Harmful Liberal Policies Mega-Thread

[Bobby_2021]

4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

But I'd be interested in talking about the merits of actual policies that are on the books that aren't nebulous philosophical idea but are brass tacks protocols, rules, and laws.

If that is what you want to do, then bring in your lawyer. Collect all the judgements released by courts. Even some of my lawyer friends struggle to make sense of the legal language and you want to discuss all that on an internet forum. It's clearly out of scope.

Try reading those judgements released by the courts on any matter. You will never want to discuss anything about laws ever again.

[Emerald]

11 minutes ago, aurum said:

I understand all that. Very reasonable.

My point is that you may struggle in your quest due to the nature of leftism and how it goes wrong. The majority of harmful leftist ideas just don't get codified.

Yes it is harder. When leftism works, it works very well.

But it's not just because it's harder that people are going philosophical. The fundamental error of leftism is philosophical. Thus, philosophy is appropriate.

Agreed.

That makes sense. But it does open up some questions about why it is that it doesn't quite work the same way for the right side of the political aisle and why it's possible to have a mixed bag of beneficial and detrimental right wing policies... but doesn't necessarily work that way for the left wing.

If it's the case, why are detrimental right wing policies possible to codify... but detrimental left wing policies are not possible to codify. 

[Emerald]

2 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

If that is what you want to do, then bring in your lawyer. Collect all the judgements released by courts. Even some of my lawyer friends struggle to make sense of the legal language and you want to discuss all that on an internet forum. It's clearly out of scope.

Try reading those judgements released by the courts on any matter. You will never want to discuss anything about laws ever again.

That's silly. Just bring up a law and we can talk about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to begin with an actual law.

It's as simple as "What are your thoughts on the TPP?" or "How to do you feel about the Dreamers immigration law?" or "How do you feel about legal marijuana in x, y, and z states?"

[Leo Gura]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

why it's possible to have a mixed bag of beneficial and detrimental right wing policies... but doesn't necessarily work that way for the left wing.

It does work that way for the left. The problem is that the left excuses away all their failures and blames the right.

How about Marxist revolution and confiscation of property and wealth? Is that law enough for you?

Plenty of leftists want this. And it's been done before with plenty of harm.

High taxation is standard leftist law. And leftists are also in denial that high taxation is harmful.

The problem isn't lack of laws, the problem is denial.

Edited April 7 by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

29 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It does work that way for the left. The problem is that the left excuses away all their failures and blames the right.

How about Marxist revolution and confiscation of property and wealth?

Plenty of leftists want this. And it"s been doing before with plenty of harm.

High taxation is standard leftist law. And leftists are also in denial that high taxation is harmful.

The problem isn't lack of laws, the problem is denial.

I did bring up authoritarian leftist policies in my original post in this thread around the abolition of private land ownership in places like China and censorship in North Korea. Those were obviously detrimental left-wing policies.

And regarding high taxation, of course there can be problems with that. 

Is there a specific existing tax system that runs off of a left-leaning philosophy on taxes that is detrimental in your opinion? Like Canada or any of the European countries with higher taxes?

My personal view is that taxes should be bracketed and progressive where the wealthiest people pay the highest percentage of the tax burden because they earn the highest percentage of the wealth.

Our current system has highest percentage of the tax burden on the middle class and upper middle class... while the wealthiest people who have most of the wealth pay a lower percentage. 

What I mean by this is (I forget the exact numbers offhand, but this just helps me convey the idea better)... let's say that the middle class is earning 40% of the wealth and they're paying 70% of the taxes... while the top .01% of wealthy people are earning 40% of the wealth but paying 20% of the taxes.

That tends to be how it works out now. And there can be many ways to re-allocate the tax burden to fund the public good that don't involve raising taxes on the middle class. 

One such example is raising the Social Security cap. Someone who makes in the $168,601 per year pays the same amount in Social Security tax as someone who makes $100 quintillion bazillion jillion per year. 

There's always tons of scare tactics around Social Security drying up, but they could just raise that cap a bit and there would be plenty of Social Security funding.

