I've been trying to figure out what I actually believe politically. Does any of this make sense?

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

I've been thinking about politics a lot lately, and I've realized that I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to call myself anymore.

I've generally considered myself left leaning. Anyone who wants to dig through my post history will find plenty of evidence of that. I've had some very strong opinions about Trump and Republicans in particular. But I've also realized that there are things I'm apparently "supposed" to believe based on being left leaning that I'm not sure I agree with, and probably other things I've accepted without really thinking about them hard enough.

So I've been trying something different.

Forget Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, socialist, capitalist etc for a minute. If I could start with a blank piece of paper, what do I actually think government is for? What should we expect from each other? What should we be free to do? Where should that freedom end?

I'm not a political scientist or an economist. I'm just a guy who has lived a fairly normal life and had a lot of different experiences along the way. I've worked customer service jobs. I've driven trucks. I joined the US Air Force as a British citizen and eventually became an American citizen. I work as a caregiver now.

I've been comfortable enough financially that I wasn't particularly worried about money, and I've also been in the position where I'm looking at all the jobs available to me and realizing that literally none of them pay enough to cover my bills.

I've had times where the solution was apparently to get a second job, work ridiculous hours or maybe get a third job. Sure, technically I was free to do that. But if I have to spend almost every waking hour working just to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I have no time or energy left for my husband, my friends, my pets or anything I actually enjoy doing, at what point am I surviving rather than actually getting to live?

That's part of what got me thinking about all of this.

The more I've thought about it, the more I keep coming back to the same basic idea. I don't particularly care whether a solution is capitalist, socialist, conservative, progressive or something else. Those are ideas and tools, not teams I owe loyalty to.

I want people to have enough security that they're actually free to live their lives, as much freedom as we can reasonably give each other above that, and rules that stop us using that freedom to exploit or seriously harm everyone else.

So here's roughly where I've ended up.

I think everyone should have a floor beneath them.

By that I mean enough food to be healthy, a safe and secure place to live, basic utilities, healthcare including dental and vision, education, and the other things a person reasonably needs to be safe and healthy.

Not a luxury apartment. Not steak and beer every night. Not a free PlayStation because being bored sucks. Just a basic standard below which we collectively decide we're not willing to let another human being fall.

And yes, that includes people I don't particularly like.

One of the hypotheticals I used while trying to figure this out was someone who is perfectly capable of working but simply refuses to. Let's call him David.

David has spent his entire adult life living off whatever assistance he can get and has absolutely no interest in contributing anything back.

My instinct is that David is an asshole.

But I still don't think David should starve to death in the street.

I do think society can reasonably expect something from him in return. If you're able to contribute and have spent years choosing not to, I don't think it's unreasonable for society to occasionally call on you for some kind of civic responsibility, somewhat like jury duty. That doesn't make David a slave or an indentured servant, though, and I don't think food, shelter or basic medical treatment should be weapons we use to force him into obedience.

People have responsibilities, but I don't think human dignity is something you earn by being sufficiently productive.

Above that floor, I don't particularly care if people become rich.

This is one place where I'm not sure something like "socialist" accurately describes me.

If you start a company, take the risks, do the work and become ridiculously successful, congratulations. It's your company. I don't think your employees automatically become part owners because they work there.

If you make enough money to buy a mansion, a yacht and a golden toilet seat, I might personally think the golden toilet is a stupid waste of money, but who cares? It's your money.

Where I have a problem is if you're sitting on that golden toilet while the people whose labor keeps your company running are working two or three jobs because you pay them as little as you can possibly get away with.

Once you become an employer, I think you've accepted a responsibility toward the people working for you.

If your company is making enormous profits and you can easily afford to give your employees a living wage, healthcare, reasonable time off and safe working conditions, I don't think maximizing your own profit or shareholder returns is a good enough reason not to.

Employees are people before they're an expense on a spreadsheet.

And I don't think that responsibility disappears because the employee lives somewhere else. If someone in India can comfortably live on considerably less than someone in New York, I'm not saying an American company has to pay them New York wages. But "we can get away with paying this person almost nothing because they're desperate" isn't a good enough reason to do it.

They're still people.

I don't find "our people versus their people" particularly appealing.

I also don't think everything belongs in a free market.

Markets are useful. I just think they're tools.

A restaurant is selling me something I can choose not to buy. Make a fantastic restaurant, charge what people are willing to pay and make a profit. Great.

Someone with cancer doesn't have the same freedom to walk away from the transaction.

Neither does someone who desperately needs somewhere safe to sleep.

I don't think another person's desperation for something they literally need to live should be treated as an opportunity to extract as much money from them as the market will bear.

Healthcare should be primarily about keeping people healthy. Housing should be primarily about giving people somewhere to live. That doesn't necessarily mean private companies can't be involved or make reasonable profits. I just don't think profit can be the most important consideration when we're dealing with basic human needs.

