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Comment by ARandomerDude | Hacker News Reader

I've been a conservative since I had a minimum wage job, for one reason: I want the government out of my life as much as possible. I firmly believe nobody will care about my family as much as I do and I don't want the government's golden handcuffs. Leave me alone, let me work, and I'll happily live with whatever happens.

I think this is the fundamental disconnect in left-right (economic) politics. The left, as I see it, wants some guarantee of a good outcome. The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk.

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In my early 20's, I would have agreed 100% with your stance.

But, you know what really gives people freedom and liberty? The freedom to fail without worrying about how they're going to keep a roof over their head and a meal on the table. Without worrying that they're one medical emergency away from losing everything they've worked for.

You want people creating small, lifestyle businesses? Give them a safety net and let them take that step without risking everything.

I'm not convinced. There are plenty of countries with social safety nets galore, and all of them seem to have fewer freedoms and fewer small businesses created per capita than the USA.

Most "businesses" created in America are shell corps designed to push money around and limit liabilities. They don't produce anything.

If this is any indication, the US is certainly not winning that race:

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Micr...

I'm looking for a better source still, so if you find one please post it here.

EDIT: I found this. Numbers are a bit old (2007), but it shows self-employment rate per capita on page 4, which is exactly the metric we're interested in discussing.

https://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/small-business-2...

So, based on those two sources, your assertion seems straight up incorrect.

I'm not sure where that first link is getting its numbers, or why they're so outdated, but the US Small Business Association puts the number of small businesses in the US at around 31.7 million [0], or just over 100 per 1,000 people, which would top that list (excluding Indonesia, which, BTW why is it so high?)

[0] https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/0512...

Do companies count as self-employed, though?

That's because good safety nets means people don't have to take risks on business. So that leaves only the people who want to start a business.

Who tend to leave for countries where it's easier to run a business and where they don't have to pay for the safety nets, but that's besides the point.

As for freedoms, I don't know. Not that much of a difference between US, UK and Germany from what I can tell.

Why are the FAANG companies all based in the US?

Same reason they make most of their physical stuff in China. The government allows the most abuses.

Large amounts of venture capital from US investors, a really large monolingual market and path dependence.

More generally though, relying on outliers for your argument is perhaps not the best approach.

Outlier? FAANG is just the top of the market. Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater.

Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors.

Monolingual? The global business world runs on English.

Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

> Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater.

I'm not convinced that this is the case. Like, the US market is cheaper to operate in relative to other markets the same size (e.g. the EU) because you have an over-arching system of laws, contracts and (most importantly) language.

If your theory is correct, then one would expect the US to remain the largest source of profitable companies globally. If my theory is correct, one might expect China/India to take it's place. Come back in 20 years, I guess?

> Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors.

Can you point to some sources on this. A quick Google didn't reveal much information, and I really would like to know. Modulo Softbank, I suspect that it's mostly US based institutions giving VC's their money.

> Monolingual? The global business world runs on English.

All of the big companies you mentioned sell to consumers, not businesses, so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant. My point was that the US is a relatively integrated, large market with one language. Most startups begin in their home company. While a startup from Greece would likely have to hire more people to scale across the EU (20+ languages), the equivalent US based startup can scale happily without worrying about languages for a much longer period.

> Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

FAANG are 100% outliers, I don't see how you can believe otherwise.

However, Europe has produced SAP (uggghhhh), Spotify, and a bunch of second-tier fintechs (but given the regulatory advantages of the EU in this space, I suspect one of them will conquer the world).

> Can you point to some sources on this.

No, but I've heard it many times. I've also seen plenty of talk about the trade deficit not being a deficit at all, as the balance is foreign investment in the US, which is not counted.

> so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant

Attend a trade show. They're in English, even in foreign countries. Every single one I've attended.

The bottom line is, which companies do you invest in?

The US is the last man standing in the west that still employs these legacy policies. Where are they going to go? China?

What freedoms are other countries lacking?

Just guns?

In Germany it is illegal to school your children if you don’t like what the public institutions are doing.

The freedom to say mildly offensive things on Twitter without getting punished by the state?

No. Any government big enough to bail everyone out, is big enough to take away everything we have. One of the parent posters said they didn't get the Trump thing. It's easy. Trump whether worth $1 or Ten Billion dollars got what converservatives and the majority want; government out of the way. And preferably the end of career politicians.