So, smart leftist policy would be one that looks at re-allocating the tax burden so that the wealthiest people pay their fair share. 

Edited April 7 by Emerald

[Bobby_2021]

43 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Just bring up a law and we can talk about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to begin with an actual law.

Give it a try for yourself and then report back. It is a pain in the ass, and you will not be able to make sense of anything. I am talking from experience. Even proper lawyers struggle to make sense of this.

Correct discussions starts from policy.

[Emerald]

2 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Give it a try for yourself and then report back. It is a pain in the ass, and you will not be able to make sense of anything. I am talking from experience. Even proper lawyers struggle to make sense of this.

Correct discussions starts from policy.

Okay, here's one that kind of falls into left-leaning policy around immigration that I think is harmful but is currently a necessary evil in lieu of a more merit-based path to citizenship.

It allows a path to citizenship for immigrants who are married to a U.S. citizen. And this is important in that it allows people who love each other to come together.

But this law (in lieu of better immigration policies) creates all sort of difficulties for those who want to immigrate to the U.S. and it isn't based off of something that's easy to control.

I know one woman who (back when she was 21, long before we met) paid to get into a fake marriage with this 50+ year old shady guy in order to get her green card. And he would call her up and give ultimatums to give him money right away or he's go to immigration. He really threw his power around.

So, it just puts people who want to immigrate in these very precarious positions that leave them at the mercy of shady people.

Or it leaves people in a position where they can't find a partner to marry. 

I know a couple real couples that got married very quickly to keep their partner in the country.

One of them is still together after 20+ years. The other of them had kids together and were together for nearly a decade an then divorced. 

But I also know of people who weren't able to find a partner weren't able to get their green card.

Needless to say, a problematic policy but I'm also glad it's there because of the dearth of better policies. 

[StarStruck]

Wealthiest people left the matrix. If you are going to tax them heavily they will just leave for another country. 

[Emerald]

1 minute ago, StarStruck said:

Wealthiest people left the matrix. If you are going to tax them heavily they will just leave for another country. 

There would, of course, need to be policies in place to disincentivize that. 

They will go with whichever option cost them less... so create policies that make staying in the country make more sense on a costs vs benefits analysis.

[StarStruck]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

There would, of course, need to be policies in place to disincentivize that. 

They will go with whichever option cost them less... so create policies that make staying in the country make more sense on a costs vs benefits analysis.

That is not possible without a world government. Currently they are stationed in tax heavens. Your national policies won’t have an effect on them. 

[BlueOak]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course no country actually has open borders. However if extreme leftists had their way the borders would be a lot more open, and that could create serious problems which they are in denial about.

***If extreme libertarians had their way. 

The left can be just as strict with the border as the right. @Leo Gura

Edited April 7 by BlueOak

[Emerald]

12 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

That is not possible without a world government. Currently they are stationed in tax heavens. Your national policies won’t have an effect on them. 

What a nation can do is to put a tax penalty on moving a business from one country to another.

Also, if that business's market is mostly situated in the country of origin... they that country of origin could impose high import taxes on ex-patriating businesses that disincentivizes those businesses from moving countries.

If they were being really strict, they could even restrict imports from ex-patriating businesses.

There are probably other policies they could enact that disincentivize people moving their businesses elsewhere. They would just have to apply consequences that impact the flow of money enough to offset the benefits of moving to a place with a lower tax burden.

I don't have a lot of knowledge on how this impacts trade, but there's also global organizations like NATO and the UN that have policies that participating nations have to abide by. And perhaps there could even be policies in organizations like this where countries in the organization don't allow businesses from other member nations to leave their country of origin for a lower tax burden in another member nation.

Edited April 7 by Emerald

[BlueOak]

I see a lot of talk about borders all the time.

Humans create their migrations by things like wealth disparity, environmental damage, hunger, the narcissism of their cultural superiority through their media, water shortages, cheap labor requirements by paying the actual workers peanuts, and war.

They create their problems with drugs by criminalizing all of them, creating an additional problem they then need to solve.

