[John23832]

I totally agree with this.

The active removal of any (even semblance) of community in society, to be replaced with radical individualism, has been horribly detrimental. There is no shame, there is no right or wrong, there is no responsibility to others.

And this extends to both sides of the political spectrum. The right glorify this "Don't step on me", "I don't care about others that don't exactly fit into my in-group", "no taxes (contributions to society)" mentality, while the left cultivates "we must take care of everyone and make everyone feel included as they are, no matter what, but we can't ask anyone to be responsible to society in any way in return".

We descended in to madness.

[gfxgirl]

Your painting the right as "no taxes" I think they'd paint as "quit wasting money".

As an example, SF has the highest tax revenue per capita in the USA

https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/us-cities-with...

So why is it so dysfunctional? My guess is the right would say because so much is wasted on the wrong things.

Note: I'm not saying the right is correct. I'm only suggesting a different interpretation of their POV.

[John23832]

Everyone thinks that something they don't want to pay for is a "waste of money". When that something that you want to quit spending money on can be characterized as "other people who I don't identify with", you get the right.

SF is a mess because of liberal mismanagement (I say that as someone who identifies as left). Spending money at massive scale without asking the people you're spending money on to fix something in society (whether it's their own actions, or something that they are responsible for). SF went from a 80B surplus to a 15B deficit... and what get it gain from that? How is the city better... It's not.

[annyeonghada]

>When that something that you want to quit spending money on can be characterized as "other people who I don't identify with"

Everyone wants to spend money on something or someone they identify with. It's not like the left has showed any leniency against those it deems unworthy.

[cyberge99]

Sure they have. They believe in social safety nets for all (livable wages to reduce crime, for example). They also tend to be more socially inclusive (I rarely see a racist gay person for example).

[John23832]

Woah there... there are PLENTY of racist gay people.

[slake]

Not from a government perspective, but does anyone want to 'quit spending money' on anything anymore? I find that as a society we've become addicted to spending on stuff and we never cut back spending on anything anymore.

I don't know if the majority agrees but we've all become addicted to e-commerce spending. The number of shoes is not counted in number of total shoes owned but number of shoes bought per month. A stock metric vs a flow metric.

Everybody has a vague idea that they're addicted but nobody seems to want to acknowledge it or even track it.

It's almost as if cutting frivolous spending is no longer a virtue.

Sorry if that's a rant.

[berkes]

This is a very US centric concept, though. Whereas the original question was far more generic.

[vladvasiliu]

Anecdotally, this is something I notice in Europe, too.

[berkes]

There is far more division, in Europe too, certainly.

But most European countries have far more plurality in their party systems. Main exception being Britain, with a two party system, but they don't even want to be European.

So in Europe there's certainly a strong left and right. Just also a lot in-between. Not black-white, binary, but a spectrum of colors, analogue.

[tlarkworthy]

I moved to Germany and find they are quite outspoken with enforcing community norms

[hiddencost]

Meh. That's a straw man based on ignorance.

The left puts effort into responsibility and care for community. Why do you think the right advocates for dismantling social services and the left champions them?

[John23832]

I'm not ignorant at all. I live in NYC (the largest "community" in the country) which has the largest, most systematically effective social services system in the country. It's one thing I appreciate most about the city, other than the subway.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing (or good things used to advance perverse incentives).

Too Much of a Good Thing: Methadone and "clean needle" clinics on 125th and Brooklyn under the guis of "harm reduction". The goal should be to reduce drug usage. Not make a shopping mall for dealers and zombies. Another is the total hands off approach of the mentally ill and aggressive homeless on the subways and on the streets.

Good Things Use To Advance Perverse Incentives: The entire homeless industrial complex in California, which does absolutely nothing but syphon money to these homeless "nonprofits". I lived in both San Jose and LA and frankly the situation was addressed in a maddeningly regressive fashion.

You sometimes have to ask yourself WHY someone is championing something. Very often it's not because of altruism.

[danaris]

The goal should be to reduce harm. The idea that drug use is axiomatically bad is an invention of the War On Drugs.

Criminalizing drug addiction increases harm. Treating it as a disease provably reduces harm. And, in fact, reduces drug use.

Methadone and clean needle clinics are pointed in the right direction, but they're not enough. They just happen to be all the people who got them put in place could manage.

