And if one were honest... One would consider HOW THEY WERE IMPLEMENTED. Which makes for a very different story.
You mean through dismantling of civil liberties, economic control, secret police, military force, labor camps, and mass murder? Seems to me they were implemented in the same way in fascist Germany, fascist Italy, the USSR, China, and most other socialist countries. If one were honest...
If the Southern Strategy magically caused Democrats and Republicans to trade places, then former KKK member Senator Byrd should have gone over to the Republicans, shouldn't he?
You cross burners always like to pretend the last century of history doesn't exist. Back to the trailer park with you.
True, I grew up poor in Europe, where we couldn't even afford trailers. I'm sure from your privileged American upbringing, I must be deplorable.
However, as a gay, atheist foreigner, I assure you, the KKK hates my guts.
Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s. Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left. It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.
It is simply a short hand for having to dig through an present a larger boxy of evidence
You have provided neither evidence nor arguments for the idea that conservatism and classical liberalism are the same. I have provided both evidence and arguments against it.
As for the word authoritarian, I like to use the dictionary term "favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom."
That's an excellent definition; I agree.
as opposed to the definition "there are taxes".
I didn't use "there are taxes" as a definition, I used it as an indicator. I'm sorry, I should have recognized that the connection isn't clear to you. Wouldn't you say that if government authorities force me at gunpoint to work 1000 hours for the government, that meets the definition of "enforcing strict obedience to the authority at the expense of personal freedom"?
If you are just going to redefine words when it suits you then rational debate is impossible
Lucky then that I'm not "just redefining words" but actually telling you what I mean. I'm still waiting for a rational response from you.
I didn't compare you to the Nazis, I made the point that every political ideology has its own definition of "reasonable" and "minimal", even the most deplorable ideologies.
To me, it is also painful as my wife's grandmother was a guest of that regime in Auschwitz. (My wife is very upset with this comparison)
I didn't call you a Nazi, so spare me the outrage. I made a point about the fact that your statement of what you believe, a statement that you seem to believe is moderate, is so wide ranging that it even encompasses the Nazis, precisely because I was assuming that you are not a Nazi. That is, your statement of your political ideology is meaningless, because it encompasses everything from liberal centrism to the most extreme and murderous ideologies.
The game theory paper is essentially a review paper, and is only one example and would seem to be "a researcher believes", not even "researchers". In particular, it looks at animal studies but lacks human studies
Look, you made the claim that private property wouldn't exist without government, with no proof or evidence. I gave you one paper that explains to you why it is false (private property exists even in animals, without government). And as a "review paper", it has lots of references you can follow.
As the paper shows, private property is something that even animals are hardwired to respect, and it is something that game theoretically arises among interacting individuals without government. So, that contradicts your point that private property wouldn't exist without government. At this point, not only have you failed to provide any evidence for your point of view, you also haven't explained why a reasonable, mainstream, well-sourced review paper that contradicts you is wrong.
And you still haven't stated a clear political ideology, instead stating something so vague that it encompasses everything from liberal centrism to extreme totalitarianism, depending on your definitions of "minimal" and "required".
Nope. For one very simple reason. The Nazis were elitists and favoured their own. That makes then neither left wing nor socialist.
Socialists are "elitists and favor their own" as well, they simply favor a different group: socialists favor "the working class" and fascists favor "the nation". That's not a post hoc analysis, that is how historically fascism was justified.
In practice, of course, both fascism and socialism lead to the same form of governance: an unaccountable, corrupt, murderous elite that wrecks the economy and stays in power through violent oppression; usually, minorities and homosexuals are oppressed or killed, after having been initially wooed when the parties wanted to come to power.
I didn't list policies that were exclusive to the left, I listed policies that the left and fascism shared.
In 1910 it was suggested by the Liberal party in the UK that the 'criminally feeble-minded' should be forced into new workhouses and sterilised
Yes, that was a policy of the progressive movement. In the US, this was the policy primarily of the Democratic party.
