Which political stereotype is she?
Pragmatist - You believe that individuals are the rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent freedoms and responsibilities. You maintain that the proper purpose of government is to protect such freedoms and not to assume such responsibilities. However, if you think that you will lose votes by saying so, you will let your principles be sidelined in favour of populism. Your role model is Suzanne Wright.
Over at The Whig, new contributor Suzanne Wright has a bone to pick with libertarians.
First she implies that libertarian ideas are wrong because they're delusional.
Being a libertarian is not a political position, it's a psychological condition.Then she implies that libertarian ideas are wrong because they're not popular.
Taxes, regulations, pretty much the whole real world is categorically wrong and we should all just see the light and agree with them. Problem is nobody agrees with them...And here's the crux.
If the libertarians really do have the truth and the light then a democratic process will tend towards their utopia because coercion is not necessary to achieve the ideal human condition.ACT members would do well to pay more heed to their founding principles. They were penned by Libertarianz founder Ian Fraser shortly before he left ACT in disgust.
All around the world lower taxes, lower trade barriers, and the collapse of central planning among other examples are suggesting that we are tending towards a libertarian utopia one way or another.
posted by Richard @ 2:59 am
4 comments
4 Comments:
My take is this:
- Most people vote according to an idea of which party will make them better off.
- A majority of the population are not personally wealthy. They look to government to cushion them from the tribulations of life through the welfare and tax system.
- This leaves them unlikely to vote for the dismantling of that system, which Libertarianism requires.
- ACT's approach is to pursue a Libertarian approach on economics, but to sweeten this for the proles by supporting authoritarian policies on social issues. The idea is that people will vote for the bigotry and ignore the economics.
An alternative would be Libertarian Dictatorship, where one is free to do almost anything except oppose the government. There are places in Africa that approach this.
I think most people vote according to a range of biases they have from their parents, their background and their friends - in short, most are sheeple. There is certain language that annoys people from the left or right, and they sit comfortably with their left or right or other tribe - so you are either a leftie, centrist, conservative or libertarian, roughly speaking
A lot of people vote that way - maybe 50% in NZ (more like 70% in the UK). Since they never change their vote, they effectively disenfranchise themselves - it's the swing voters that decide elections.
Hi! Just to let you know, beNZlypiperazine has been added to a repository of NZ blog links at http://www.longwhitecloud.org.nz/ .
Cheers,
Rich.
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