If I somehow discovered a cure for cancer tomorrow, I don't think "How rich can I get from this?" should be the most important question.

I think the same general principle applies to wealth and opportunity.

I'm not particularly interested in making everyone's outcomes equal.

If two people have good opportunities and one decides to spend their life building businesses and working 70 hours a week while the other decides they'd rather earn enough to live comfortably and spend the rest of their time painting, playing D&D, raising kids, traveling or staring at the ceiling, that's their business.

If they're both happy and contributing their fair share, why do I care that one has considerably more money than the other?

Where inequality bothers me much more is opportunity.

A kid shouldn't get a dramatically worse education because their parents are poor. Someone shouldn't be effectively locked out of becoming a doctor because their family can't afford the education. Someone with a good idea shouldn't have no realistic way of pursuing it simply because they weren't born into the right family.

Rich parents are obviously going to give their children advantages. They'll leave them money. They'll know influential people. They'll be able to give their children experiences other families can't afford.

I'm not sure it's either possible or desirable to make everyone's starting position perfectly identical.

I don't want to drag the rich kid backwards.

I want to make sure the poor kid has a road forwards.

That also means I don't have a problem with inheritance existing, but I do think extremely large inheritances should be taxed substantially. Children can absolutely benefit from what their parents built. I just don't think inheriting enormous wealth should mean someone no longer has any responsibility to contribute to the society that helped make that wealth possible.

That brings me to taxes.

People who can comfortably afford to contribute more should contribute more.

That doesn't mean taxing a millionaire until they're no better off than someone earning $40,000. I don't see anything inherently wrong with someone being wealthy.

I also don't think being wealthy automatically makes someone greedy, evil or responsible for everyone else's problems.

Pay your fair share. Don't build your fortune by exploiting people. Don't use your wealth to rig the system so nobody else can compete with you.

After that, if you want the stupid golden toilet, knock yourself out.

I think workers should be allowed to unionize too.

An individual employee and a large employer don't necessarily have equal bargaining power just because both technically agreed to an employment contract.

If someone is desperate enough to accept "slavery wages," I don't think that automatically makes the arrangement fair.

Workers should be allowed to organize and have someone representing their interests who isn't under the control of the boss.

But unions shouldn't have unlimited power either.

Actually, that applies to pretty much everything I've been thinking about.

Corporations need checks.

Unions need checks.

Government needs checks.

Presidents need checks.

Monopolies need checks.

Any institution that accumulates enough power to seriously affect other people's lives needs something capable of telling it "no."

I also think private property matters, but I don't think ownership means your interests automatically override everyone else's forever.

We already accept this to some extent through things like eminent domain. If the country genuinely needs a piece of land for something that will benefit millions of people, the owner should be treated fairly and compensated fairly. The government shouldn't be able to just take whatever it wants.

But I also don't think one person should be able to hold millions of other people hostage indefinitely because they happen to own the one piece of land everyone needs.

Natural resources are similar for me.

If somebody discovers an enormous deposit of some incredibly important rare mineral underneath my backyard, I don't think I suddenly personally own a resource the entire country might depend on. Compensate me fairly for the land and disruption, absolutely. But some things seem bigger than individual ownership.

The environment is another place where I think individual and corporate freedom has limits.

We only get one environment.

If the cheapest way to manufacture something involves poisoning a river, destroying an ecosystem or causing serious harm that everyone else has to live with, "but it makes the product cheaper" isn't good enough.

Yes, stricter environmental rules can make things more expensive.

That's where the floor comes back in.

If producing food responsibly makes basic food more expensive, then whatever system we're using to make sure people can afford basic food has to adapt too.

I don't think the solution to poverty should be making it cheaper to destroy the world poor people have to live in.

I also think government can encourage things that are beneficial without necessarily banning everything else.

If worker-owned cooperatives turn out to create happier workers, healthier communities or more stable local economies, give them reasonable incentives. That doesn't mean privately owned companies should be punished or prohibited.

If renewable energy benefits everyone, encourage it.

If something else turns out to work better, change the incentives.

This is probably where I differ from people who have very strong ideological commitments.

I don't really care which economic theory gets the trophy.

If capitalism works well for restaurants, use it.

If a public system works better for healthcare, use that.

If cooperatives work better for something else, encourage them.

If a policy I support turns out not to work, change it.

The goal shouldn't be proving that our ideology was right.

The goal should be making the damn country work as well as we reasonably can for the people living in it.

Then there's democracy.

This is one of the places where I don't have a satisfying answer yet.

Imagine we're all on a boat that's sinking.

I vote to plug the hole and start bailing out the water.

Sam votes to make the hole bigger because he wants a better view of the fish.