And that was from a party vehmently opposed to anarchism and Marxism
So? Catholics and protestants killed each other by the millions over minor differences in religion, yet both are Christians. Closely related ideologies often hate each other fiercely, for the simple reason that they are competing for the same pool of followers. Fascists and Marxists clearly hated each other, but at their core, they are very similar ideologies.
You seem to want to ascribe stuff to your bogeymen and ignore other evidence.
The evidence is crystal clear: fascism is a modification of socialism that replaces "class" by "nation" and adopts some ideas from the progressive movement. This is true both if you look at the history of the parties and at their political programs. Both fascism and socialism are totalitarian, anti-capitalist ideologies, and both in in practice lead to mass killings and economic ruin.
"The cleverest trick is to accuse others of what you yourself are doing" - Goebbels. As practiced by ooloorie above in trying to describe fascism as "leftist".
I didn't "accuse others", I gave a long list of Nazi policies that coincide with leftist policies and the historical close connections between fascists and leftists. You are welcome to try to try to refute my points with facts. You will find that I am correct: fascism and socialism are both leftist ideologies and closely connected.
You do make an important observation, though: it is leftists that have been going around after WWII to make groundless accusations against others of being fascists and neo-Nazis. Every Republican president over the last couple of decades has been denounced as a "fascist", "Nazi", and/or "white supremacist" by the left. Every conservative commentator or intellectual has been denounced as such. It's not surprising that you quote Goebbels to point out a strategy that has been pursued for more than half a century by leftists.
Also, my family just barely survived the Nazis and then suffered under socialism, so I know first hand how utterly evil both ideologies are. It's also unclear why socialists are so afraid of having it pointed out how closely related they are to fascists; after all, socialists themselves are responsible for mass killings, genocides, racism, torture, war, and destruction that easily puts fascism to shame.
There is some merit in this argument, however, I believe in the minimum amount of this to ensure people have reasonable lives, and the minimum interference of government in other areas of people's lives.
So does everybody, for some definition of "reasonable" and "minimum". Even the Nazis believed that, they simply thought that "minimum" meant carting Jews off to the gas chambers. Modern Europeans believe that it means taking more than half of people's productive labor (that's more than under slavery). It's the definition of "reasonable" and "minimum" where all the differences between political views are.
Private property would not exist in any meaningful way for an extended period without government backing it up, though. It would be nice if it didn't require this, but realistically it does.
Er, I don't see much interference of freedom of association from the libertarian left, so that seems to be inserting your prejudice and imposing it on what you believe to be the views of others, when it is not.
More weasel words ("much interference", "from the libertarian left", "your prejudice", etc.). Do you have a specific point to make?
If you think that, I don't think you know what authoritarian means
I gave my definition and criteria for authoritarianism. You're welcome to do the same, instead of refering to unnamed authorities. Specifically, why do you think that a form of government that forcibly takes around half of the labor of people and regulates pretty much every aspect of their public and private lives shouldn't be called "authoritarian"?
You seem to think that sticking the term "corporate" something means that it is right wing; that is false. Both state corporatism and state capitalism are left wing ideologies; that is, the "corporation" is very much a tool of left wing ideologies, used to control free markets. Right wing ideologies are free market ideologies.
hilarious the people that only believed what came out of Hitler's mouth compared to what he and the Nazis actually did
What the Nazis actually did is what leftists in general do: they tightly regulated businesses, highly taxed unearned income, controlled prices and wages, engaged in massive redistribution, massively expanded government welfare systems, provided free education, oppressed and controlled the churches, regulated news media to promote what they considered truth, categorized people into desirable/undesirable, implemented free healthcare and mandated fitness, stimulated the economy through government spending, promoted environmentalism an a return to nature, promoted sustainability, and oppressed their critics. That is, in most policies, European fascists were just like leftists. And until the horrific crimes of European fascists in the 20th century came to light, American leftists were quite laudatory of European fascists.
No, they were not socialists
Nazis were indeed "not socialists", but they were most certainly leftists and ideologically very close to socialism and progressivism.
I consider the authoritarian label to be as insulting as it is incorrect.
