[lotyrin]

Not inherently. Politics is inherently about policy, the consensus mechanism involved is undefined. The fact it's been degraded into a carnival of moralistic cultural violence and individuals and their virtues, charisma or lack thereof is not at all inevitable.

The job of a state is to create social good for its citizens by solving tragedies of commons which promote opportunities, solving common problems in a way that takes advantage of scale, and holding other organizations (other states, corporations, whatever) or individuals accountable not to be creating harm. By reducing them to cultural divide-and-conquer games this process has been crippled. A certain economic class is responsible for this, is not even subtle about it, and propagandizes the other classes into believing that it benefits them, that the worn down veneer of democratic processes involved could somehow legitimizes it despite the obviously poor outcomes.

When I see people say left/right or "whole spectrum" of political ideas I know they've bought into this reductive vision of what politics could ever even possibly be, and it's as disappointing as it is common.

I particularly love when I get involved in a demographic survey and I get asked to rank myself on a "very liberal" to "very conservative" spectrum as if those are the only possibilities. I am incredibly critical of both of these ideologies and positions of "compromise" between them are even worse: ahistorical, amoral and unethical.

People who live their whole lives within the Overton Window and can't imagine anyone lives outside of it are incredibly bizarre to me.

[indigo945]

    > Politics is inherently about policy, the consensus mechanism involved is undefined. 

It's true that the consensus mechanism is undefined, but it is definitely not the case that politics is about policy. I hate etymological arguments, but in a literal sense, the "political" is merely a translation for "public" - that is, anything that happens when you step outside is political.

That also means that "cultural divide-and-conquer games" are not in some sense "not politics". They're inherently political by virtue of being public, in the same sense that coming out as gay, wearing a MAGA hat or claiming on an online forum that the "job of a state is to create social good for its citizens" are political. Once you accept that almost everything is, in fact, politics, it also becomes clear that we don't have policy to generate particular outcomes in a detached and neutral manner, but to police politics.

I agree that the liberal/conservative spectrum is a "reductive vision of what politics could ever even possibly be", I'm just not convinced that associating politics with state power is any less reductive.

[tovej]

Close, but not quite, political as a term refers to polities, groups of people that make decisions together.

Political as an adjective refers to anything related to making decision on the behalf of a social group of people.

[lotyrin]

This is only socially and "practically" true, not literally or inevitably or technically (or in my opinion, actual-practically) so.

One of the things we need to accept as social animals is that there are a lot of different flavors of "true" and "correct".

A lot of times I'll get someone to concede with my opinion of stuff in a way where they say something like "well, sure, but good luck convincing anyone of this" and that's them just giving into the social-consensus truth rather than the empirical (what the evidence shows, what follows from that and our choices of axiomatic principles) or practical (produces the best outcomes in the situation) truth.

If we want to be a species worthy of surviving our impending climate extinction we need to have a population of leaders and actors who are willing to act on and create institutions according to the practical truth as informed by the empirical truth, and become villains in the eye of the social-consensus truth.

[xwolfi]

And that's all very american. Ofc in Europe, we have a matrix: conservative in morals vs conservative in economics and reformist in morals vs reformist in economics. It's not at all a line but more a sort choice of policy preference when it comes to dealing with traditions and economics.

For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this. You can project his 2D stance on a 1D line and say he's a centrist, but he's left-morals, right-economics, so what is he at the "center" of ?

But I could be out of that matrix and say what matters is natural protection and vote for a green party who is either reformist or conservative in other policies but strongly focus on a single issue.

I don't understand american politics: it's like there's no variation of choice, just two sides of the same coins, role playing debate on pointless cultural issues without really having the power to reform or conserve.

Populist parties are more similar to american politics, they yell absurd nonsense at each other, accusing each other ad-hominem of various crass deeds, while distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over.

Politics is about managing transitions and changes in the population, and it's absurd to think the answer is bi-polar: republican or democrat, with a fallacy of the middle ground. Sometimes, it's just about softly following popular preference, sometimes it's about nudging the people to accept a necessary but difficult choice, sometimes it's about joining everyone in the middle because who cares.

[jorvi]

> but he's left-morals, right-economics, so what is he at the "center" of ?

That's literally what liberals are (not US-moniker).

They're libertarians-light, believing that everyone should be free to do whatever they want, be it economically or socially, and there should be minimal impediment to doing so.

It's an ideology that looks reasonable on the surface, until you realize that economically, the freedom is one way traffic. Businesses should have the power to crush individual employees and wealthy individuals to crush the poor, both in the name of economic freedom. But according to the liberal, woe to them that try to rebalance the economic scales of power via things like unions or laws.

I used to think liberalism is great, but there is something very malformed about an ideology which inevitably leads to "take from the weak and give to the strong". That already is the nature of the world and it is our moral obligation to rise above it.

[jack_tripper]

>For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this.

What "conservative economics capitalist" things has Macron done to earn this description?

>Populist parties are [...] distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over.

Agree, but what have the non-populist parties done on solving those issues? Because from what I see, populist parties have been rapidly growing in popularity PRECISELY BECAUSE the "normie" parties have done absolutely fuck all in tackling those very important issues we've been having for 10+ years now.

Sure, all they do is calmly discuss those issues, and then do absolutely nothing about it, just kick the can down the road till the next election.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise, the populist parties gained popularity for reasons nobody can explain. /s