Does reality have a left-wing bias?
It has been asserted on a different thread that reality has a left-wing bias. Rather than de-rail the other thread I've started a new one. I would assert that reality has no bias at all. Indeed the discernment of reality usually entails casting bias to one side. Of course what the statement "reality has a left-wing bias" really means is that the left tend to be better than the right at discerning the truth.
I strongly disagree with this assertion. I can see both truth and falsehoods asserted from both right and left wing perspectives:
1. Left-wing truths- The left usually lean towards the weaker members of society. As the wealthy have greater access to the justice system the poor are often unfairly treated in a society. They also have less access to resources to make their voice heard. In this sense the left can sometimes uncover truths that are obscured by an unequal distribution of resources.
2.Left-wing falsehoods- there can be little doubt in this day and age that capitalist free-markets have delivered a higher standard of living for all income groups. The left sometimes deny this and perpetuate a myth that capitalism causes poverty.
3. Right-wing truths- The right assert that capitalist free markets increase freedom generally and promote multi-culturalism. This is a credible assertion. Free markets create a plurality of power centers and groups with a broad range of world-views are free to use their resources in support of their particular culture.
4. Right-wing falsehoods- The right sometimes ignore or deny the unintended consequences of the free market, which justify state intervention such as environmental damage and inequality.
I can't see that any ideology has a monopoly on the truth.
I strongly disagree with this assertion. I can see both truth and falsehoods asserted from both right and left wing perspectives:
1. Left-wing truths- The left usually lean towards the weaker members of society. As the wealthy have greater access to the justice system the poor are often unfairly treated in a society. They also have less access to resources to make their voice heard. In this sense the left can sometimes uncover truths that are obscured by an unequal distribution of resources.
2.Left-wing falsehoods- there can be little doubt in this day and age that capitalist free-markets have delivered a higher standard of living for all income groups. The left sometimes deny this and perpetuate a myth that capitalism causes poverty.
3. Right-wing truths- The right assert that capitalist free markets increase freedom generally and promote multi-culturalism. This is a credible assertion. Free markets create a plurality of power centers and groups with a broad range of world-views are free to use their resources in support of their particular culture.
4. Right-wing falsehoods- The right sometimes ignore or deny the unintended consequences of the free market, which justify state intervention such as environmental damage and inequality.
I can't see that any ideology has a monopoly on the truth.
Comments
From the 'truths' asserted, the 'left-wing truths' appear to be about what people do, while the 'right-wing truths' are about what people say - apparently ('The right assert') without the support of evidence. This doesn't feel like comparing like with like.
Since the Eighties, when the modern economic free market consensus came into being, incomes have stagnated for the majority of income groups, and income for the poorest income groups has begun to fall again.
Those nations where standards of living for all income groups are rising at the moment are nations that have much more state involvement in the economy that is standard in the West.
Summary: the form of free market capitalism currently advocated by the right is not the form that has delivered a higher standard of living for all income groups. The form of capitalism that has delivered a higher standard of living is that advocated by what is now the far left.
This saying originated with Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Dinner [video]. It may or may not have been a play on a Bush aide's (probably Karl Rove) denigration of what he called "the reality-base community".
There does not seem to be a similar thread of conspiracism and will to power among the American left. See, for example, the QAnon theory that a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles controls the world and that Donald Trump and the secretly still alive JFK, Jr. are working behind the scenes to uncover it. I don't think there's an equivalent on the American left. Certainly not one that would be given the credence that QAnon has been given by Republican elected officials.
I'm not suggesting that the truth is that no state intervention is justified. You may have noted that I cited this as an example of a right-wing falsehood. The point is that even where there has been state intervention it is capitalist free market that have produced the wealth. Living standards were far lower in Chine before the decision to liberalise markets there.
Nonetheless I am not convinced that your data is correct. It does not appear to be the conclusion of this report:
https://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn89.pdf
It is also not consistent with my experience. When I was growing up in Liverpool in the early 80s there were eye-sores everywhere and you could see the impact of poverty. During the economic boom that began around 1994 there was significant redevelopment in the city.