Well, and again you demonstrate that you are not interested in rational discussion. To wit: (1) This discussion started with you calling me a "conservative"; I responded "I'm not a conservative, I'm a classical liberal, here is why the two are not the same:...". Your response? Nothing related to my points, instead more of an appeal to authority or intuition "you're a conservative because classical liberalism is associated with conservatism". (2) You view "authoritarian" as an insult and a label, instead of as a possibly valid description of your ideology. So your response is "you are closed minded", "you are insulting me", "you're a partisan", "nobody has shown that", etc. The proper response would be "why would you believe that?" and "who else made that argument?"
Your beliefs and style of reasoning are typical of the European intelligentsia and the American left. Like many classical liberals (as well as conservatives), I started out as a member of your tribe until I realized what those groups actually stand for and what their history actually is.
Yet you seem to have the close-minded views of a true believer, which baffles me.
I'm a "true believer" only in one thing: a rejection of the American left and related ideologies. And that happened because I opened my mind to other ideologies, which is why I moved away from your political beliefs. The problem is your closed-mindedness, not mine.
That's your opinion, not borne out by evidence, though.
There are many political scientists and economists that have proven that point. Your ignorance of that work doesn't change the correctness of their arguments. While they make long argument, it's also pretty obvious: any political ideology that involves imposition of social norms, redistribution of income, government attempts to increase equality of outcome for different groups is necessarily authoritarian since it involves government taking of private property and interference in freedom of association, if necessary at gunpoint, hence authoritarian.
It's also quite obvious simply by looking at the economy: European conservatives, social democrats, and progressives have created systems in which the majority of economic activity is under state control; more than 50% of state control over economic interactions is reasonably considered authoritarian (with 100% being totalitarian).
I mentioned your suggestion that you considered me to be authoritarian on this basis, and I now need to clean tea off the bed sheets. She's American, by the way.
Economics, especially macroeconomics, makes climate science look positively rock solid and thoroughly-understood in comparison.
I didn't say "economics can predict the future", I said "we can make excellent predictions about the effects of economic development." We don't need economic theory for that, simple empirical measurements tell us what the effect of development on countries around the globe is and has been.
You're absolutely right. Mass warfare or mass-plagues will also do the trick.
And mass warfare and mass plagues are going to happen if governments intervene to reduce carbon emissions, because it is prosperity and energy that has made the world as peaceful as it is. A wealthy world is a peaceful world with low birth rates and an excellent ability to deal with the effects of climate change. That's why we should focus on making the world wealthy, instead of making futile attempts to reduce carbon emissions.
Meanwhile the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet's ecosystem is estimated at about 4-5 billion and falling
E. O. Wilson estimates it at 9-10 billion, roughly where population projections say that global populations will stabilize under current birth rates. However, government restrictions on carbon use would decrease wealth and development and thereby increase birth rates, on top of delaying a switch to solar energy, exactly the opposite effect we want.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be switching to renewable energies, I'm saying we are already switching to renewable energies as fast as the global economy can do that, and any government interference that attempts to accelerate the process further will just make the problem worse: it will decrease wealth, increase birth rates, and delay the transition.
t present, we're still the primary source of increasing atmospheric CO2, and if we stopped all fossil fuel use tomorrow it might still be very possible to reverse the process.
If we stopped all fossil fuel use tomorrow, we wouldn't be reversing anything: the carbon is in the atmosphere and will stay there for hundreds of years; if we have crossed any "tipping points", we already have crossed them. But the necessary government interventions would cast the world into a massive global economic depression and poverty, making it next to impossible to deal with the inevitable effects of climate change. And for what? The world is largely going to change to solar energy over the next 20-30 years anyway because the price of solar is coming down as semiconductor technologies improve, and the less we interfere with the global economy the faster that happens.
We're still very much the forcing factor, and it's not at all clear that the planet has crossed the tipping point
There is zero evidence that we have reached a tipping point.
where, if we stopped forcing, it would return to its historical stable state.... Our choice may now be down to slowing the transition to geo-historical norms, so that we and the planetary ecosystem have a decent chance to adapt.
There are no "geo-historical norms". For the last seven million years, temperatures have been undergoing rapid cycles, with much of the northern hemisphere covered in vast ice sheets every 100000 years, followed by warming and massive sea level rise. We're currently at the end of a warm period. Humans have lived through several of those cycles; it is likely the reason H. sapiens exists in the first place.