Ban the immigrant workers + We need to manufacture things again! + But we don't have enough young people! + Breed more! + But it costs too much to raise a family and buy a house! = Temporary Work Visas, and/or high-speed rail connections, housing on the border they can travel from.
*Unless the person is racist, which many people who speak along these lines are, in which case there is no hope of reaching a common ground on this issue with them.

Any refugees of all kinds should be given ten years to establish themselves. If they are earning a wage, speak the language, and have integrated, then it's done. If they are in a gang, committing crimes, or still on benefits, then they have to go. Family or not. That's a good chunk of time to get yourself into a stable place, and yes, the last nine years need to be taken into account for last-minute changes. It's also a good chunk of time to arrange another place to go to if your country is unstable.

Edited April 7 by BlueOak

[MediumKahuna]

3 hours ago, Emerald said:

I've been a full time high school teacher... and a substitute teacher. And I've never seen it discussed in the curriculum.

Yes, I've never heard of it either. Anyone have a legit source that gender fluidity is being taught in schools?

[Yimpa]

24 minutes ago, MediumKahuna said:

Anyone have a legit source that gender fluidity is being taught in schools?

I personally self-taught after leaving the entire school system and going on a spiritual journey. Most people don’t have the guts to leave the mainstream system and discover their own Truth. It’s just too radical at this time.

Anyway, deep personal experience is your friend. Not some university teacher brainwashing you with what gender is. And even a  conservative mind can be open to exploring what gender is deeply when met with openness and love

 

Edited April 7 by Yimpa

[KingCrimson]

 

Quote

Any refugees of all kinds should be given ten years to establish themselves. If they are earning a wage, speak the language, and have integrated, then it's done. If they are in a gang, committing crimes, or still on benefits, then they have to go. Family or not. That's a good chunk of time to get yourself into a stable place, and yes, the last nine years need to be taken into account for last-minute changes. It's also a good chunk of time to arrange another place to go to if your country is unstable.

The problem is that there is currently no legal way to get rid of people once they are in the country, even if they turn  criminal. At least, this is the case in Austria/Europe. All you have to do is manage to cross the border and say "Asylum!", and you're in. Most applications for asylum are denied. However, there is no legal way for Austria to take a refugee back to Afghanistan, for example, even if their application is denied. And once they are in, they are being supported by the extremely generous welfare and social benefits. They get free housing, free money, free healthcare, free schooling for their children, etc. There is a reason all these refugees are coming to Austria, Germany, and Sweden. They are not going to other EU countries with less generous social benefits. Of course! I would do the same. But left-wing politicians actually deny that this might be a "pull factor" even though it is blatantly obvious that this is the case.

In my view, the problem is simple. If you try to integrate too many people from Stage Red/Blue societies into a liberal society like Germany or Austria at once, this will lead to countless problems. There are schools in Vienna where only 10% of the students actually speak German. I have been talking to teachers and what they report is simply crazy to me. Teachers are abandoning their jobs in droves because they are expected to basically be social workers rather than actually being able to teach their subjects. What are we going to do with all these children? They have a tough future ahead of themselves.

A huge problem right now is family reunification. Every month, more than 1000 relatives of people who were granted asylum in Austria are coming to Vienna. About half of these are children! None of whom speak German at all, and many of wom have never seen a school from inside. Imagine you come to Austria as a 12 year old, you don't speak the language, you don't know anything about the customs. And every month, hundreds and hundreds more of these kids enter the Austrian school system, which is completely unable to cope with this influx.

Even if you had infinite resources to throw at the issue, this would still not be easy to solve. If you have a 24 year old from Afghanistan, for example, who is an analphabet and knows no German whatsoever; How long does it take for him to be an even remotely useful part of society? In the best case scenario, 10 years at least. In any case, from a pragmatic/financial/economic point of view, these people are a net loss for Austrian society.

