[BorgHunter]

Broadly, left-wing politics favors making money and power more diffuse and is suspicious of hierarchy, right-wing politics favors making money and power more concentrated and embraces hierarchy. Politics is, of course, messy and not everything fits neatly into this framework (and people have idiosyncratic opinions sometimes), but that's how I view it in broad strokes. What about you?

[MrBuddyCasino]

> Broadly, left-wing politics favors making money and power more diffuse and is suspicious of hierarchy

How do you "make money more diffuse"? I would agree that the hierarchy thing is broadly correct, and many use this definition, but I find it unsatisfactory, as it does not move me in any way. "Yeah hierarchy is so cool man" said no one ever.

Taking left-wing ideology at face value is a mistake, what is interesting is the underlying psychology. The stated goals and how it plays out in practise are never aligned, thus the "real communism has never been tried" meme. If you are attached to leftism or simply never delved deeper into political philosophy, these definitions might offend you, but they are psychologically correct:

"The bugman pretends to be motivated by compassion, but is instead motivated by a titanic hatred of the well-turned-out and beautiful." [BAP]

"Communism is when ugly deformed freaks make it illegal to be normal then rob and/or kill all successful people out of petty resentment and cruelty. The ideology is all just window dressing." [Mystery Grove]

[BorgHunter]

> I would agree that the hierarchy thing is broadly correct, and many use this definition, but I find it unsatisfactory, as it does not move me in any way. "Yeah hierarchy is so cool man" said no one ever.

And yet, the two quotes you put forth as "psychologically correct" both use hierarchies as assumed priors. In the first, a hierarchy between "the well-turned-out and beautiful" and everyone else, and in the second, a hierarchy between "ugly deformed freaks" and "normal [people]". Do you feel that these are useful distinctions to make when setting public policy?

> Taking left-wing ideology at face value is a mistake

Taking any ideology at face value is a mistake. Words are cheap; it's easy to say one thing and do another, especially when political parties control entire media ecosystems due to the consolidation of media companies that the root comment of this thread was discussing. Is the Chinese Communist Party communist in any meaningful sense? Does it serve to weaken or reinforce hierarchies? Does it seek to empower its constituents, or consolidate power for the benefit of the few?

> How do you "make money more diffuse"?

There are tons of ways to do this, some better, some worse, and I think it's out of scope to go through them all. We do at least have a direct measurement of this one, though, called the Gini coefficient.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Max thread depth reached, so continuing here.

> And yet, the two quotes you put forth as "psychologically correct" both use hierarchies as assumed priors.

This is correct, but I would rather call it "accepting reality", not "motivating factor".

> Do you feel that these are useful distinctions to make when setting public policy?

Without a doubt: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gdz4G24WIAA6TEd?format=png&name=...

> Taking any ideology at face value is a mistake. Words are cheap; it's easy to say one thing and do another, especially when political parties control entire media ecosystems due to the consolidation of media companies that the root comment of this thread was discussing. Is the Chinese Communist Party communist in any meaningful sense? Does it serve to weaken or reinforce hierarchies? Does it seek to empower its constituents, or consolidate power for the benefit of the few?

I agree. This is why studying history is important.

> [...] Gini coefficient

So, equality. How did that work out for checks notes every single time it was tried, ever.

[n4r9]

> "Yeah hierarchy is so cool man" said no one ever.

Perhaps not in those exact words. I'd argue that an implicit desire for hierarchy pervades a lot of right-wing thought. E.g. wanting a strong leader, a harsh penalty system, and traditional paternalistic social stratification.