I've done these sort of tests before. They never categorise me as left authoritarian as you would pigeonhole me
I merely gave those quizzes to get you to think about political orientations in a multidimensional way and, in particular, that conservatism is in a different place from libertarianism (which is closest to classical liberalism on that chart).
But the axes are mislabeled. You can see that the actual distribution of responses is roughly triangular, with the classical liberals concentrated in the bottom right corner; anything outside the bottom right quadrant is authoritarian. In other words, in a society with maximum individual liberty, there can't be any political left-right distinctions anymore.
what I do believe is that American conservatism is currently the home of classical liberals
You're playing meaningless word games. The fact remains that I'm a classical liberal, not a conservative. I explained to you the difference, you simply refuse to even read the explanation.
Your characterisation of the American left, though, seems very odd, especially given that it does not at all fit with American liberals that I know.
It seems odd to you because both the American left and you do not actually have a logically consistent political position, you are merely engaging in empty political posturing. That's why you can simultaneously advocate authoritarian positions and policies, while at the same time stating and believing that you "value liberty".
Your view seems very close minded and partisan
I grew up in Europe and even voted there, became a registered Democrat after naturalization and then became an independent, so my political positions are rooted in ample experience and I have demonstrated my willingness to change my political positions based on rational arguments. How about you?
Now, about your charge of partisanship: the only position I have expressed is a criticism of the American left. So which group are you accusing me of being a partisan for? Surely not conservatives, since I reject many of their political views. What you are actually revealing is merely your own partisanship and narrowmindedness: it is you who divides the world into your tribe and "everybody else" and accuse people who criticize your tribe of "partisanship".
P.S. I can't demonstrate anything about the American left as I'm European.
As I was saying Many Europeans are "American liberals", they just call themselves something different in Europe. Where do you think crap like critical theory and postmodernism comes from originally? From Europe (specifically, France and Germany), not from the US.
it is very hard to have a rational debate with someone who has such a binary view of the world which is apparently either unfettered capitalism or authoritarianism
Well, yes it is, and that is your view. After all, you hold the view that everybody to the right of center is a conservative.
I contrast, I recognize that there are many political viewpoints: classical liberal, libertarians, conservatives, democratic socialists, communists, etc. All of those groups are capable of rational discourse, even if they vehemently disagree. And then there are American progressives and American liberals, who are different from all the aforementioned groups.
You exactly made a comment about nationality referencing the fact that a commentator was British. Do you not remember?
You attempted an appeal to authority in support of your argument and quoted Deepak Lal. I'm saying that even if I considered your appeal to authority valid, I do not consider Deepak Lal an authority on the US; he is a British neo-liberal and expert on Asia, not a US policy wonk.
The extent of the problem is vague, because we're dealing with systems we don't understand well enough to make detailed predictions.
But we can make excellent predictions about the effects of economic development.
And I addressed your point directly. Yes, famine is caused by an imbalance between population size and agricultural productivity. And thus a sustained drop in agricultural productivity, which is looking very likely, directly translates to famine until the population size drops to newly sustainable levels.
Mass starvation is not required to lower population levels. As the US and Europe demonstrate, economic development is the best means to achieve population reductions. That is why we need to prioritize economic development, which has massive, predictable, positive effects, over attempts to limit carbon emissions through government intervention, which are largely futile, ineffective, and have unpredictable effects on climate.
Positive feedback alone doesn't convey the fact that there's a very real danger of pushing the global climate balance beyond the point where anything we can reasonably do will have a noticeable effect.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean through dismantling of civil liberties, economic control, secret police, military force, labor camps, and mass murder? Seems to me they were implemented in the same way in fascist Germany, fascist Italy, the USSR, China, and most other socialist countries. If one were honest...
If the Southern Strategy magically caused Democrats and Republicans to trade places, then former KKK member Senator Byrd should have gone over to the Republicans, shouldn't he?
True, I grew up poor in Europe, where we couldn't even afford trailers. I'm sure from your privileged American upbringing, I must be deplorable.