So most federal conservatives. Who are career politicians. Want to get rid of career politicians? After doing nothing to get rid of career politicians their whole career?

This doesn’t track. No politician from either side wants to limit themselves out of a job.

You're conflating security with freedom. You can have security or freedom, but not both.

You absolutely can have both, because the world does not boil down to simplistic either or choices. You can argue that freedom and security are oppostite poles of a sliding scale, and most people would agree with you. But nobody wants absolute freedom (anarchy and literal lawlessness) nor does anyone want absolute security. People want degrees of both.

It's a naieve mindset to think it's all or nothing.

> You absolutely can have both

It's a sliding scale between security and freedom. Every bit of security you want means giving up a corresponding freedom.

Also, most people do not include "freedom to harm others" when they're talking about freedom. I've never heard of anyone carrying a sign saying "FREEDOM" and meaning they want to be free to hurt others.

How am I less free because my country has free healthcare and decent unemployment benefits?

Neither of those is free. You still pay for it, plus you pay for the government's cost of administering it. You're worse off.

With "free" government health care, you're not only paying more for it, but you no longer get to choose what health care you get. You get what a government bureaucrat says you get.

Walter, it’s amazing how often I see you weigh in on economic and political issues on this forum when you have a poor grasp of even the basics. Claiming that privatised healthcare is somehow more efficient in spite of overwhelming real world evidence to the contrary, or that people are capable of meaningfully informed choices in picking a healthcare plan and somehow find it life-enhancing to have to do this, or ignoring the fact that funding it through taxation rather than insurance results in more universal and equitable access, and entirely glossing over adverse selection problems, is just amateur house stuff. You’d get laughed at in a high school classroom with this stuff but here you are trying to talk about it with authority.

Are you sure about your points?

I've never made the claim that privatized health care is more efficient. I have claimed that free market health care is more efficient. If you've got evidence that government health care is more efficient, let alone overwhelming evidence, I'd like to see it.

From what I've seen from high school economics, they can laugh at me all they want. But they don't know anything as they are taught by high school teachers who don't have any training in economics and have never held a private sector job or run a business.

Here's a reference for you with plenty of evidence that contradicts your claims. Read it and get back to me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...

BTW, you made one of my points for me. You just said that having the government force a plan on you is better than you picking your own plan. You gave up your freedom for security. Exactly what I was talking about.

Google "US health expenditure vs life expectancy" and "adverse selection in healthcare", read the top few links and get back to me.

You're making several basic mistakes thinking about freedom, because once again you're not even familiar with basic knowledge of the topic. In particular:

- Confusing the quality and quantity of choices. Free healthcare increases freedom because it increases overall quality of choices people can make - if you'd even encountered the concept of the capability approach to human welfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach) you wouldn't have made this basic mistake.

- You're conflating capitalism with freedom, when in fact capitalism is built on top of property law, a very anti-freedom system. Property is the biggest government program their is, and is enforced with violent anti-freedom, liberty-destroying government force.

In other words, you're so ideological you're not even wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).

You didn't read the article I cited. Please return when you have.

BTW, the Soviet Union didn't allow people to own property, and had free healthcare. People were so free there they had to build a wall around it and shoot people who tried to escape. Ditto for every other communist country.

And where do those freedom-loving people want to go? The US. So many, in fact, that the US had to build a wall to keep them out.

What do all those people know that you missed?

People in Norway with high taxes, high state ownership of the economy, and a great welfare state seem to be happily staying in Norway rather than clamouring to move to the USA for the extra “freedom”, even in spite of the weather. What do all these people know that you missed?

No, I'm simply restating Maslov's hierarchy of needs. You cannot reach self-actualization without first covering basic needs. One of which is, ironically, called "safety". As in, perhaps, a safety net...

Or, in other words, to have the freedom to self-actualize, you must have security in your basic needs.

As a European… The problem with safety net is it brings taxes to cover that safety net. And regulations for companies to make them part of that safety net. In the end it makes it harder to start a small business and more comfy to be employed. Essentially helping big businesses to stamp out competition.

Some safety net without the negatives would be nice. But where will the money come from?

And if one were to consider healthcare premiums in the US as a "tax", the US looks very much like a European country. We in the US are already paying for the safety net, but without actually getting one.

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-a...

>The left, as I see it, wants some guarantee of a good outcome. The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk.