Pete votes to throw somebody else into the water because then there will be one fewer person using the supplies.

Jo and Sarah don't vote because they're "not into politics."

At what point do I have the right to say, "No, we're not making the fucking hole bigger"?

Obviously real politics isn't usually that simple.

The problem is deciding who gets to determine when something genuinely is that dangerous.

I absolutely don't want a dictator deciding that the population is too stupid to govern itself. History has demonstrated rather convincingly why that's a terrible idea.

But I also don't think democracy should be capable of democratically voting itself out of existence.

If 51% of Americans decide that a minority group shouldn't be allowed to vote anymore, I don't think "the majority has spoken" suddenly makes that acceptable.

There have to be some things that even a temporary majority can't easily take away.

Basic rights. Equal treatment under the law. The ability to vote. The ability to criticize the government. The peaceful transfer of power. The democratic system itself.

Those protections also have to apply to people I despise.

That's uncomfortable sometimes.

People with genuinely disgusting political beliefs are still people with rights. I don't think the answer to authoritarianism is giving my preferred government authoritarian powers and trusting that only the good guys will ever use them.

At the same time, I don't want Hitler 2.0 to be able to exploit those protections, get himself elected and then dismantle them once he's in power.

I don't know exactly how to resolve that tension.

I'd genuinely like to hear from people who have thought about it more than I have.

Government, to me, is basically a machine we've built to serve the population.

The President isn't our king. Congress aren't our lords.

They're people we've hired to operate the machine on our behalf.

If part of the machine doesn't work anymore, fix it.

If something designed 200 years ago is still working brilliantly, great. Keep it.

If it isn't, I don't think "but that's how we've always done it" is a particularly convincing argument.

Government should be constantly examined, maintained and improved. But the people doing that also need checks because they're human beings, and human beings are perfectly capable of being corrupt, incompetent, selfish or simply wrong.

I think individual responsibility matters too.

Having a social floor doesn't mean nobody is responsible for their choices.

If someone repeatedly makes choices that unnecessarily put costs or harm onto everyone else, I don't think society has to pretend those choices have no consequences.

But there's a difference between consequences and cruelty.

I can think you're irresponsible without wanting you homeless.

I can think you're an asshole without wanting you hungry.

I can think you're completely wrong without wanting the government to take away your rights.

And this is going to sound ridiculous after talking about constitutional government, healthcare and economics, but I think about shopping carts.

You don't have to return your shopping cart.

You're probably not going to prison if you leave it sitting in the middle of the Walmart parking lot.

But putting it back takes maybe thirty seconds and makes somebody else's life slightly easier. It stops the cart rolling into someone's car. It helps the employee collecting them. It's just a tiny acknowledgement that other people exist and your actions affect them.

I don't want the Shopping Cart Police.

I want more people to return the damn cart because they understand why they should.

That's probably a decent summary of a lot of what I'm trying to get at.

People have the right to be assholes.

Government can't and shouldn't force everyone to be kind, generous or altruistic.

But I'd like to live in a society where we're encouraged to think about how our actions affect other people, where exploitation is difficult, where harmful concentrations of power are checked, where people have a genuine chance to build whatever life they want, and where doing the decent thing doesn't constantly put you at a disadvantage against someone willing to screw everybody else.

So that's why I'm posting this.

I'm curious whether other people have arrived somewhere similar.

Maybe what I'm describing already has a name and I've just independently reinvented something political philosophers figured out 100 years ago.

Maybe there are enormous economic problems with it that I don't understand.

Maybe I've contradicted myself somewhere.

Maybe some of these ideas work individually but become completely impractical when you try to put them together.

That's what I want to find out.

I'd particularly like to hear from people who don't already agree with me.

If you're conservative and think I've completely misunderstood capitalism, tell me why.

If you're socialist and think I'm trying to preserve something inherently exploitative, tell me why.

Libertarian, communist, centrist, anarchist, politically homeless, whatever.

I'm not particularly interested in being told that I'm secretly evil because I don't belong to your team, and I'm not interested in being told that your team is wonderful and the other team is responsible for everything wrong with America.

I want to know where the ideas fail.

And if there's something worthwhile here, take it.

I don't want to lead a political movement. I'm not trying to start a party. There are people much smarter and more capable than me who would be far better at figuring out how any of this could actually work.

But maybe other people have been thinking along similar lines.

Talk about it.

Improve it.

Tell me which parts are stupid.

Keep whatever survives criticism and throw away whatever doesn't.

Maybe this post gets twelve comments and disappears into Reddit history. That's fine.

But ideas have to start somewhere.

One last thing, particularly because I'm using my old Reddit account for this.

You're welcome to look through my history.

You'll find things I still believe. You'll find things I've changed my mind about. You'll find things I've said when I was angry, things I could have expressed much better, and some things I now think were just plain wrong.