However, as a gay, atheist foreigner, I assure you, the KKK hates my guts.
I don't dispute that they are "usually considered" that.
How about an analysis from a former Marxist and accomplished economist?
Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.
Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.
It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.
You have provided neither evidence nor arguments for the idea that conservatism and classical liberalism are the same. I have provided both evidence and arguments against it.
That's an excellent definition; I agree.
I didn't use "there are taxes" as a definition, I used it as an indicator. I'm sorry, I should have recognized that the connection isn't clear to you. Wouldn't you say that if government authorities force me at gunpoint to work 1000 hours for the government, that meets the definition of "enforcing strict obedience to the authority at the expense of personal freedom"?
Lucky then that I'm not "just redefining words" but actually telling you what I mean. I'm still waiting for a rational response from you.
I didn't compare you to the Nazis, I made the point that every political ideology has its own definition of "reasonable" and "minimal", even the most deplorable ideologies.
I didn't call you a Nazi, so spare me the outrage. I made a point about the fact that your statement of what you believe, a statement that you seem to believe is moderate, is so wide ranging that it even encompasses the Nazis, precisely because I was assuming that you are not a Nazi. That is, your statement of your political ideology is meaningless, because it encompasses everything from liberal centrism to the most extreme and murderous ideologies.
Look, you made the claim that private property wouldn't exist without government, with no proof or evidence. I gave you one paper that explains to you why it is false (private property exists even in animals, without government). And as a "review paper", it has lots of references you can follow.
As the paper shows, private property is something that even animals are hardwired to respect, and it is something that game theoretically arises among interacting individuals without government. So, that contradicts your point that private property wouldn't exist without government. At this point, not only have you failed to provide any evidence for your point of view, you also haven't explained why a reasonable, mainstream, well-sourced review paper that contradicts you is wrong.
And you still haven't stated a clear political ideology, instead stating something so vague that it encompasses everything from liberal centrism to extreme totalitarianism, depending on your definitions of "minimal" and "required".
Socialists are "elitists and favor their own" as well, they simply favor a different group: socialists favor "the working class" and fascists favor "the nation". That's not a post hoc analysis, that is how historically fascism was justified.
In practice, of course, both fascism and socialism lead to the same form of governance: an unaccountable, corrupt, murderous elite that wrecks the economy and stays in power through violent oppression; usually, minorities and homosexuals are oppressed or killed, after having been initially wooed when the parties wanted to come to power.
I didn't list policies that were exclusive to the left, I listed policies that the left and fascism shared.
Yes, that was a policy of the progressive movement. In the US, this was the policy primarily of the Democratic party.
So? Catholics and protestants killed each other by the millions over minor differences in religion, yet both are Christians. Closely related ideologies often hate each other fiercely, for the simple reason that they are competing for the same pool of followers. Fascists and Marxists clearly hated each other, but at their core, they are very similar ideologies.
The evidence is crystal clear: fascism is a modification of socialism that replaces "class" by "nation" and adopts some ideas from the progressive movement. This is true both if you look at the history of the parties and at their political programs. Both fascism and socialism are totalitarian, anti-capitalist ideologies, and both in in practice lead to mass killings and economic ruin.
You got your parties mixed up: the party of the KKK is the Democrats. Hillary was best buddies with a former KKK member.
I didn't "accuse others", I gave a long list of Nazi policies that coincide with leftist policies and the historical close connections between fascists and leftists. You are welcome to try to try to refute my points with facts. You will find that I am correct: fascism and socialism are both leftist ideologies and closely connected.
You do make an important observation, though: it is leftists that have been going around after WWII to make groundless accusations against others of being fascists and neo-Nazis. Every Republican president over the last couple of decades has been denounced as a "fascist", "Nazi", and/or "white supremacist" by the left. Every conservative commentator or intellectual has been denounced as such. It's not surprising that you quote Goebbels to point out a strategy that has been pursued for more than half a century by leftists.
Also, my family just barely survived the Nazis and then suffered under socialism, so I know first hand how utterly evil both ideologies are. It's also unclear why socialists are so afraid of having it pointed out how closely related they are to fascists; after all, socialists themselves are responsible for mass killings, genocides, racism, torture, war, and destruction that easily puts fascism to shame.
