Hi there, my first post on the politics board.
In the last few years I have started to take a keen interest in politics but I do not find myself aligned with any of the current party's or politicians viewpoints. I have outlined a few of my general thoughts below and I am genuinely curios to see if you believe I have a completely poor ill-educated mish mash of points, or if there is an actual sub culture of philosophy that I reasonably fit into.
I have always believed myself to be a liberal person, certainly culturally, believe in gay rights, non discrimination, religious freedom.
I come from a working class background, and would always fight in the corner of the working class man or women.
However I feel that for true liberal progression and to provide opportunity and choice and freedom to the working class, this is achieved by breaking down power structures and layers, however liberal's and the left often support big government, regulation, high taxes, trade unions as a way to to keep the rich in check and to stop wealth monopoly.
This just seems to me to exacerbate the problem, for example the financial crisis, was caused by banks taking huge financial risks, with little regard for everyone else, because they knew (rightly so) that the government would guarantee personal accounts and bail the banks out.
I have since heard people argue, that a true conservative capitalist position would be to have let them fail, do not have government involvement in regulating banking at all, this would have devastated the sector, and they would have never taken those risks, less regulation and and truly free market, would increase competition towards being the safest and most secure banks for their clients. but instead people ask for more regulation and control of banking
I guess the point I am trying to make above is surely, a really true capitalist society (which we have never really had, america got the closest which happened to coincide with its crazy boom years) with low regulation, no minimum wage, low taxes. This is all seen as right wing conservative thought, but it would in my view actually be of most benefit to the working class, we would have much stronger labour choices, cheaper prices due to less bureaucracy and most importantly freedom to choose to spend our money in the best way we feel fit for ourselves.
I find it weird that, working people hand over so much money for the government to spend it as they feel fit for us, meanwhile employing tens of thousands of government workers on great salary's and pension benefits, it is just a whole level disrupting and slowing down free market economics.
So far I understand that much of this sounds like an average conservative viewpoint, but then why is conservative viewpoints regards as against the working class, I see the exact opposite, breaking down structures of the elite and taking power and influence away is going to help stop the the top 1% and big business influencing policy and keeping the rich, rich.
Now this is where I differ lots of working class / left people seem to be fighting against inequality by blaming capitalism and turning more towards socialist politics, but my understand of socialism and democrats is they seem to want to control business via regulation and high tax's in order to control the economy and stop exploitation, now unless my history is wrong, that is basically what fascism is? my goodness the Nazi's were literally called the national socialist party.
So I still do not understand why conservative thoughts like I myself hold get called fascists by the progressive, Surely the way to stop the threat of fascism in not to encourage nationalisation of business and give more power to the government.
In summary I just feel that lots of politics just seems arse backwards, a good example of this is brexit (whatever your opinion lets not debate that) but the paradox I see with EU, is that remain is supported hugely by politicians on the left, but yet the biggest votes for leave are amongst traditional labour communities, you can flip it upside down or take it back 20 years and you can just as easily have torries supporting remain, because they see it as reducing tariffs and obstacles for big business to grow and get rich, and the labour voters not liking the fact it benefits big business and we have hundreds of already rich highly educated mep's flying back and forth Brussels sitting in pointless chamber meetings collecting huge salaries, pensions and expenses.
In final summary, maybe lets give true free market, Libertarianism , small government a go, the closest anyway has ever come to it, was the Americans back in the day, it is created the worlds most powerful nation and turned a significant proportion of the working american into a brand new middle class. There are some people calling for it and it me it makes sense, it just seems strange that I come to it from what I believe is a leftist perspective.
P.S It is important to say some of my views are derived from Peter Schiff at occupy wall street, the video is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY0R0NpIdQQ
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listening to Margaret Beckett in the car on the way home this evening, I think she called the May charade of her negotiation spot on, it's all been staged what we are seeing is just for public consumption, all that is left for the voters is an illusion of choice, politics stinks and the smell is coming from all sides.
Originally Posted by Nelsonca61