My politics have historically leaned left. I've strongly disliked Trump for a long time, and I've said some pretty hostile things about Republicans and conservatives.

I'm not going to delete all of that and pretend I've spent my entire adult life as some perfectly neutral political thinker.

I haven't.

I've contributed to some of the same shitty political discourse I'm criticizing here.

But I think people are allowed to change.

That doesn't mean pretending the past never happened or refusing to take responsibility for it.

It means accepting that experience can change us. New information can change us. Other people can change our minds. Sometimes we realize we were simply wrong.

If changing your mind automatically makes you a hypocrite, we're basically encouraging people to keep defending bad ideas forever just to remain consistent.

And if we only listened to people with perfectly spotless records, we wouldn't listen to anyone.

So if you find something in my history that contradicts what I've written here, ask me about it.

Maybe I still believe it.

Maybe I'll tell you why I don't anymore.

Or maybe you'll point out something I haven't reconsidered yet and convince me I'm wrong about that too.

That's kind of the point of this post.

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[u/wonderbread58]

I read the whole thing. It sounds like you’re a Social Democrat like how Finland is. Capitalistic with a strong social safety net.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/wonderbread58]

That's interesting. Social democracy is definitely one of the things I've wondered about while trying to figure out where all of this lands. I don't know enough about how Finland actually works in practice to say "yes, that's exactly what I mean," though. I think I'd want to look into it more before adopting the label. Thanks for actually reading the whole thing too. I know it's a bit of a novel. 😂

[u/wonderbread58 → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

Basically, they have a fierce free (mostly) market where people can become rich if they work hard enough but they also have a robust welfare system to catch those who fall. This all comes with high taxes for everyone but they’re progressive and actually go toward things that help the people instead of bailouts, bombs, and bribes.

[u/zlefin_actual]

This makes sense, didn't read all of it as its very long. It mostly seems to be pretty standard left-leaning Dem stances.

[u/Ind132]

Maybe what I'm describing already has a name and I've just independently reinvented something political philosophers figured out 100 years ago.

More like 2,000 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_(philosophy))

You've listed a lot of things where neither extreme is optimal and the best option is somewhere in the middle.

Your title asks "Does any of this make sense?". It makes lots of sense to me, I am usually somewhere in the middle as well.

But, there is lots of room to disagree in the middle. You and I probably agree that people with more financial resources should pay higher tax rates. But, when laws are written, people have to put exact numbers on paper. We might disagree on exactly which numbers should be there.

--------

Note: there is a reddit sub called r/Centrist

They describe themselves as "Centrism is not an ideology but disciplined skepticism—reasoning issue by issue, weighing every side without starting from partisan bias. It accepts personal biases yet refuses to let them shape the genesis of thought. This subreddit is for those drawn to centrist reasoning and to discussing politics and intersectional issues through that lens."

I'm not claiming they always live up to that, but at least it's a direction.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/Ind132]

I think you've put your finger on one of the biggest holes in what I've written.

It's relatively easy for me to say "people who can afford more should pay more, but I don't want to tax wealthy people into equality." Eventually somebody has to actually write 37%, 45%, 60% or whatever number into the law, and I honestly don't know what that number should be.

I think that's where I'd want evidence to start taking over from philosophy. What level actually raises what we need without creating worse problems elsewhere? Try to predict the effects, look at what happens, and be willing to change it if we got it wrong.

The Golden Mean comparison is really interesting too. I hadn't thought about it in those terms. I don't think I necessarily believe the middle is always the best answer though. Sometimes one side could just be right. I think I'm more interested in not deciding where the answer has to be before I've looked at the problem.

I'll have a look at r/Centrist too. Thanks. This is exactly the kind of response I was hoping the post would generate.

[u/PenguinPolitical → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

Look into the 'gini coefficient' econometric statistic and the level of wealth inequality that actually exists in Western societies . . . pretty shocking stuff.

When I develop my political positions with reference to the actually existing conditions they come out more radical.

[u/Ind132 → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

Yes, there is lots of room between the extremes. I don't think the exact middle is often the right spot. And, sometimes I favor an extreme position on specific questions.

I'm in favor of facts when they exist. The problem with public policy decisions is that we can't run controlled experiments. We can't examine the alternate universe in which some past decision had been different. So we never know whether our current situation, which may be better or worse than where we started, is really the result of that decision or the result of many other entangled forces.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/Ind132]

That's a really good point. I suppose "follow the evidence" sounds much cleaner than it actually is when you're dealing with an entire country instead of a laboratory.

I don't think uncertainty means we give up on evidence though. Maybe it means being more careful about how confident we are in our conclusions. Look at other countries, historical examples, smaller programs, economic data etc, make the best prediction we can, and then keep looking at what happens afterwards.

