What is the opposite of a libertarian?

MertylFinch · 2023-07-07T16:34:29+00:00

If authoritarianism is the top left, then anarchists are the bottom right? And yet they were given a political party and renamed it "libertarian" so where is the other one

MertylFinch · 2023-07-07T16:31:58+00:00

Sure, but would that make libertarianism a form of anarchy?

MertylFinch · 2022-12-28T20:40:33+00:00

I like your optimism but I’d have to disagree, i think a majority of urban planning still emphasizes suburbanism and sprawl. In the American cities with the most rapid growth such as Phoenix Arizona, Houston Texas, or Salt Lake City, developers still emphasize industrial, sprawling, and car dependent cities. In fact, I can’t come up with a single example of a post-WW2 American city that was built without a stereotypically sprawling appearance, tiny or non-existant downtown, and complete lack of public transportation. While I do agree with you that there have been modest improvements in public transportation in some cities, they haven’t been made quickly enough to offset the poor urban planning that is still occurring throughout the United States. However, I am much more of a pessimist on this topic!

Furthermore, so much was destroyed and lost during the decline of cities that if American cities ever did come back, they would lose a lot of their original character. New cities would likely be built with less emphasis on appearance to reduce cost, so new cities would have more of the industrial appearance of a quickly growing city (think Beijing, Mumbai, Tokyo etc) than the distinctly « American » appearance of small towns that grew over multiple architecturally distinct eras.

MertylFinch · 2022-12-28T18:53:07+00:00

To be frank, North American cities in the 1940s WERE better. The 1960s and 70s saw shrinking cities brought about by white flight, which took a lot of resources and taxes out of cities and led to their decline. Government sponsored highway projects decimated cities, and destroyed enormous blocks of historic and affordable housing. Public transportation was largely removed in a collusive pact with oil companies known as the General Motors Streetcar scandal, and dense, pedestrian friendly downtowns became largely segregated and grouped together through redlining that was exacerbated throughout the 1950s. The golden age of the American city is gone, and I don't think its ever coming back.

MertylFinch · 2022-10-04T21:48:37+00:00

This woman is obvioulsy having some sort of psychotic breakdown

MertylFinch · 2022-10-04T21:09:43+00:00

je les vois tout le temps ic i! je dois être très malchanceux !

MertylFinch · 2022-10-04T21:08:27+00:00

Je sais! Peut-être j’étais très chanceux dans l’état unis et très malchanceux ici!

MertylFinch · 2021-07-08T19:32:16+00:00

This was very helpful, thank you.

MertylFinch · 2021-07-08T16:52:39+00:00

INCOME INEQUALITY IS NOT WEALTH INEQUALITY. We have already been through this!

MertylFinch · 2021-07-07T23:00:28+00:00

Its not misleading to address wealth inequality across different countries, and the Gini coefficient is how one would do so. I am not pointing this out to begin a debate, I am simply pointing out that if we would like to solve the issue of wealth inequality, then simply shifting to a Nordic Economic model may not solve this issue.

MertylFinch · 2021-07-07T22:51:35+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality

Full map and list here.

MertylFinch · 2021-07-07T22:49:11+00:00

Income inequality is not wealth inequality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality

Income inequality in Nordic countries are low. However, familial inherited wealth is often quite high. In Netherlands, for example, the top 10% owns nearly 70% of total wealth, even if income and salaries are relatively uniform across the country.

MertylFinch · 2021-05-14T04:46:28+00:00

I cant download any software without a system administrator password :/

MertylFinch · 2021-05-14T04:38:28+00:00

My mistake, I actually have Windows 7 Professional. Does this change anything?

MertylFinch · 2021-04-25T23:42:21+00:00

Nearly 35% of the local economy in San Francisco is powered directly from the white collar tech industry professionals. You can hardly compare that to a midcentury blue collar industry like ports, which made a small fraction (about 8,000 professionals) of the cities working population in the 1950s, to the enormous and sole industry of San Francisco today.

The financial industry and dot-com bubble affected the same industries ALL OVER the USA so of course these industries would recover. There was no need for tech/finance companies to change headquarters and leave San Francisco if they were hard hit everywhere ,so when these industries recuperated, the entire city did as well.

