[mionhe]

Yes, I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

Looking at it that way, though, I find myself concerned with the people who are setting themselves up as the arbiters of my fate. Regardless of party affiliations, they don't seem to think very highly of me or care about my personal happiness.

Seeing that is the case, I'd rather they stay out of the business of pursuing my happiness and instead support my freedom to pursue happiness. I can be responsible for my own happiness.

[wredcoll]

> Yes, I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

I find this meme, in the original sense, rather odd. Speaking as an american, over the last 40 years the right wing of our political institutions have been extremely hierarchical and authoritarian. Right wing ideologies are almost entirely based on which group should obey which other group and why.

The term left-wing has gotten a little vague recently, but I think you could say that the common premise of most of their political theory is that there's already/always going to be a powerful government that everyone has to obey so we might as well make that government the best it can possibly be for as many people as possible.

(I have a personal theory that political power, much like energy, can never actually be destroyed, merely moved.)

[BigFnTelly]

> (I have a personal theory that political power, much like energy, can never actually be destroyed, merely moved.)

This journal article discusses power in two forms:

- 'Power to' (freedom, from others): a variable-sum game

- 'Power over' (others, ultimately denying freedoms): a zero-sum game

I'm no scientist and this is just from the abstract: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00323187.2020.1...

[eru]

> - 'Power over' (others, ultimately denying freedoms): a zero-sum game

You are being way to generous here. You are suggesting that no matter how much we deny freedoms and give some people power over others, the sum will not change? (And in reverse, no matter how much we stop denying freedoms etc, the sum will also still stay fixed?)

I doubt that.

[marcosdumay]

If you speak for the US, your political system has only 2 powerful entities, one on the far Right, flirting with corporation capture, and the other on the far Right going into fanatical Fascism.

[eru]

If only corporations would actually capture anything.

[marcosdumay]

Hum... You mean on the US? Except for the military products, telecom, fossil fuel production, automobile and aviation manufacturing, health-care and drugs manufacture, audio-visual industries, retail, information service, what industry ever captured anything?

[eru]

See https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...

[pixl97]

>I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

I mean, no I really don't summarize it that way at all.

>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect

Is a better, but much more politically charged saying.

Moreso, self determination is more of a libertarian thing rather than right directly.