I think it's more that the left believes government has a responsibility to guarantee equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome in what is assumed to be a fundamentally inequitable system. The big philosophical difference to me is in what each side believes the proper role of government should be. The right (tending to be the side that supports the military, police, harsh criminal penalties, etc.) believes government's only legitimate purpose is enforcing the laws and defending the borders, in other words the exercise of violence, whereas the left also believes the government has a duty to provide for the social welfare of its citizens in exchange for the power granted to it by social contract.

And when the right says it wants liberty, what it tends to mean is that it wants liberty from the social obligations that the left tend to want government to support.

> The big philosophical difference to me is in what each side believes the proper role of government should be.

I think you're close here, but I don't think that's the root of it. That difference in position is important, but it comes from even deeper philosophical differences. I think this boils down to the argument over positive vs negative rights (freedom to vs freedom from).

A worldview built on negative rights has to have a much smaller legitimate role for the government than one built on positive rights. In the former, the government can never make anything better, only potentially rectifying wrongs (usually via punishing the offender). Within that framework, the goal of the government becomes to rectify the worst of the wrongs while disturbing things as little as possible. A worldview built on positive rights inherently leaves a bigger space for the government to behave legitimately, because this worldview sees the government as having a role in making things better.

Of course, there are very few people who adhere 100% to either of these, so reality is a bit more complicated.

> (tending to be the side that supports the military, police, harsh criminal penalties, etc.) believes government's only legitimate purpose is enforcing the laws and defending the borders

People who support police when police breaks laws are not pro-enforcing laws. People who make it increasingly hard to prosecute and investigate cop when those are suspect of breaking law are not pro-enforcing laws. People who make it legal for police to use escalating aggression are not pro law enforcement either.

These people are pro state violence people. Simple as that. Whether it is happening in Russia, America or elsewhere.

> I think it's more that the left believes government has a responsibility to guarantee equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome in what is assumed to be a fundamentally inequitable system.

There is a section of the left-right spectrum that believes in equality of opportunity, but that it’s certainly not the leftmost people in that spectrum. The left pole is not “equality of opportunity for all” and how far left you are is defined by how strongly you believe in that.

I think it’s more the middle of the spectrum who hold the view and the left extreme is much closer to equality of outcome.

Most safety net programs are far more focused on "avoiding a catastrophic outcome" than guaranteeing a good outcome. This is why we don't see a mass migration from tech jobs to welfare...

But for catastrophe prevention... you don't have to think the government will care as much about your family as you do to want there to be a support system in for your family if you die, become unable to work, etc...

And "liberty" alone is so undefined as to be meaningless for these purposes. Is "paying less taxes so that the disabled don't have as much help" an example of liberty? For you? For them?

> Most safety net programs are far more focused on "avoiding a catastrophic outcome" than guaranteeing a good outcome.

Right. It's weird to me to see so many people framing it in the ensures-good-outcome sense.

A "safety net" is literally a thing that catches you when you fall. That's it. It doesn't push you higher in general; it just helps you avoid the lowest of the low.

> I want the government out of my life as much as possible

unless it has to do with your education, gender identity, sexual preference, religion, voting, or women's rights, I assume

This is an uncharitable reading. Almost no one would answer that they want the government to impose positions over their personal views on those topics

Except it's accurate. Most conservatives are fair-weather individualists who only care about "liberty" in loose terms as long as the liberty that they believe is being affected is their own.

We had to drag conservatives kicking and screaming over the past 30 years to allow gays to have the right to marry and openly serve in the military, just like we had to drag them kicking and screaming 60 years ago to allow minorities the right to vote, or allow mixed-race couples to marry.

No conservatives lost liberty in any of those instances. They lost their "special" status, which is what they're really worried about and why the populist rhetoric resonates so strongly with them.

Reread my post, I I thought I was clear emphasizing that they didn't want imposition on themselves. Nobody does

You cannot divorce their record on the rights of others with their claims of being for liberty, thus the GP's post was not uncharitable at all.

Not just Republicans, though. Plenty of Democrats were against gay marriage as well - including Obama as recently as 2004.

I don't think the parent referenced Republicans or Democrats at all. The parent was talking about "conservatives". And anyone who opposed same-sex marriage in 2004 -- Obama included -- should absolutely be counted as having (at least some) socially-conservative views.

Obviously many people changed their minds since then. It is perhaps notable, though, to consider that most of the people who changed their minds since then identify as Democrat, while many more Republicans continue to hold such backward, discriminatory views.

Are you including Obama in that? He was against gay marriage until the tide turned.

