Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?).
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.
Hm. I understand you now. However I carve reality in a somewhat different way—we see joints in the territory in different places.
First I would set up level zero as reality, what actually exists now—all the current socio-econo-politco-etc. structures. And then one dimension by which you divide people/groups/movements would be by whether they are more or less content with the current reality or whether they want to radically change it.
Another dimension would be the individual vs. group/community/state spectrum, anarchists being on one end and fans of a totalitarian state on the other.
You can add more—say, egalitarianism vs.some sort of a caste system—as needed.
Getting back to your wishes, I think we have a bunch of socialists here who on a regular basis post critiques of the status quo from the left side (e.g. didn’t we have a debate about guaranteed basic income recently?). On the other hand they do lack in sexiness and edginess :-)
I didn’t witness this debate, so maybe you’re right that the advocates for the guaranteed minimum income were in fact socialists. I’d like to note, though, that the idea of a guaranteed basic income has had some currency in libertarian circles as well, advocated by (among others) Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. So I wouldn’t take support for this policy as very strong evidence of a socialist political orientation.
Well, I mentioned socialists because a significant part of LW self-identifies as socialist (see Yvain’s surveys). That, of course, is a fuzzy term with many possible meanings.
But the survey didn’t just say “Socialist”, it said “Socialist, for example Scandinavian countries: socially permissive, high taxes, major redistribution of wealth”.
Hehe I’ll give you that coherently expressing edgy views is part of what keeps me reading despite fairly strong disagreement...outside view, that’s not actually a point in its favor, of course—as a general heuristic, the boring and conventional people are right and the edgy internet subculture is wrong, even if wrong in novel ways!
I don’t think that’s a particularly useful heuristic. I’d like to offer a replacement: people who actually did something in reality or who point to something existing and working are right more often than people whose arguments are based on imagination and counterfactuals.