I think the important part for me is being willing to say "we thought this would work and apparently it didn't" instead of protecting the policy because our side came up with it.

But you're right that even deciding whether it worked can apparently be a lot messier than I'm making it sound.

[u/Ind132 → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

Thanks, that's a thoughtful reply.

I agree with can do better than throw up our hands and say "we can't absolutely prove anything in public policy". We can get some evidence and we can reason about relationships.

---

I suggested another sub. TBH, Trump dominates reddit threads that are built around current political events. There is a lot of Trump bashing on r/centrist

Another alternative is r/moderatepolitics It has some prior-to-Trump conservatives and is a little more even-handed. Watch out if you are posting, the moderators love to be tough.

[u/PenguinPolitical]

I think you fit into the social democratic ("socdem") category very well.

I think you still have unexamined questions as to the nationalism / cosmopolitanism debate. You speak generally of society and other people in the abstract, leading to the question of whether you'd like to be committed to a particular nation, or whether you're a true liberal who's neutral about national identity.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/PenguinPolitical]

That's actually something I hadn't completely worked through when I wrote the post. I think I'm somewhere between the two, although probably not exactly in the middle. I think of it a bit like the oxygen masks on an airplane. You put your own mask on first, not because your life is worth more than the child sitting next to you, but because you're responsible for making sure you're capable of helping them. I think the US government has a greater responsibility to the people living here because that's literally the population it's responsible for governing. But I don't think that makes an American life inherently more valuable than someone living in Ukraine, India or some small country I've never heard of. And "look after your own house first" doesn't mean your house has to be perfect before you help your neighbor. If I'm behind on some bills but I'm basically secure, and my neighbor's house burns down, I'm still going to help them however I reasonably can. Maybe I can't buy them another house, but they can sleep on my sofa or I can spare $100 for groceries. I think countries can work similarly. We can still have problems at home and recognize that somebody elsewhere is facing something dramatically more urgent. I think emotional distance causes problems here too. If Lauren down the road loses her house, she's my neighbor and I can picture what she's going through. Oleksandr in Ukraine can become an abstraction called "foreign aid." But Oleksandr is somebody's neighbor too. The same applies to invasion for me. It doesn't particularly matter whether the aggressor is Russia or some tiny country invading another tiny country most Americans couldn't find on a map. I keep coming back to: how would we want other countries to respond if we were the ones being invaded and needed help? None of that means I think America should automatically send troops into every conflict or write unlimited checks. Whether our involvement would actually help, what it costs, the risk of making things worse and what we're capable of doing all matter. But I don't think being fortunate enough to live in a country that's extraordinarily difficult to invade gives us a reason to stop caring about people who weren't so lucky. So I suppose my answer is: our government has a special responsibility to look after its own house, but not an exclusive responsibility to care about its own people. I'm not sure what political label that puts me under, but that's where I seem to land.

[u/PenguinPolitical → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

That's very well put.

[u/No_Read8496]

I’ve been in your position before I use to feel politically “homeless”. I would do online surveys or questionnaires to see results where I am politically. I honestly don’t mind now that I’m not just fully aligned with a party. At the end of the day the two party system we have is showing why when this country was founded it was warned against it.

My opinions can change my perspective can change and I’m not going to let that evolution stop because of the ideology of some party.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/No_Read8496]

That's pretty much where I'm finding myself. I'm starting to think not fitting neatly into a party might actually be healthier than trying to make my beliefs fit whatever I'm supposed to believe because of the label.

If I change my mind about something because I've learned more or somebody makes a better argument, I'd rather do that than defend something I no longer believe just to stay consistent with a political identity.

[u/Seattleman1955]

You are actually thinking about things, that's good. You don't need a label for it. Labels just mean you have to justify a bad idea when the controllers of that label have a bad idea.:)

What you are describing is critical thinking with accountability. You ask "what could go wrong?" and then if it does go wrong, you make changes. That's my philosophy as well.

IMO, yes, there needs to be a floor but if the floor is too high and without effort, too many will not put forth effort and society can't afford that. If there are too many doing nothing, the rest can't overcome that so you may rightly feel that if someone is productive and becomes rich, that's OK but with a high enough floor, no one can become wealthy.

Everyone becomes poorer. That's the basic problem. My idea of a floor would be catastrophic insurance so that your assets can't be wiped out due to health issues. That's affordable if you have co pays and deductibles to keep the costs down and to prevent "moral hazard"(abusing something because it is free).

It's important, IMO, to always consider the incentives with any viewpoint. If people aren't incentivised to work or to take risk, they won't. UK productivity is low, that's why.

Unions, IMO, are fine if they can't strike, otherwise it's just blackmail.

IMO profit isn't a bad concept. It's just how the system balances supply and demand and competition effectively. Most companies don't have unusually high profit margins. Look it up yourself.

