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The problem with the LibDems is the gap between what they say and what they do. The reason they are in such dire straits is that when they got a sniff of power and joined a coalition with the Tories, they abandoned a number of key election promises and royally pissed off their core vote.

(And when they were punished in the polls for this, their leader quit and got a job as Facebook's amoral bullshitter in chief.)

Plus, the LibDems support all the amoral creepy shit, anyway. Unfortunately, it's got cross-party support, as has the Online Safety Bill.

Has there ever been a political party that wasn’t a disappointment once in power in the last few decades?

You basically have to choose the least bad options.

I don't get why we put up with political parties at all... is it to have somebody to blame, somebody who is not ourselves? Because, if it wasn't so, we would enact direct democracy, and the next time that a lobby group wants to pocket a politician, it would have to pocket each and every single citizen...which I guess they could do by paying voluntary taxes...

If we had direct democracy in the UK, immigration would be banned, Brexit would have happened in the 1980s, and murderers and child molesters would be hanged.

- yes and no, I suspect you would see a stricter system with numerical limits. Aus is often touted as a good example

- the EEC would have stayed as just that, I suspect. Perhaps the EU would have formed without us, hard to know.

- yup

> I don't get why we put up with political parties at all...

For two reasons:

First, because politics is an ecosystem, and political parties are much stronger than unorganized political actors, so they outcompete and win. Your effectiveness is multiplied tremendously if you have an organized group which can fundraise, make small compromises among its members to reach common goals, scan membership to find compelling leaders, etc. Unorganized political actors have no chance against parties, and so they adapt (by becoming parties themselves) or die.

Second, because "political parties" are just a fact of gathering large numbers of humans: they will always have different opinions, and form tribes and cliques with like-minded people. If you don't have explicit parties, you will have hidden, implicit, internal ones, and that is much worse. See The Tyranny of Structurelessness, or alternatively one-party states like China, which still do have political factions, because having political factions is something people naturally do, but hide these behind the opacity of the CCP, leading to much less transparent decision-making.

Organization seems like a missing link.

And then there's this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202...

I do not think our rulers (or their advisors at least) are complete dummies.

yes, blair's first labour government. things did go off the tracks later.

> You basically have to choose the least bad options.

Do you? I choose not to vote because I refuse to participate in a charade of false consensus. If you pick the lesser of two evils, you are still picking evil.

The obvious -- yet never stated -- reason voter turnout is so bad in the United States is that the candidates offered are such garbage.

In the case that the greater of two evils wins, you are then complicit.

The world isn't perfect. There will always be issues with candidates, because the world is messy and complex. If you chose not to vote for the lesser of two evils, you leave more opportunity for the _greater_ to succeed.

"I can either punch you in the face or kick you in the crotch. Which will it be?"

"What are you complaining about? You asked for it?"

I didn't say you asked for it...I said you're going to get it either way, so make the best of a bad situation.

Sticking your head in the sand just gives more opportunity for _you_ to get the worse outcome.

You don’t seem to get it. By continuing to participate you are prolonging it.

Dream bigger. I mean unless you love the current shitshow.

https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies

I know I’m not living in a totalitarian state like Solzhenitsyn, but yet I am refusing to eat dog shit cause it tastes better than cat shit.

I get entirely what you mean, I just consider it naive utopianism. Dreams without any plan are just delusions.

The system is going to continue on, for the near future at least. If you've got some plan to fix 'the current shitshow', do that, _while making the best out of the current shitshow_.

You say you are refusing to eat dog shit. You're not. You're just letting society decide which shit you eat, without putting your vote in. The better, or worse, of two evils is still going to be elected. You're still going to be part of that system unless you're entirely off grid and self sufficient.

Yeah, I've got the same question, and I see the same trend in American political issues. There's an obvious problem, and the left-leaning want to try to solve it by either increasing power and control of one (usually governmental) group or decreasing the power and control of a group (like the police). The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all. They claim the problem is unsolvable, or not a problem, or often that it doesn't even exist.

I get the paranoia, but where are your solutions? Wouldn't it be more effective to instead come up with a fix that you prefer?

> The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all.

I think we can all look at places like Florida to see what the right has in mind, and it certainly isn't reducing the size or intrusiveness of government.

It would be nice if these policies could be part of the campaigns, rather than just ranting against the other party's plan. Let's be upfront about possible policies and compare those. I get that things might change as rubber hits the road, but typically we get heavily watered-down versions of proposals and don't start out with nothing to reason about to begin with and then get the policy.

My point is that things are happening right now in Florida, and the guy in charge of Florida is the one the GOP establishment apparently wants as their Presidential candidate next year. Florida is, therefore, pretty close to what the GOP's vision for the future looks like, were the GOP in charge of the whole country. It couldn't really get any clearer.

I actually don't agree about the point you make about american politics. I think the left wing "solutions" are broadcasted on entertainment and media channels a lot louder where as the right wing "solutions" are generally silo'd and not propagated in a "mainstream" fashion (or just to be lampooned) so the perception is one side loudly demanding things and the others simply protesting it.

