this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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It's true that those with higher education are more likely to slant less, and academia is made up of people with a lot of education.
That's not the same as the existence of an "academic left". They're not an organized group with goals and opinions... You can divide any subset of the population however you want and label them a group, but that's just a set of people with shared traits.
You can study them, and maybe there's some interesting patterns in the data, but that "group" is individuals. They don't coordinate, they don't have meetings, they don't have an objective... They don't exist as a group
I broadly agree with your political goals. I also think we need to do things smaller and more locally, I think we should be as free as possible without imposing on the rights of others. But I've evolved more as I've learned more about economic systems and government - ultimately, I think size is the one true evil. Whenever we set up a way for people to collect power, it attracts the worst people and entrenches them... They then complete for more.
Also, the world economy is absurd and untenable - we print/create money through debt. That only works when you produce value with that loan, and that only works at scale when you have growth - and all available markets are approaching saturation. We can't maintain the growth rate to keep feeding the beast, and look around... Companies are cannibalizing themselves and sacrificing their future to keep up in the short term.
We need to figure something else out very soon, and we need to realign incentive structures to align with human needs. There's countless options and I've got some I prefer, but systematic change is a lot to explain in one post.
The modern Democratic party is neoliberal, it sounds like you're more of a leftist than a liberal - liberals seek progress through maintaining the system, and I think (like me) you don't see endless bureaucracy as a potential solution
And there are lots of ways to break this down. But I think it's interesting to look at one clear point of evidence: CEOs are much more likely to be Republican than Democrat. CEOs tend to be well educated (most have masters, many have PhDs).
I'm going to make a bit of a leap here, but it seems Republicans tend to believe experience has more value than formal education, hence why they're small business owners, CEOs, etc, whereas Democrats tend to put a lot of stock into formal education, hence why they're professors, scientists, etc.
So your average Democrat likely believes in the traditional lifestyle track: go to school, work hard, get promoted. Whereas your average Republican likely believes you need to be independent, build a network, and fight outside the "system" to get what you want. That's a pretty broad brush stroke, but I think it explains a lot of policy choices:
Sure, and the same goes for any other vaguely categorized group of people. I don't think anyone other than a few nutjobs are arguing that there's a big conspiracy, but when pretty much any group has a clear majority, you get problems.
Absolutely.
I don't really care about the amount of money involved, I care more about the relative complexity of services being offered. Once a system reaches a certain level of complexity, it's easy to hide all manner of evils.
For example, I'd much rather have something like UBI/NIT than our current welfare system because the welfare system has way too many moving parts. UBI is a simple cash calculation, whereas food stamps, housing assistance, etc all have interested parties that want a carve-out. Look at all the Medicare supplement sellers that exist and tell me they don't have an interest in changing Medicare to benefit them...
I want a few, simple, transparent services that the public easily understands and that journalists can easily audit. Complexity breeds corruption.
More of a libertarian/classical liberal (not the current US Libertarian Party, and certainly not what Republicans mean when they say "libertarian").
I believe in maximizing individual rights, free markets, and small, focused government. I think we need some very key reforms to encourage true competition, because special interests have eroded it for short term profit. A proper free market will self correct in most cases, and a small, effective government is there if it doesn't. This video is about traffic, but I think it can apply here too. Big government is like building a massive highway, where everyone gets the same, crappy experience, whereas a free market is like lots of competing streets that are highly optimized for their target market. People say they want the bigger roads (when all you have is a hammer...), but really the plethora of alternative (parallel) options is ultimately better for everyone.
I also very much believe in a strong social safety net. You can't truly improve yourself if you have to work two jobs just to keep a roof over your head.
So I'm not sure if that qualifies me as a leftist or not, I honestly don't know that people really mean when the say "leftist" or "far right." I believe in smaller governments, with more focus on local government. I'm excited about my city rolling out municipal fiber, but I'd vote against my state doing the same thing, because there's so much more risk of corruption at the state level.