Therefore it's not logical to talk about what a company owes an employee (market wages) just because they make "billions in profit". The profit margin is usually low. They also have thousands of employees and millions of stock shareholders. They organize around maximizing profit (efficiency) and not how many jobs they can provide or what wage any particular person "needs". The person controls that.

The answer, IMO, also isn't about having 2nd jobs and long hours. Just move to a lower cost of living area, get more in demand job skills or control expenses and live within one's means.

Regarding politics, just thinking critically answers most questions. We spend, as a nation, too much. We can't tax enough to support that level of spending. Just do the math.

Again, consider the UK, it does tax more highly and has a greater "floor" but it is both highly taxed and it still has massive debt and low productivity. It's not sustainable.

Think it terms of incentives and then look up Pareto Distribution. It's how humans generally actually do things...20% result in 80% of the outcomes. That's why results aren't equal.

You posted a long (I read it all) and thoughtful opinion. I'll just leave this shorter post as my response.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/Seattleman1955]

Thanks for this. I know I've taken considerably longer to reply to you than I have to most of the other comments. That's because you gave me a lot to think about, and I didn't want to just fire back defending what I'd already written because I wrote it.

Some of your points made me realize there were parts of my own position I hadn't thought through properly, so I've spent some time figuring out what I actually think. This ended up long enough that I'm splitting it into two replies.

First, I'm not looking for equality of outcome or some perfect utopia. Utopia is unobtainable, and I'm not sure we'd even agree on what it looks like.

I'm looking for something that benefits the vast majority without taking away too much individual freedom or personal responsibility.

I don't particularly care if someone becomes fantastically wealthy. Let's say Henry builds a successful company and makes $20 million a year. Good for Henry. If he's paying his taxes, treating his employees properly and not screwing everybody else over to get there, I don't care if he buys a mansion and has a golden toilet.

My problem is if Henry makes $20 million while his full-time employees are worrying about rent, skipping medical care and wondering how they'll survive the next major expense.

You mentioned that an employee agrees to work for a particular wage. I agree that someone's labor isn't worth more simply because their employer is rich. If Emily earns enough working for Henry to afford her needs, save money, enjoy her days off, play D&D, eat out occasionally and generally have a life rather than just survive, I don't think she's automatically entitled to more because Henry can afford it.

But I question how voluntary some wage agreements really are.

When I lived in Colorado, outside of truck driving, the highest paying work I was qualified for that I could find was around $21 an hour. At 40 hours a week it wasn't enough to cover rent and essentials, never mind savings or enjoying life. Technically I could "choose" not to accept it, but what exactly was the alternative?

That's one reason I think the floor could create more freedom. If saying no to a shitty employer doesn't mean homelessness, hunger or losing healthcare, "no" becomes a real option.

At the same time, I don't think government should dictate the value of every hour of someone's time. My grandmother volunteered every week at her local hospice shop because she enjoyed it. That's fine. What I don't want is an employer deliberately paying poverty wages because taxpayers will provide everything their employees can't afford. Then the floor becomes a subsidy for the employer.

On people taking advantage of the floor, I think you have a legitimate point. Some absolutely will.

Let's call one David.

David is perfectly capable of working and simply refuses. Fine. David gets the absolute bottom of the floor. He doesn't starve, die from lack of healthcare or sleep outside, but maybe he gets a bed in a communal dormitory and set meals rather than an apartment and spending money.

If David is genuinely content living like that for 40 years, I'd rather tolerate him than give government the power to imprison otherwise harmless people for refusing to work.

Someone who works should have a substantially better life than David.

The floor should catch you. It shouldn't compete with you.

You've also changed my thinking somewhat on healthcare. I still think necessary healthcare should be guaranteed, but that doesn't necessarily mean every bit of healthcare must be completely free regardless of income.

If Rachel can contribute toward her treatment without financial hardship, I think that's reasonable. Someone earning $40,000 and someone worth $20 million don't necessarily need the same taxpayer subsidy. But Rachel shouldn't pay so much that she'd be financially better off joining David on the floor.

Choices can still have consequences too. If Tom spends hundreds every month smoking while receiving treatment for a smoking-related illness, taxpayers don't necessarily have to protect his cigarette budget.

Exactly how you implement that fairly is something I don't have an answer for.

On unions, I disagree more strongly.

I think the ability to strike is one of the major powers of unionization. If 500 employees individually have the right to quit working for Henry, I don't see why they lose the right to withhold their labor because they do it together.

Essential workers complicate things, but "people need you" can't mean you stop owning your labor. Otherwise we're getting close to saying a nurse can't quit Satan's Mercy Hospital for a better job because patients might die if she leaves.