What about the CA Prop 8 against gay marriage that was widely supported by minorities? Were you "dragging, kicking and screaming" those minorities as well?

I mean... yes?

Clearly you're trying to go for a "gotcha!" type comment, but... so what? People who believed same-sex marriage should be illegal are just as wrong as people who believed interracial marriage should be illegal during much of the last century. It doesn't matter if they called themselves Democrats or Republicans or whatever. It doesn't matter if they were part of some majority or minority. They were just as wrong regardless.

Some people -- Obama included -- changed their minds, for whatever reason. Many people, sadly, still have not. It might be interesting to look at what kind of person still hasn't seen the light on this, and what political party that kind of person is overwhelmingly more likely to identify with, but that still doesn't really matter much to the rightness or wrongness of a previous belief.

So when Obama became pro-gay marriage is he no longer a conservative? Or is he still one?

My comment was more about calling out a group that doesn’t actually exist or at least has no formal definition based on OPs opinion.

Yes, he became less conservative on the point of gay rights. Why would that be shocking or gotcha?

“We had to drag conservatives kicking and screaming”

You didn’t answer the question. You agree Obama was a conservative. So is he still? Not “more or less”, you either are or you aren’t.

I don't think Obama was all in all conservative. I think he had some conservative views, gay marriage being one of them.

> Not “more or less”, you either are or you aren’t.

This is not true. This is both fallacy and a lie. This is also refusal to see worls as it is, insisting on comfortable dichotomy.

This is not true. This is both fallacy and a lie.

Then you and I agree on the exact same point. The OP was wrong to say "We had to drag conservatives kicking and screaming..."

There are no "conservatives", there are "conservative views".

There are people who identify themselves as conservatives. They are subculture that very much exists. It is not true that there is no such thing as conservative.

These people call themselves conservative. They read what other self described conservatives write or listen to their talkshows. They alter their own views to conform to what those talkshows say.

These people hated Obama. Obama did not shared all that many views with them.

You’re putting people in buckets again.

So? Yes there is such a thing as a conservative or liberal oe whatever. And then there are people who are not conservatives and still hold some socially or economically conservative view.

It is hard to know whether you are trolling or genuinely ignored politics and culture from wherever you got born.

How do you define a conservative if not for the views they hold?

So again, is Obama a conservative? If you say no, then how many conservative views must one hold to belong to the group?

So, you are trolling then. I answered these in upper comments.

> If you say no, then how many conservative views must one hold to belong to the group?

When you proclaim proudly "I am conservative" and share 70% of conservative opinions or more. Or, when you talk about liberal snowflakes. Same thing, really.

'Minorities' are not inherently liberal or conservative. And it's possible to be conservative on one issue only

This is clearly a spectrum. On one hand we have Mad Max-style "might is right" anarchy, which is over-prioritizing freedom. On the other we remove all personal choice in order to "keep people safe."

So the question is, "how much risk is acceptable?" Are we okay with the idea that getting sick can ruin your entire financial future? Are we okay with child labor? Personally I lean towards providing a social safety net, and I think most people actually want _some_ version of that as well -- but perhaps have not thought deeply about where exactly the balance is for them.

There's also a question of how personal freedom interacts between people. If one person has a contagious disease, and knows it, do they have a right to put others at risk of infection without those others' consent? If so, that infringes on the personal freedom of the others. If not, then isn't their personal freedom infringed? "Prioritizing freedom" and "keeping people safe" can each claim either position!

That’s an awfully selfish outlook, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be willing as a society to care for the poor and needy among us? So far every other group and organization has completely failed at that, except for government. I am happy to pay my taxes so that my government can take care of those who not as well off as I am.

This is all well and good, but we have essentially had this for 40 years where anti-trust enforcement is concerned. I don’t think anyone can honestly say this has been a good things, especially not for small businesses. There is a conservative argument for breaking up big businesses thereby enabling democratic control over our economic destiny, which has been largely lost, to the detriment of 99% of us.

> The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk.

The right are proponents of right-to-work legislation that force unions to represent non-dues paying members for free, and nullifies their private contracts. That's not exactly liberty, and it minimizes risk for owners.

That's not true at all.

Those union members are perfectly free to create was is called a members only union, which only represents its own members who voluntarily join the organization.

Doing that avoids any of those conditions that you are talking about.

