Yes I guess conservative is a better word, since while we disagree on some things you generally seem to grok my positions well. Since we are on this subject I hope I always approach your arguments in good faith and competently since you’ve earned quite some intelectual respect from me in our public and PM exchanges.
The reason I put it there is that I don’t see myself having much in common with conservative politics in nearly any relevant country, though other people are probably a better judge of this than me. While I do agree with at least a few of the people one finds on say a site like Unqualified Reservations. I try very hard not to let such labels influence my self-conception, my identity so to speak, but I do unfortunately need one word summaries of my current positions.
As to democracy and dictatorship… I do think we are biased in favour of democracy and that it probably isn’t as good as we seem to think it is. I think there exist better social and governmental arrangmenets than those found in modern Western countries. These might be some kinds of dictatorship or they might not. I’m certainly not discounting the possibility that we may be just plain mistaken about our actual preferences and that many of us might prefer life in a existing “technocratic city state” as I think you recently termed it. It is actually my conservative streak that still leads me to prefer living in a regular social democracy than to say a experimental neocameralist or futarchist state.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
Yeah, sure, I should’ve guessed you were ironic; the reason I asked was simply that it’s the first time I remember you applying any political label to yourself. I’m not overly concerned or distressed by your (or anyone’s) ideas about the relative merits of political systems, seeing as in my mind it’s inevitably largely a “red herring”, disguising other factors of a society’s nature. E.g. I think that the formal dissolution of the USSR, the adoption of a new constitution, Putin’s (much-criticized and now rolled-back) electoral reforms and other post-Soviet political rearrangements were not among the factors that seriously impacted life in Russia, with the exception of the severed links with other Soviet republics and the effects of those.
(Of course, when e.g. I’m arguing about the merits of liberal vs. restrictive laws, or censorship, or whatever, I’m usually genuinely concerned—as I always try to be when it’s about real people’s lives.)
I was being humorous.
Yes I guess conservative is a better word, since while we disagree on some things you generally seem to grok my positions well. Since we are on this subject I hope I always approach your arguments in good faith and competently since you’ve earned quite some intelectual respect from me in our public and PM exchanges.
The reason I put it there is that I don’t see myself having much in common with conservative politics in nearly any relevant country, though other people are probably a better judge of this than me. While I do agree with at least a few of the people one finds on say a site like Unqualified Reservations. I try very hard not to let such labels influence my self-conception, my identity so to speak, but I do unfortunately need one word summaries of my current positions.
As to democracy and dictatorship… I do think we are biased in favour of democracy and that it probably isn’t as good as we seem to think it is. I think there exist better social and governmental arrangmenets than those found in modern Western countries. These might be some kinds of dictatorship or they might not. I’m certainly not discounting the possibility that we may be just plain mistaken about our actual preferences and that many of us might prefer life in a existing “technocratic city state” as I think you recently termed it. It is actually my conservative streak that still leads me to prefer living in a regular social democracy than to say a experimental neocameralist or futarchist state.
But again it was a throwaway line I didn’t mean to start a discussion on politics.
Yeah, sure, I should’ve guessed you were ironic; the reason I asked was simply that it’s the first time I remember you applying any political label to yourself. I’m not overly concerned or distressed by your (or anyone’s) ideas about the relative merits of political systems, seeing as in my mind it’s inevitably largely a “red herring”, disguising other factors of a society’s nature. E.g. I think that the formal dissolution of the USSR, the adoption of a new constitution, Putin’s (much-criticized and now rolled-back) electoral reforms and other post-Soviet political rearrangements were not among the factors that seriously impacted life in Russia, with the exception of the severed links with other Soviet republics and the effects of those.
(Of course, when e.g. I’m arguing about the merits of liberal vs. restrictive laws, or censorship, or whatever, I’m usually genuinely concerned—as I always try to be when it’s about real people’s lives.)