Could it be that by controlling inflation people were better off in real terms? I'm not suggesting that incomes rose but only that the standard of living rose after 1979.
I'm not sure whether it comes to understanding local people or where saying something is able to alter reality, but in such cases the right do possibly seem to have evidence on their side. "Get Brexit Done" worked. The people (despite the evidence, and accepting the whole FPTP thing) did see Johnson as a strong leader. You could even add, people don't want to wear masks. Shares could be in a similar bracket.
On the other hand the negotiations are a different type of reality, and even more so with the Virus. You can't bluff the virus, you can't negotiate with the virus, and because it's exponential you can't jump from "nothing's happened, quit whining" to "too late now, time to move on".
[and there with this fundemental reality the right do seem to struggle]
And most of the time, a slanted story isn't untrue. All stories include some aspects of reality and leave out others. Left-leaning or right-leaning narratives leave out different bits of the whole picture.
Scrutinise away.
Removing tinted spectacles is precisely what I'm advocating. I'm not sure that Dafyd and I disagree that capitalist free markets produce wealth. The aim of government interventions is usually to mitigate the unintended effects of free markets. Occasionally an attempt is made to intervene to the extent that free markets are entirely obstructed as in China under Mao. Living standards were very poor in that scenario as they also were in eastern Europe before the wall fell.
A society that provides universal basic services is impossible to quantify by that criteria. Universal healthcare is a huge boon to those of restricted means, as would free high quality education, housing, transport and legal services, and sustenance (however it is provided).
On a more retrospective note, stripping agricultural land from rural families deprives them of shelter, food, and income - but forcing them to work in a sweatshop for a dollar a day is counted as 'lifting them out of poverty'.
I think Carl has a point. The post election coverage of talk radio, Newsmax, OAN and the chat Hosts on Fox News has been devoted to fostering and spreading the false narrative of fraud. And they are believed by some three quarters of GOP voters.
This has been referred to as the "Shape of the Earth: Opinions Differ" style of journalism; avoiding "a slanted story" by not actually distinguishing between fact and falsehood.
The evidence is that what creates wealth is not pure state intervention and not pure free market control, but a mixture of the two.
If you start from total state control and free the market up a bit then you can say that it is the addition of capitalist free market elements that have made wealth. But equally if you start from a position of near total capitalist free market and add state intervention, as with the New Deal or the UK welfare state, then you might say that it was the state intervention that made the wealth. The point is that you want a mixture and the mixture that you want has considerably more state intervention than is considered mainstream in the UK at the moment.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the USA leans further to the right than other high income countries in a variety of ways. But the land of the free market just doesn't get the same results on really basic things like life expectancy, which for the first time is going backwards. As has been mentioned above, the time when the USA really did lead the world was a couple of generations back when the USA was not as right-wing as it is now.
I am not anti capitalism as such. I used to have shares in Disneyland Paris until Disney bought us out. Capitalism cannot be left to run free.
As to reality. Reality has a different meaning for different people.
Consider the first great project in United States history -- the Erie Canal. A huge amount of economic growth sprang from that. Are you suggesting that it would have been dug by the workers with or without New York state investing the huge amount of capital needed for the project? That just doesn't make sense to me. You can argue that there are various ways to get the capital for an enterprise (and the Erie Canal seems to be an interesting case in point for such a discussion), but without the initial investment providing the energy of activation I am hard-pressed to see the trio you list as having accomplished this feat.
Conventional economics has it that it is the combination of land capital and labour that produces wealth.
Ah, the golden age, when was that again?
Aye, under FDR for a start. There must be an infographic showing egalitarianism's rise and fall?
I think it's more accurate to say that Republicans say it will hurt the economy now, while Democrats say they are trying to save the economy of a hundred or more years in the future.
If it were not for Markets forcing down prices then everyone - most especially the poor - would be considerably worse off in terms of the resources, services and goods to which they can gain access.
But their affordability is also affected by poor people's incomes, and the push to keep prices low depresses wages of their producers. It's no help to me if potatoes are sixpence a hundredweight if in order for them to be that price I'm paid three farthings every other month to make the potato sacks.