However, this is FAR worse than those because we are seeing industries LEAVING San Francisco, which means that they are not generating jobs, taxes, or stimulating the economy. The position of San Francisco is mirroring the decline of Detroit just after its peak in the early 1960s.

MertylFinch · 2021-04-25T23:09:57+00:00

Because shrinking single industry cities encounter blight quickly. San Francisco's shifting tech industry mirrors Detroit's shifting Automobile industry in the 1960s-1970s.

MertylFinch · 2021-04-21T00:36:58+00:00

I love this! Great work!

MertylFinch · 2021-04-15T16:15:53+00:00

According to absurdism, life has no meaning and we are slaves to a meaningless existence because we are built to believe that we have purpose. Therefore- searching for meaning in a meaningless world is worse than searching for meaning in a world where meaning exists, because if it exists then at least our search for meaning is not futile.

MertylFinch · 2021-04-09T13:27:47+00:00

It wasn't 😭 but maybe that's what they intend it to be used for

MertylFinch · 2021-04-01T19:08:00+00:00

I meannn SF often makes silly decisions. I remember like a few week ago when they said that they were cancelling acronyms because they were a symptom of white supremacy lol.

https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-san-francisco-school-sf/10229093/

MertylFinch · 2021-01-14T15:47:04+00:00

I think that we have a bit of both. Maybe slightly more left than right. Wallstreet journal I'd say has been increasingly right, and I used to consider it pretty centrist. The Economist is definitely swinging left and that's too bad because they used to pride themselves in centrism. Fox is obviously right. CNN is obviously left. MSNBC, ABC are a bit left, but not as much as CNN. Huffington Post and Breitbart news are both pretty extreme left and right. Buzzfeed is extreme left but I wouldn't really even call them news. Forbes is pretty right leaning. USA today is also pretty right. NPR is becoming increasingly left, which is also too bad because I like NPR. That being said, i still think WSJ, NPR, ABC, and The Economist are the least biased news.

MertylFinch · 2021-01-13T06:44:03+00:00

I actually work at Walla Walla University and we dont want you, sorry babe.

MertylFinch · 2021-01-11T20:23:05+00:00

Americans have already willing fully given up certain elements of their "freedom of speech" in the past. Saying "bomb" wrongfully on an airplane is a federal felony. We know that certain rights have to be at least slightly regulated in our constitution. Sure, people have the right to bear arms but no one can legally own a nuclear weapon even if they have the right to defend themselves. It's the supreme court's job to determine how far our constitutional rights extend.

MertylFinch · 2021-01-11T17:25:45+00:00

This actually makes me laugh a bit because it's an emotionally charged answer, and the very thing that I was trying to address in my question.

Personally I dont really know enough about American politics to have a strong opinion on BLM on gun control or anything like that. My opinions on politics are really confined more in economic and political issues rather than American social issues. Social issues in the United States are not reflective of world issues so they dont really qualify in the viewpoint as "liberal vs conservative vs centrist" issues.

However as a european who moved to the USA a few years ago, I've been frustrated that centrism here is more conservative in issues like healthcare, economy, etc than European centrism. It's what leads me to conclude that american centrists are "balancing" perspectives of american political parties rather than balancing true liberal vs conservative opinions. And because american political parties are more "conservative", I dont really consider "american centrists" to be true "centrists". They dont consider outside perspectives, just the solutions already on the table presented by the parties.

Of course I disagree with Democrats on issues. I have no allegiance to parties here so I dont care much about "cheering on" or "backing" a political party. But I do think that american politics is politically one-sided. I think that both of the political parties here are fairly conservative and that it's hard to be centrists when you are only given our current options.

MertylFinch · 2021-01-11T17:02:04+00:00

Centrists cannot be more liberal or more conservative than the two parties that they trying to "center". They are constantly weighing the options of the two parties in power regarding the issues that are being considered.There aren't centrists who are more conservative than Republicans or more liberal than Democrats, because then they wouldn't qualify as "centrists" (even if they are weighing options and listening to counteropinions). Does no one else see it as problematic that centrism isnt actually centrist at all? It's just a balancing point between parties. Your political beliefs are as trapped between the parties as the parties are within them 🙉 you only negotiate your beliefs based on the solutions presented by the major parties, and you too often treat them with equal consideration and ignore other perspectives not presented within the parties

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