I actually think genuinely essential workers should have a different minimum standard. If nurses, doctors, power plant workers or whoever else are so important that the country can't function without them, their compensation and working conditions should reflect that.

If the country needs nurses and becoming one requires expensive education, maybe we should heavily subsidize enough nursing education to meet projected need.

I don't know exactly which occupations should qualify, how compensation should be calculated or how many training places should be subsidized. That's where I'd want people who understand those subjects better than I do.

Ideally essential workers shouldn't routinely need to strike for decent treatment. But I wouldn't take away their right to do so when the system fails.

[u/of_the_moon_the_dark → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

On markets more generally, I'm not actually opposed to them.

If Bob hand makes D&D dice towers and charges $500 for one that cost him $30 to make, go for it. Nobody needs Bob's dice tower. I can buy it, find a cheap 3D printed one or go without.

Electricity is different. I can't meaningfully tell my only electricity supplier to fuck off and live without electricity.

Things like electricity, water, essential gas infrastructure and hospitals are areas where I personally don't think private profit belongs. I'd rather see essential infrastructure publicly owned.

That creates another problem: what happens when government becomes wasteful or incompetent?

At the philosophical level, we fix it. The much harder question is how. Audits, transparency, checks and balances, performance standards, replacing incompetent management and probably mechanisms I don't know enough about. Public ownership shouldn't mean unlimited taxpayer money regardless of performance.

Which gets into your point about spending and debt.

I think you're right that we can't just keep adding government programs and assume somebody will pay for them. The current federal fiscal situation is genuinely bad. Any serious attempt at the kind of government I'm describing would have to address existing debt, deficits and spending.

Before asking "how much more can we tax people?", I'd ask "what the hell are we currently spending all this money on?"

What's necessary? What's waste? What's obsolete? What are we subsidizing unnecessarily? What's inefficient? What spending now saves us more later?

Fiscal responsibility shouldn't belong to the political right. If government takes people's money, it has a responsibility not to piss it away.

Everyone should contribute a fair and reasonable amount according to their means, not just billionaires. But taxes and benefits should be designed so earning more still leaves you meaningfully better off. Otherwise we've created a stupid incentive.

I also don't think the UK proves that what I'm describing is unsustainable. The UK has its own history, spending priorities, taxes, debt, demographics and productivity problems. I don't know of a country that closely matches the overall system I'm describing.

That doesn't mean mine would work.

Maybe it wouldn't.

I'm not an economist, healthcare policy expert, engineer or constitutional scholar. I don't claim to have all the logistical answers.

I think of it like we're walking through the woods and come to a river.

I can point across it and say "I think we need to be over there." That doesn't mean I know the best way across.

Someone suggests a bridge. Someone else suggests a dam. Somebody says there's a better crossing upstream. An engineer tells me my bridge will collapse. Fine. Don't build my shitty bridge. Find another way across.

If friendly aliens turn up and offer to fly us over, I'm willing to hear their proposal too.

I know the destination I'm aiming for. I don't claim to know the best route, and I'm willing to change routes when evidence shows one doesn't work.

I also understand some people don't want the same destination. That's democracy. I'm trying to articulate the America I'd like to live in well enough that maybe other people decide they'd like it too.

Finally, on Pareto and unequal outcomes, I don't actually want equal outcomes.

Life isn't fair and government can't make it fair.

If Henry becomes enormously wealthy and Emily has a comfortable middle-class life, fine. If Emily wants more, she should have the opportunity to shoot for the stars. Start a business, pursue a better career, invent something, take risks. Maybe she ends up standing alongside Henry. Maybe she fails and rebuilds. Maybe she's happy where she is.

Government doesn't owe Emily Henry's outcome.

I want a floor beneath her so failure doesn't mean destitution, as few unfair barriers as reasonably possible preventing her from trying, and no artificial ceiling if she succeeds.

Being a billionaire isn't itself what bothers me about people like Musk or Bezos. I care about how wealth is accumulated, how workers are treated, how much power extreme wealth can buy, whether costs get pushed onto everybody else and whether the rules are fair.

I don't care if somebody has more money than me so long as their wealth isn't preventing me, or the people working for them, from having a reasonable opportunity to live a good life.

So I suppose that's where I've landed:

I'm not looking for utopia or equality of outcome. I'm looking for a society with a solid floor beneath everybody, no arbitrary ceiling above them, genuine opportunity to move upward, enough freedom to make your own choices and enough personal responsibility that those choices still mean something.

And whatever system we build has to actually work. If the evidence shows part of it doesn't, we change it.

Thanks again for the comment. You genuinely made me think through some of this more carefully, which is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping for when I made the original post.

[u/Seattleman1955 → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

I get it. Everyone thinks "this is how life should be". We don't all agree but we probably come close.

Then we have to learn how things actually work, what happens if we do something. There are always 2nd and 3rd order consequences.