That is not to say that we should not accept any asylum seekers or that I have no empathy for these people. Rather, the system needs to be reformed EU-wide rather now than later. The current jurisdiction on asylum is outdated insofar as it was never intended for economic refugees. Many leftwing politicians do not want to acknowledge this and leave the field wide open for the far right to come in and be the only ones who dare to say anything. The reality is that we still live in a world of nation states. It is totally okay to protect your borders. Many left-wingers deny this! This is so crazy to me. If you don't have the right to protect your borders, why bother calling yourself a state at all? In my view, these leftists confuse compassion and mercy with self-abandonment. 

The result of this is the current rise of far right parties in Europe. In my country, the extreme right-wing FPÖ is currently no.1 in the polls, and their only shtick is precisely the issue of illegal immigration. Of course, the way they milk the issue and the way they speak is absolutely disgusting. (Recently, a member of the FPÖ suggested one should dig a ditch and just put "them" all in there...)

I am myself rather frustrated with this. I consider myself to be rather left-wing, and many of my friends are turning around and acknowledging the problems caused by illegal immigration. However, for the most part, the established left-wing parties are too afraid to take a firm stance on this issue.

Edited April 7 by KingCrimson

[Schizophonia]

2 hours ago, StarStruck said:

Wealthiest people left the matrix. If you are going to tax them heavily they will just leave for another country. 

Lol, the rich in tax havens are those who are the most "in the matrix".

 

Edited April 7 by Schizophonia

[Yimpa]

Imagine complete open borders like the Tylenol murders in 1982. Imagine no safety seals in your medications or no food inspections for your nuts

 

 

[Bobby_2021]

5 hours ago, StarStruck said:

Wealthiest people left the matrix. If you are going to tax them heavily they will just leave for another country. 

They can leave. But they can't transfer their wealth with them. 

There can be policies to that can't be gamed by packing bags and leaving the country.

Although taxing the rich shouldn't be the absolute best priority of any society at the moment. It's only a secondary goal. There are better things to do to bring fairness in business.

[zurew]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

While it's probably the most interesting conversations you can have, it's also probably the hardest conversations you can have, which is why almost nobody has them. Even when Schmactenberger is directly asked the question of how to implement his ideas in practice, he doesn't actually get to the point, or at least I can't remember ever seeing it. I'm thinking specifically about his conversation with McGilchrist and Vervaeke where he was directly asked that question. He seems stuck on defining the problem but not actually acting on it. And I don't blame him. I can't even imagine an attempted solution that is not microscopic in its impact without presupposing a level of coordination and integration between different systems that would automatically solve the very problems we're trying to fix (a perfectly internally coordinated and functional organism is not a house divided against itself).

I am not even sure anymore whether they are actually progressing on laying out descriptively what the problems are and what the dynamics are. Could they provide any premise that they are actually sure of with a high confidence by now? Its unclear what the progress on the problems would even look like, because the fear of "the framing of the problems could be wrong (additional context might completely undermine most of the current prescriptions) and you could miss certain aspects of the problems" - which is true, but lack of action has its on consequences too (which they don't seem to take into account in the whole equation or they don't give much weight to lack of action ( or at least I haven't seen any of them talking about it). 

This fear of misframing the problem space is used as any excuse so that no one stakes out any positions (based on their current best understanding of the solutions and the problems) on anything at all. There is no confidence margin that is provided regarding any of the premises or problems at all. By now, they should be able to provide at least some answers even if they are not perfect . Its okay if you don't know all the sufficient things, but can you mention some of the things that you know are necessary? - talking about those could give a frame to work with and it makes this whole thing goal oriented, and people can actually have some concept of what the progress or the degress would look like.

If the problem space in not defined in a clear enough way where people can track progress and degress, that means that we are probably lost in vauge space, where on the surface - seemingly we are talking about things, but in reality we are not defining anything in a coherent and clear way, and its unclear whether the ideas that are discussed are even coherent after an investigation of the semantics. 

There is also a difference between not having any solutions in mind at all vs having some solutions but you are unsure about all the consequences that the solution might bring.

When they are asked a direct, non-vague question, they shouldn't dodge the question just because they don't have a 100% perfect answer for that question - they should lay out all the things to the best of their understanding and just say that the answer might change in the future.