The poor who consume resources, services and goods are not some separate category from the poor who produce resources, services and goods. They are one and the same. Low prices benefits only the already-wealthy who consume the most. Fair pay - reducing profits for capital is included in that - benefits the poorest the most.
I think most economists agree with this (n.b. current writer is not an economist). Where they begin to differ is over which of the three required categories should get the reward for producing the wealth.
Yes, and also no. Low prices achieved by efficiency savings (eg mechanization) also benefit both the remaining workers who run the machines, and the workers who are replaced by machines, under the assumption that they find something else to do. Low prices achieved by exploiting the downtrodden masses behave rather as you describe. Low prices achieved by importing cheap shit from whichever developing country offers the cheapest labour could go either way when you consider domestic workers, but is clearly exploitative when you also consider the foreign workers.
Economists have coined the term the Great Compression* to indicate the compression of the upper and lower tiers of American wages to be closer to each other. This was from the early 1940s through the late 1970s. This was accomplished through strong unionism, progressive taxation, and vigorous anti-trust enforcement. In other words, the sorts of things that are anathema to most modern conservatives.
*Any large-scale economic phenomenon will have the modifier "Great" applied to it by economists if they can get away with it.
Indeed. And make sure not to get the Great Compression confused with the Great Contraction.
But lots are. The food banks I have mentioned are proof of that. If you are working full time and cannot afford to feed your family something is wrong. If you have two full time incomes abs still can’t afford to get a house then something is wrong.
Lower prices do cause the producers of say, coffee, chocolate and bananas to suffer, forces children into work and not school. Allows children to be made to use dangerous equipment.
Producer in the west say their profits are being tightened so that are making substantially less than they did. That affects people’s lives.
The markets and therefore capitalism just sees cost and profit.
If you are happy with that ok.
Assume a can opener.
It's clearly true that if what you produce is potato sacks then the first-round effect of a fall in the price of potato sacks is that you're worse off. But if sacks of potatoes are then cheaper, then all the consumers of potatoes who don't work in the potato industry are (first round) better off.
You're right that it's little consolation to you that the potatoes you can buy are cheaper, because (first round) everything else still costs the same, and the whole of your income has been cut.
Then all the feedback loops and second-round effects kick in. More sacks of potatoes are sold (because there's more demand at the lower price). So some of the farmers will grow more potatoes (and if they're working at full capacity, that means they have to grow less of something else. Like maybe turnips. So the price of turnips goes up).
But your ability to buy other products (like maybe cheese) has decreased, so the price and volume of cheese produced goes down...
The likelihood is that when everything settles into a new equilibrium (or new trajectory if the underlying rates of change are such that equilibrium is never reached) you'll still be worse off. But whether the overall net change is that everybody is on average a little better off or a little worse off is hard to predict.
Unless you know better ?
I would say that the gospel includes both elements of right and left. On the one hand the gospel presupposes a radical equality that none of the conventional barriers to inclusion such as income, social status or ethnicity can exclude a believer from God's kingdom. Most people would perceive this equality as left-wing. On the other hand there is a radical belief that there must be a penalty for sin. Most people would interpret judgment as right-wing. I can't pretend to be able to fully comprehend the ineffable nature of justice, but it seems to me that the gospel unites those parts of left and right that thirst for justice.
Many on the political left thirst for the eradication of the injustice that arises from inequality. Many on the political right thirst for the justice that arises from having freedom.
For me the nobility of many on the left rests on their love of equality whilst the nobility of many on the right rests on their love of freedom. At the same time the scourge of the left is their cynicism that cannot trust people enough to give them freedom whilst the scourge of the right is the narcissism that arises from a sense of entitlement. People just ain't perfect.
I don't think this is fair. Conservatives have in the past governed economic systems that can properly be described as mixed economies. Why can't those conservatives represent the "right wing"?
I think we are presently in a phase where the right of politics is led by extremists, not by people who can be described as representing the mainstream. This is as unfair as using a Marxist writer for Green Left magazine to represent the left.
The Trump Presidency demonstrates that the GOP is an extreme, proto-fascist party in its current iteration. It is no longer a suitable representative of right wing politics.