So does everybody, for some definition of "reasonable" and "minimum". Even the Nazis believed that, they simply thought that "minimum" meant carting Jews off to the gas chambers. Modern Europeans believe that it means taking more than half of people's productive labor (that's more than under slavery). It's the definition of "reasonable" and "minimum" where all the differences between political views are.
I know of no evidence for this. To the contrary, game theory and biology suggest the opposite. Nor is government required to create free markets.
More weasel words ("much interference", "from the libertarian left", "your prejudice", etc.). Do you have a specific point to make?
I gave my definition and criteria for authoritarianism. You're welcome to do the same, instead of refering to unnamed authorities. Specifically, why do you think that a form of government that forcibly takes around half of the labor of people and regulates pretty much every aspect of their public and private lives shouldn't be called "authoritarian"?
"Many believe that..." is not a rational argument.
You seem to think that sticking the term "corporate" something means that it is right wing; that is false. Both state corporatism and state capitalism are left wing ideologies; that is, the "corporation" is very much a tool of left wing ideologies, used to control free markets. Right wing ideologies are free market ideologies.
What the Nazis actually did is what leftists in general do: they tightly regulated businesses, highly taxed unearned income, controlled prices and wages, engaged in massive redistribution, massively expanded government welfare systems, provided free education, oppressed and controlled the churches, regulated news media to promote what they considered truth, categorized people into desirable/undesirable, implemented free healthcare and mandated fitness, stimulated the economy through government spending, promoted environmentalism an a return to nature, promoted sustainability, and oppressed their critics. That is, in most policies, European fascists were just like leftists. And until the horrific crimes of European fascists in the 20th century came to light, American leftists were quite laudatory of European fascists.
Nazis were indeed "not socialists", but they were most certainly leftists and ideologically very close to socialism and progressivism.
Well, and again you demonstrate that you are not interested in rational discussion. To wit: (1) This discussion started with you calling me a "conservative"; I responded "I'm not a conservative, I'm a classical liberal, here is why the two are not the same: ...". Your response? Nothing related to my points, instead more of an appeal to authority or intuition "you're a conservative because classical liberalism is associated with conservatism". (2) You view "authoritarian" as an insult and a label, instead of as a possibly valid description of your ideology. So your response is "you are closed minded", "you are insulting me", "you're a partisan", "nobody has shown that", etc. The proper response would be "why would you believe that?" and "who else made that argument?"
Your beliefs and style of reasoning are typical of the European intelligentsia and the American left. Like many classical liberals (as well as conservatives), I started out as a member of your tribe until I realized what those groups actually stand for and what their history actually is.
I'm a "true believer" only in one thing: a rejection of the American left and related ideologies. And that happened because I opened my mind to other ideologies, which is why I moved away from your political beliefs. The problem is your closed-mindedness, not mine.
There are many political scientists and economists that have proven that point. Your ignorance of that work doesn't change the correctness of their arguments. While they make long argument, it's also pretty obvious: any political ideology that involves imposition of social norms, redistribution of income, government attempts to increase equality of outcome for different groups is necessarily authoritarian since it involves government taking of private property and interference in freedom of association, if necessary at gunpoint, hence authoritarian.
It's also quite obvious simply by looking at the economy: European conservatives, social democrats, and progressives have created systems in which the majority of economic activity is under state control; more than 50% of state control over economic interactions is reasonably considered authoritarian (with 100% being totalitarian).
And just like many privileged, American women, she gets into bed with authoritarians..
I didn't say "economics can predict the future", I said "we can make excellent predictions about the effects of economic development." We don't need economic theory for that, simple empirical measurements tell us what the effect of development on countries around the globe is and has been.
And mass warfare and mass plagues are going to happen if governments intervene to reduce carbon emissions, because it is prosperity and energy that has made the world as peaceful as it is. A wealthy world is a peaceful world with low birth rates and an excellent ability to deal with the effects of climate change. That's why we should focus on making the world wealthy, instead of making futile attempts to reduce carbon emissions.
