[a study paper is shown, with some of the text legible]
STUDY RESULTS
GIVING POOR PEOPLE MONEY REDUCES CRIME MORE THAN GIVING COPS THAT SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY
CONCLUSION
If you want to reduce crime, take care of your community’s primary needs instead of funding cops so much
[an orange character in a suit has stamped a paper labeled MORE POLICE FUNDING BILL, and is grinning]
Heh, you think we don’t know?
https://thebad.website/comic/scientific_policing
You mistakenly think that the purpose is to reduce crime and improve people’s lives.
People in power (and unfortunately most people not in power also) think that there is a “fair” order to things. Those deserving will be successful, and the undeserving will not (and should not and must not) get anything. The strength of the power of the police+law is to protect the deserving from the undeserving. Not to make a fair or just or happy society. There are many who would happily lobby to refuse all emergency services, rights, legal protections, healthcare, etc to those who are “undeserving”.
That’s the heart of conservatism: hierarchy
I go on about this a lot, but the book “Dying of Whiteness” has examples of that. One guy literally was dying but still didn’t want those people to have free health care, even if it would save his life.
You say that as though Liberalism didn’t immediately start with hierarchy. Liberalism literally said that power should be in the hands of the wealthy, not the hands of the hereditary aristocracy. Liberalism emerged precisely because merchants got super wealthy and then found that no matter how much money they had, the king decided if they got land. So Liberalism emerged as something to replace the hierarchy of the nobility with, specifically the hierarchy of wealth. All the “universal” equality shit of liberalism was invented to get the poor peasantry to agree. There was never a single day of liberalism anywhere on planet earth that saw an absence of hierarchy.
I think you were schooling me a few weeks ago on this subject, and I never responded. If that was you, thank you for your infomative response.
Possibly, I often try to bring the history of Liberalism and Conservatism into view when people clearly just mean “good” and “evil” but borrow terms from political philosophy without examining them.
Bit of a waffles and pancakes response, or maybe squares and rectangles.
I am inclined to agree with you, but don’t see what you’re saying as a contradiction of what I said.
Conservatism emerged as a response to Liberalism. Hierarchy is at the heart of the society that creates both of them, neither of them are about hierarchy. The heart of conservatism is the preservation of a status quo that itself is maintained entirely through systems that produce stability. The heart of liberalism is the preservation of a status quo through mercantile dynamism, where one person may be at the top of heap one day and fall to the bottom the next without necessarily resorting to violence.
I think it is inaccurate at best, and deliberately misleading at worst, to say hierarchy is the heart of conservatism. History isn’t a vibe.
Conservatism is built on support for monarchy, the most hierarchy of hierarchy.
No. Conservatism is a reaction to Liberalism. Liberalism is a hierachical system with different mechanisms than monarchy. Conservatism was not reacting to the hierachical aspect of Liberalism but to the stability aspect. Because it was a reaction to Liberalism, it didn’t need to defend hierarchy, it only needed to defend the systems of power distribution that Liberalism was attacking.
You’re doing vibes and it isn’t working.
My vibes align with Wikipedia, at least
I don’t know if I’ve heard it described as a reaction to liberalism
So when I accuse you of vibes-based reasoning, what I mean is deriving your understanding from the opening paragraph of wikipedia, or equivalently from dictionaries, and having no knowledge of conservatism being a reaction to enlightment philosophy (specifically liberalism). You clearly haven’t done the bare minimum of work to understand conservativism, so what makes you so confident that hierarchy is the heart of conservativism? If you read even a little bit you’ll be confronted with various other potential hearts like wisdom, community, history, social cohesion, stability, and tradition. Stop trying to defend your unexamined position, take the critique, and do some reading. It’s a very rich history with lots of challenging ideas and tons of wonderful debates that help us understand where we are today and lay the foundation for how to move forward.
If you’re born into money, you have two options:
Either you believe you don’t truly deserve all this money, and you live with the existential angst and dread this causes you until you slowly kill yourself through drugs and alcohol, or you give it all away and live as a poor nomad.
OR you believe you truly deserve all that money. And since you know you didn’t actually DO anything to get it, it must be because you were BORN better than everyone else. Genetically superior.
Which do you think most people choose?
And if you’re not born into money it’s:
or
Which message would you choose?
Edit. And if you grew up rich and wanted to protect the system that put you in charge of a media company, which message would you choose to propagate?
I think the most important messages the rich can choose to propagate to protect themselves are messages that help prevent the working class from uniting against them.
Voters think that though. Waking them up from the illusion may help.
Plus, honestly, most people drink their own kool aid so I wouldn’t be surprised if our leaders did believe this despite all evidence. The desire to think of yourself as a good person can overpower most evidence.