• @Sterile_Technique
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    31 month ago

    Steelmanning

    I didn’t know there was an actual word for it!

    The abortion shitshow was actually the topic of that lesson because of how tribal each side has gotten. That was… idk, 15 years ago? Not much has changed lol. Initially we were just told to prepare a debate on it, so we ofc pulled heavily from whichever echo chamber we adhered to, and we had all our (very flawed) talking points ready to go. Then the prof dropped the ol’ switcheroo. Thoroughly broke highschool me’s brain - in hindsight it was pretty funny to be in the middle of a room full of people who thought we knew our shit, all suddenly realizing we don’t know squat.

    That was a fucking good prof!

    The LP… they sound alright on paper. The non-agression principle is solid. All the emphasis on a ‘free market’ sounds nice if you assume corporations elect for ethical practices when they’re not mandated (lol). I can talk em up in the scope of a lunch break; it’d be hard to keep the ball rolling much passed that though.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 month ago

      No, nothing has changed. And that was a good professor. I’m kind of in the place where we’ve picked metrics to decide when it’s fine to let a life go so why can’t we look at the other side and aim for a non-magical start.

      The LP has pretty good social ideas. First electoral vote for a woman. First to include sex workers in the party platform. The NAP is interesting because both the left and right are down, we just define aggression differently.

      With sane liability laws and a financial system that isn’t built for large corps, a free market could work. Where business has responsibility for its actions and is rated based on customer liability vs assets. Libertarians don’t want no regulation, they just prefer private regulation. Ancaps are kind of the same. So long as we keep trying to patch up our bullshit system instead of addressing root causes, we’ll continue getting fucked.

      I’m still kind of a libertarian. My anti-corp and non-propertarian leanings make me somewhat left politically, but I have strong ethics about helping each other and those that can’t really help themselves. I just don’t like using violence to make people do what I want.

      • @Sterile_Technique
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        21 month ago

        The LP definitely has potential for growth. I’d love to see them eventually take the GOP’s seat as one of the big two. All the social stuff would pass pretty much overnight cuz that’s a win for everyone; we’d just bash heads over where to (not) spend money and what (not) to regulate, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing - at least the two parties would each have a clear objective for voters to weigh, vs the GOP’s nonstop contrarian bullshit for the sole sake of contrarian bullshit. It’d also force the blue team to get their shit together and run some actual progressives instead of this race for second-worst we keep dragging our feet in. I can’t stand this loop of voting for someone because they’re not a Nazi. It’s necessary, cuz I don’t want the fucking Nazi, but is that really the highest we can set the damn bar?

        My political wet dream is to look at a ballot and actually hesitate for a minute because all of the options on it are good options and trying to pick out the best one becomes a difficult task. That will never happen as long as it’s red vs blue. Yellow vs blue though… there’s potential.