Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 382 posts

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#141

Post by mntmoss »

scarmig wrote: post #105
CameronNemo wrote: post #99

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…

This is not accurate. Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those. In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about th…

This can also be predicted in terms of realpolitik. If the power of nations tends to consolidate along predictable lines, then the political question at any moment is reduced to a left-right "rate of reform" along each axis, with the furthest right positions being near-zero rates of change, but all viable positions serving the purpose of ensuring power for the stakeholders. This makes the right tend to automatically converge onto a mythologized moment in the past where their power is greatest - rights of kings, supremacy myths, and so on, while the left goes in a spectrum of directions but must ultimately form a singular coalition in order to gain power. Thus the prevailing tendency of left-right politics is also one of leaps forward from the left and gradual slides back from the right as the coalition breaks down. The new consensus is different from the old, but it's also typically not the most ideologically left one, since it emerges to compromise with the present realities, and the more radical you go, the more it resembles blood-in-the-streets revolution, which is a huge roll of the dice.

The developed world as a whole seems to be approaching one of those "great leap" moments today as more and more issues have fallen into partisan extremism, motivating the search for a new consensus.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#142

Post by nottorp »

slumdev wrote: post #133
namirez wrote: post #114

> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized. I just don't know. This is a typical complaint by the so called moderates who feel unappreciated by the left (whatever that is). But I yet to…

The far left in the United States mostly doesn't exist. The corporatist center-left has given up on meaningful economic policy change and mostly just panders on abortion, gay marriage, and gender identity.

Yeah, what left in the US? They have no idea what "left" is...

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#143

Post by wbronitsky »

hindsightbias wrote: post #138
namirez wrote: post #114

> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Or perhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simply more disorganized. I just don't know. This is a typical complaint by the so called moderates who feel unappreciated by the left (whatever that is). But I yet to…

[flagged]

In what way is Hillary Clinton a Marxist? That seems like a pretty outlandish statement directed towards someone with so much money and power

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#144

Post by wbronitsky »

Apocryphon wrote: post #121
jpitz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he breaking it?

This is an essay on politics. It goes to show that people in tech are acknowledging more that the industry is not apolitical and has a very real social and political effect on the world at large, and are so dropping the pretense of lacking political interest. That and like the rest of the world, the tech industry has become increasingly politically polarized over the last half decade.

I think you have conflated PGs blog with HN. They are firmly separate entities

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#145

Post by redisman »

nottorp wrote: post #142
slumdev wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far left in the United States mostly doesn't exist. The corporatist center-left has given up on meaningful economic policy change and mostly just panders on abortion, gay marriage, and gender identity.

Yeah, what left in the US? They have no idea what "left" is...

The "extreme" left in the US system maps (policy-wise) almost exactly to center-right in most other western democracies. Talking about viable politicians not twitter creatures by the way.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#146

Post by robbrown451 »

CameronNemo wrote: post #99

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…

Very true.

In the absence of first past the post voting (and its tendency to force people into parties to avoid losing to people who do [1], and for those parties to coalesce into two dominant, equally balance parties), there is still a polarity of, say, liberal and conservative. At least in the original meanings of the terms, which has to do with whether you go toward new things or prefer traditions.

But under FPTP, right vs left encompasses a lot more than that.

And more importantly, FPTP doesn't allow for middle ground. If you are in the middle, you can't get elected, because neither party would nominate you.

If we had a electoral system that tended to elect the first choice of the median voter, things would be dramatically different. Yes there would be people on the extremes, but most people -- those elected, as well as regular citizens -- would tend be "accidental moderates."

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#147

Post by eanzenberg »

justin66 wrote: post #132

It is so peculiar that anyone believes the United States possesses a "far left" as a force in politics. This requires one to ignore political science and ideology, not to mention the practical politics of the rest of the world, and simply place people on a continuum and draw a line near some perceived median.

[flagged]

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#148

Post by namirez »

nottorp wrote: post #142
slumdev wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far left in the United States mostly doesn't exist. The corporatist center-left has given up on meaningful economic policy change and mostly just panders on abortion, gay marriage, and gender identity.

Yeah, what left in the US? They have no idea what "left" is...

Sadly this is true. A big pillar of the left politics is labor unions and profit sharing, which is totally absent in the US discourse. Instead, we just hear about safe spaces and bathrooms.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#149

Post by robbrown451 »

scarmig wrote: post #105
CameronNemo wrote: post #99

Right and left are arbitrary constructs necessitated by a first past the post voting system. Change the electoral system and you will see much more diverse and meaningful party affiliation. >The effect of a system based on plurality voting is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distri…

This is not accurate. Yes, many election systems result in more parties than FPTP. But left and right still have salience within those. In fact, you can look at how each politician votes (without explicitly coding votes as left or right). This itself forms a space equal to the number of votes taken. But that vote space can be projected into a much lower dimensional space that captures most of the information about th…

Sure there may still be a right left axis, but it wouldn't be condensed into the "main" axis, and people and candidates would form a nice bell curve rather than one with two humps.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#150

Post by joejerryronnie »

simonh wrote: post #16

As a British moderate conservative, the differences between US and UK (arguably European) politics are fascinating. What moderate means is so different. For reference I’m a lifelong conservative voter that grew up under Maggie Thatcher. We do have a middle of the road Liberal Democrat party, but to my mind they maintain their position in the middle ground by dodging the hard issues. They are intentional moderates in…

US politics has devolved into a series of ideological purity tests. Neither the bigoted, dated ideas of the GOP or the magical, fairy dust ideas of the progressive Dems have anything to do with actually solving problems. Most US voters are forced to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Post reply on HN