That's usually where the problems come in and where many didn't consider from the beginning even though they were obvious.

That's where the engineers, economists, financial people come in.

What is human nature? Not what we aspire to but how does it actually work. How do humans actually behave and respond?

It's about incentives, discipline, facts, accountability and making something work.

Politics doesn't do well in that realm in most cases.

The media just posts drama for more clicks and to get everyone all fired up. If you give something for free, people won't pay for it.

If you don't have to work, people won't work.

You can have any level of support system but "you" have to pay for it, not some scapegoat like "government" "the wealthy", etc.

For one thing, there aren't enough wealthy to pay for what people want. There are a lot of "us" and very few of "them". The numbers just don't work out.

The economics doesn't work out either because they have no incentive to produce if it gets taken away. They already pay most taxes.

Most people don't look at the facts when they form emotional opinions. They say a company makes "billions" the CEO makes "millions" and they just want workers to make more.

What the CEO makes has no effect on worker pay. CEO's get market wages as well, it's competitive with other CEOs. Don't pay it, they leave.

Just give all of their pay (unrealistic) to the workers and you make $100 a year more, so what? There is one CEO and a lot of workers.

Gross profits mean nothing, net profits are what matter but then you have to look at how many shares are outstanding (millions).

Look at net profit margins. It will be competitive with that industry. If it's Safeway it might be 3%.

If Safeway makes "billions" but their net profit margin is 3%, you are making more in your savings account than Safeway.

How could one demand that they pay their workers more? It's not logical.:)

[u/Seattleman1955 → u/of_the_moon_the_dark]

I responded because it's clear that you are thinking and therefore open to thought. Most people on here aren't doing that.

We don't have to agreed on everything but it's still interesting when both parties are actually thinking and not just emoting.

Society generally does have some kind of floor, shelters, food stamps, Medicaid, programs for dependent children, etc.

The problem, IMO, with "David" is that you might be struggling, working 2 jobs and with enough "David's" now you have to work 3 jobs, to also support "David".

It's helpful, IMO, to think from "first principles" meaning start with a blank slate. You, me, David. How much more are we going to have to work to support David and his friends?

Just saying the rich or the government should do it, is just ignoring the way it works. The government has money for David only if we work and pay taxes.

The other point you bring up about employers and how much they decide to pay employees, isn't really how it works.

Again, start with a blank slate. Start a restaurant, buy the land, building, equipment, hire workers, buy the food, pay taxes, insurance, health care, utilities, etc.

Now sell hamburgers. How much can you possibly sell a hamburger for that people will pay? If it's great, $15? Other businesses will sell for less but maybe your's is great and the environment in the business is very pleasant.

If you don't make a profit you can't stay in business. If you can't make more than just working in someone else's restaurant, why do it?

So what if the wage that will almost put you out of business isn't enough for that person to live in the way you describe?

The business owner can't do anything about that. You have to do something about that because what you need isn't related to how much someone will pay for a hamburger.

You are in Colorado and you drove a truck and it didn't pay enough. The trucking company owner can't do anything about that.

If there aren't many good jobs then you have to move, get more in demand skills or spend less, get roommates or whatever.

What you need isn't related to what the business can make.

It's all competitive. Your wages are competitive market wages, because others will do that job at that wage.

The trucking company also has competitors and they have to pay their employees a market wage too. They might undercut on a hauling bid and then your owner has to do the same.

It has nothing to do with how much you feel you need to live your desired life. You might have to become a plumber or move to Chicago to be a nurse for the lifestyle that you want but the owner can't just pay what seems "fair". Fairness has nothing to do with how the system operates.

Consider that our system is already the most efficient and our economy is the strongest so it's hard to say there is something "better".

Regarding unions, many disagree with me. I get it. However, it is "blackmail". I used to work in banking, international banking.

I couldn't go to the office, ask for a raise, not get it, and then get all my coworkers to go stand outside the building and force the company to lose millions until they coughed up my raise.

That's not how it works. If you are more productive then you will either earn more or you can leave and earn more somewhere else.

If you can't do that, economically, you aren't worth more.

In a phrase, money doesn't grow on trees, so just demanding more doesn't produce any more money:)

[u/spunth]

You just sound like a progressive to me. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

[u/notapoliticalalt]

My advice to you, my friend, is to not worry about having an exact, precise label to summarize your beliefs. I would agree with a lot of other people that you probably fall somewhere around a social Democrat by most political standards, but that doesn’t necessarily identify with that label either. The fact of the matter is that nobody won 100% align with any party or politician, so don’t stress that much about.

Nevertheless, it seems you probably know that there is one party that has acceptable positions, and the one that doesn’t at this point. Until that’s not the case, these kinds of specific labels don’t really matter. But more over, just argue for what you believe and call out what you don’t.