs improving their own position?


All these terms are used to defraud populations as much as describe the governments... so we've gotta remember that when we're trying to think about these things.

[MachineGhost]

I dunno -- you're making my brain hurt -- all I know is the simple map I posted is the current political sandbox that we all play in.  It's just a game.

Maybe someone can come up with a better map that combines both the history of statism to non-statism along with current political positions that respect left and right tilts.  In PS's map, putting Bush, Obama and Paul all close together is just nonsense.  Obama is way more socially liberal than either Bush or Paul.  I don't like Bush or Paul because they're socially restrictive control freaks.  I don't feel like elaborating, but Paul is a Republican NOT a Libertarian.  People conflate that endlessly just because he's more capitalist and anti-war than the NeoCons.