E. O. Wilson estimates it at 9-10 billion, roughly where population projections say that global populations will stabilize under current birth rates. However, government restrictions on carbon use would decrease wealth and development and thereby increase birth rates, on top of delaying a switch to solar energy, exactly the opposite effect we want.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be switching to renewable energies, I'm saying we are already switching to renewable energies as fast as the global economy can do that, and any government interference that attempts to accelerate the process further will just make the problem worse: it will decrease wealth, increase birth rates, and delay the transition.
If we stopped all fossil fuel use tomorrow, we wouldn't be reversing anything: the carbon is in the atmosphere and will stay there for hundreds of years; if we have crossed any "tipping points", we already have crossed them. But the necessary government interventions would cast the world into a massive global economic depression and poverty, making it next to impossible to deal with the inevitable effects of climate change. And for what? The world is largely going to change to solar energy over the next 20-30 years anyway because the price of solar is coming down as semiconductor technologies improve, and the less we interfere with the global economy the faster that happens.
There is zero evidence that we have reached a tipping point.
There are no "geo-historical norms". For the last seven million years, temperatures have been undergoing rapid cycles, with much of the northern hemisphere covered in vast ice sheets every 100000 years, followed by warming and massive sea level rise. We're currently at the end of a warm period. Humans have lived through several of those cycles; it is likely the reason H. sapiens exists in the first place.
I merely gave those quizzes to get you to think about political orientations in a multidimensional way and, in particular, that conservatism is in a different place from libertarianism (which is closest to classical liberalism on that chart).
But the axes are mislabeled. You can see that the actual distribution of responses is roughly triangular, with the classical liberals concentrated in the bottom right corner; anything outside the bottom right quadrant is authoritarian. In other words, in a society with maximum individual liberty, there can't be any political left-right distinctions anymore.
You're playing meaningless word games. The fact remains that I'm a classical liberal, not a conservative. I explained to you the difference, you simply refuse to even read the explanation.
It seems odd to you because both the American left and you do not actually have a logically consistent political position, you are merely engaging in empty political posturing. That's why you can simultaneously advocate authoritarian positions and policies, while at the same time stating and believing that you "value liberty".
I grew up in Europe and even voted there, became a registered Democrat after naturalization and then became an independent, so my political positions are rooted in ample experience and I have demonstrated my willingness to change my political positions based on rational arguments. How about you?
Now, about your charge of partisanship: the only position I have expressed is a criticism of the American left. So which group are you accusing me of being a partisan for? Surely not conservatives, since I reject many of their political views. What you are actually revealing is merely your own partisanship and narrowmindedness: it is you who divides the world into your tribe and "everybody else" and accuse people who criticize your tribe of "partisanship".
For your handy reference, here is a map of political orientations.
Here is another more detailed quiz determining where you fit on a 2D map
Actual political orientation is probably higher dimensional than that, but you might at least try to figure out where you fit on these 2D maps.
As I was saying Many Europeans are "American liberals", they just call themselves something different in Europe. Where do you think crap like critical theory and postmodernism comes from originally? From Europe (specifically, France and Germany), not from the US.
Well, yes it is, and that is your view. After all, you hold the view that everybody to the right of center is a conservative.
I contrast, I recognize that there are many political viewpoints: classical liberal, libertarians, conservatives, democratic socialists, communists, etc. All of those groups are capable of rational discourse, even if they vehemently disagree. And then there are American progressives and American liberals, who are different from all the aforementioned groups.
You attempted an appeal to authority in support of your argument and quoted Deepak Lal. I'm saying that even if I considered your appeal to authority valid, I do not consider Deepak Lal an authority on the US; he is a British neo-liberal and expert on Asia, not a US policy wonk.
But we can make excellent predictions about the effects of economic development.
Mass starvation is not required to lower population levels. As the US and Europe demonstrate, economic development is the best means to achieve population reductions. That is why we need to prioritize economic development, which has massive, predictable, positive effects, over attempts to limit carbon emissions through government intervention, which are largely futile, ineffective, and have unpredictable effects on climate.
We are already past that point.