[John23832]

The goal should be to reduce drug use and end addiction. "Harm" is relative. There are functioning heroin addicts(either tar or hillbilly heroin) that some people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart) would say aren't "harming" anyone. It's still not something to societally encourage.

I also said nothing of criminalization of addicts. Seller's, sure.

> Methadone and clean needle clinics are pointed in the right direction, but they're not enough. They just happen to be all the people who got them put in place could manage.

This makes no sense. The halfass'd effort is worse than nothing at all.

[rowtheway]

Broadly speaking, the community-oriented left in places like the US support bureaucratic government welfare programs, while community-oriented conservatives support more organic, often religious, and non-government charitable organizations. My preference runs toward the latter, for reasons best explained by John Carmack:

https://archive.ph/0tHg4

[cmoski]

"more organic, often religious, and non-government charitable organizations"

Or none at all. Or ones for people in a select group.

Most people live in towns, cities, states and nations, not communities. State and national governments cannot rely on the good of the neighbour. Larger, more equitable systems need to be put in place.

[rowtheway]

> Or none at all. Or ones for people in a select group.

Bureaucrats do this too. See the history of communism in Europe, or present state of communism in China. Centralized welfare is a centralized system of control in the hands of politicians.

[freedom2099]

If you don’t see the issue with “often religious” then nothing I say can change your mind! Religion as a moral compass is horrible! Religious communities are often the most toxic ones!

[rowtheway]

I am an atheist ex-Catholic. The big atheist-leftist crowd in my college town are intensely more violent, toxic, and racist than local Catholics or Lutherans. Lack of religious belief is no guarantee of kindness or rationality, nor is the presence of faith a strong signal of evil.

[cyberge99]

Behavior is a strong signal and I see more Christian harlots and swindlers than people practicing Christ’s philosophy. The left at least don’t pretend to be wholesome and righteous.

[kcplate]

> The left at least don’t pretend to be wholesome and righteous

Funny, I use this same line about the right (at least in reference to politicians) in the US.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> I see more Christian harlots and swindlers than people practicing Christ’s philosophy

Perhaps "more people who claim/pretend to be Christian"? You can hardly call someone Christian if they're not following Jesus; it makes as much as calling someone an atheist just because they call themselves an atheist right before talking about how God exists.

[freedom2099]

I am Italian… raised catholic… my high school was owned and managed by the church… and I am an atheist as well! An I can tell you that in my country the problem are the believers not the atheists! The presence of faith implies you are willing to outsource your moral compass to what a bunch of primitive men belived to be right

[rowtheway]

When it comes to value systems that have stood the test of time and have well-understood failure modes vs. whatever hot new theory was cooked up on Twitter or Tumblr last week (the main vectors for recent moral changes in my country), I generally prefer the former.

[nailer]

The left champions not working, rather than social care. In the UK it’s common to hear ‘I’m on benefits’ as an excuse in itself, rather than ‘I am disabled’ or ‘I am elderly’ or some other legitimate reason for receiving money.

[andrelaszlo]

I wonder what you hear then. To me it sounds like "I'm out of options". It makes me think of this aid program that gave people in really poor countries money instead of food. With money they could of course buy food, but also save to improve their life in general, for example by improving their housing, buying a goat, sending their children to school, etc. Previously, they were just dependent on the food, medicines, and whatever was provided by the system and the situation rarely changed for the better.

I think it's similar, at least where I live. With a better support system, people seem to be less likely to get dependent on it. Seems like a good thing to do in the long run, even if you just think about it economically.

Unless, perhaps, you need a class of people that are in a sort of benefits bondage. I don't really want to think that this is by design though.

[nailer]

My expectation is that healthy adults should work.

[coding123]

I am not religious but I do see the general fall of religion as a huge part in this. I've warned people that an individuals moral compass is not a strong as the influence a communities moral compass has on the individual. Currently we are set to just keep legalizing everything because it's good for somebody.

[rowtheway]

In America, you don’t need to reach for philosophy to explain the destruction of high-trust communities when history will do:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2056992.Left_Behind_In_R...

Summary of the book by a far-right nutjob:

https://twitter.com/GodCloseMyEyes/status/141461967105629798...

Community culture still exists in some places. Those places generally aren’t trying to solve massively complex racial or mass-migration conflicts at the same time as healthcare, housing, education and so on. Voters and leaders have limited time and attention. Fewer problems to solve means more resources available per problem.