The NLRA has historically been interpreted in a way that denies bargaining rights to members-only unions. It hasn't been tested in a while, and it's possible that the current NLRB would view the issue differently, but unless and until that happens minority unionism is not a viable strategy in the US.

> that denies bargaining rights to members-only unions

Then you don't understand what "bargaining rights" are. It is absolutely fully legal for a members union to negotiation on behalf of its members, if those members consent to it.

In the same what that it is fully legal for me to hire a lawyer friend of mine, to bargain on my behalf.

What it can't do, is force everyone else, who is not in the members only union, to go along with that bargained contract.

So please, do not say that their bargaining rights are taken away. Instead be honest and say that their ability to force everyone else to have their bargaining rights taken away, and given to the union, against the wishes of those employees, is being removed from them.

Workers are free to take non-union jobs if they don't want to be in a union.

Except when all the jobs in your industry are union jobs.

Unless you're suggesting someone in this position should have to retrain for a different industry. Which, sure, ok, I guess, but the cost to do so might be quite high to the point of being life-ruining.

Those workers are also free to use right to work laws, to make it so they are allowed to get jobs at whatever company wants to hire them while also not joining the union.

And then workers who prefer the union, can join members only unions that are not forced to represent people not in them.

Employers have a legal obligation to negotiate in good faith with unions which are the exclusive representatives of an entire bargaining unit. They have no such obligation to members-only unions. This is what the "right to collectively bargain" refers to in the context of US labor law. If you don't like the terminology, you can try to take it up with the NLRB, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground.

> If you don't like the terminology, you can try to take it up with the NLRB

Well, I am talking to you here though right? And there is context here, to this subthread that you are ignoring/missing.

If you want to say "Non union members cannot force 3rd parties to work with them, if they don't want to" Then yes I agree.

But the context of this subthread was about the idea of who is or is not forcing people to do things.

So, to get back to the point of all of this, I was initially responding to someone else who tried to claim "That's not exactly liberty".

But it is liberty. Liberty is the idea of consenting parties, not being forced to do things. So yes it is liberty to say that people can join non-members unions, but that those non-members unions cannot force other people to do certain things.

Do you understand the point and context of this all? It was about whether that is "liberty" or not, which just means who is or is not forcing others to be in the group, or forcing people to work with your group.

Without the government your minimum wage job likely would have been sub-minimum wage...

I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with the topic at hand but statistics show the far majority of minimim wage workers, for many of whom it is not just a short phase, will disagree with you on this.

Most Americans aren’t even at liberty to leave their jobs as they risk medical bankruptcy from a hospital trip.

I don't think people ask for social support from goverment as "emotional" support or "expression of deep love" - the way you seem to interpret it. It is way more about practical down to earth "do I get health care or not" thing. It is also about what kind of environment is build - both social and physical.

Also, golden handcuff means enough money so that you don't want to leave. I don't think such high govermental support exists all that often.

I recently moved from a conservative state to a liberal one. The government at the former was far more controlling then my new home. I’ve never understood this argument. Conservatives are just as invested in intervening in our lives. See recent legislation limiting medical access, voting rights, environmental protections in the Southeastern US.

In my new home. I have better access to medical care, the outdoors are better funded, voting is simple and easy.

Both parties want control over the populace. The idea one party is advocating for more “liberty” is a reductive way of viewing politics

In a idealogical vacuum, totally fair. But in a (spiritually) capitalist economy, the federated nature of government is an effective instrument when applied properly. It’s not either the left or right’s fault that government is dysfunctional, it’s that greed is the root of all evil and subversion necessitates complex regulation over time.. it’s a double edged sword. Hands off and risk irreversible damage to millions, hands on and risk irreversible damage to millions. I do not envy the job of governing (justly).

> The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk.

Why did the republicans bail out the banks then?

The right wants you to think you should be responsible but the guys at the top will happily give and take govt money.

I also want government out of my life as much as possible. I don't want them controlling what I do with my body or who I love, or how I present myself. Who should I vote for?

Libertarians.

Is bailing out banks and huge corporations a left wing or a right wing thing to do? Clearly the second, judging from reality. Your second paragraph is a ridiculous tale of the right that has gotten to the minds of many. "Liberty together with the risk" only concerns non rich people. Look at all those entities getting saved when in a pinch by sweet government money, and tell me if they have liberty or not. Is there a reason EVERYONE cannot be bailed out the same way? US government just threw 3 billion and counting in a heartbeat at Ukraine but somehow a safety net for its own citizens is non feasible?

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