The spectrum of opinions and solutions from people on both sides seems to be massive at a grassroots level but there are massive interests involved in the media distilling them into two camps of people with zero nuance.

This isn't just my perspective from media, but from living in a city with a very conservative base (Colorado Springs). I've seen very little political action from conservatives that wasn't reactionary and to the tone of "actually, we don't want anything to change, anywhere at all, unless it means legally enforcing my religious ideals".

When it comes to major issues like "how do we handle this virus?" I haven't seen any answers at all from the right other than "we don't want anything the other side of the fence wants".

How does the right plan to handle many of the largest problems? Food monoculture? Environmental problems? Wealth inequality? Racial inequality?

I live in a pool of conservatism, and the answer is always "what's the problem? My life is good."

> Food monoculture? Environmental problems? Wealth inequality? Racial inequality?

Wealth inequality: reducing regulatory capture and ease of doing business to encourage more competition and wealth across all levels of industry.

Food monoculture: reducing globalization of trade and exports to focus on local farming and agriculture

Environmental problems: reducing globalization of trade and exports to reduce shipping and much worse pollution and environmental damage in countries of origin (while also promoting manufacturing here to help with wealth inequality)

Racial inequality: of what?*

*edit now that I re-read it, I mean what particular race and inequality are we addressing, there are plenty and there is no blanket solution.

How does a return to local farming help food monoculture? Half the things I eat can't be grown here.

It helps by putting more emphasis on growing things native to a region, rather than feeding the entire world on corn, rice, wheat, dairy, pork, beef, and chicken.

Those are reasonable approaches. You must interact with more reasonable conservatives than I do. The ones I interact with regularly tend to worship the rich and reject any approach that involves any change at all.

As far as "racial inequality" goes, it's loaded and difficult. I disagree with the common approaches I've heard on both sides (the left tends to push for an oversimplified hypercorrection, which causes different sets of problems). It's like cancer, in that it's often lumped into a single category, but it's actually a huge set of problems without a single solution. Most of the conservatives I've talked to reject that any inequality exists at all.

What you are talking about is what I'd really consider to be "true conservatism", but in my interactions, a lot of real life conservatives I've talked to sound more like 4chan trolls. Maybe I need to get out of this city.

What are some good conservative outlets for proposals to deal with climate change?

Re-shoring manufacturing in the US to eliminate the environmental impact of china/india and the shipping industry is one I've personally heard to reduce our environmental impact from conservative Americans.

A Conservative solution to climate change (part 1):

https://youtu.be/D99qI42KGB0

Covers this.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

From the amount of Ted Kascynski memes I see circle around the right wing internet, I'd probably start paying more attention to what they're actually saying without the filter of partisan bloggers.

> But - outside of performative activism and spleen-venting - do they have any interest in sustained or intelligent actions which might address a few of the problems?

Well, that would like under the purview of your conundrums of political science, not stuff for the hoi polloi. You don't want a tyranny of the majority, but - I believe this is the point being made - just dismissing popular concerns which have at least a grain of truth will bite you in the arse and take down not just your one pet project, but everything else even vaguely connected.

Ultimately here that means solving some thornier problems, because it is an amazing but accurate stereotype these days that the person riding a bike in most cities is more privileged than the person driving. The former could afford a nice place in the city, which is way more than the cost of car ownership - and almost certainly relied on nepotism in some way. To fix that, alternative transit to suburbs NEED to exist, even in the face of negligent or outright malicious government. Accommodation in cities NEEDS to be cheaper, something I'm not sure has ever happened without urban decay and collapse. And lastly, crime, in cities and on transit, NEEDS to be controlled at relatively low levels - yes, even if the perpetrators are minorities. I have to really strongly disagree with the idea that automation makes the law less fair. That's a cheap shot, the progressive's equivalent of "think of the children". High crime areas are not romantic anti-racist utopias where the downtrodden mix rap with ceilidhs. They are shit, they are devastating to any real investment and growth, they hold no opportunity whatsoever to any decent person of any ethnicity, and discussion of policing shouldn't ignore that.

> Ultimately here that means solving some thornier problems, because it is an amazing but accurate stereotype these days that the person riding a bike in most cities is more privileged than the person driving. The former could afford a nice place in the city, which is way more than the cost of car ownership - and almost certainly relied on nepotism in some way.

During the pandemic SF closed a section of Great Highway, a road that runs along the ocean in the Sunset district, so people could get out and exercise on it and not have to get close to others. Now, Great Highway is also one of the fastest ways to go north-south through the area. I met one guy who lived in Sunset who was welding up caltrops to throw on the road if it was reopened to car traffic. Surely those noble caltrops would know better than to puncture the tires of a single mother driving in from out of town to work at his local coffee shop, though. Talk about privilege.

> UK's Liberal Democratic Party sounds like the perfect place for people alarmed by a creepy, authoritarian state.

Which presumably explains why their leader Nick Clegg went off to work for the not at all creepy and authoritarian Facebook.

Nick Clegg was the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Deputy Prime Minister.

He then swanned off to become VP of Facebook.

I'm not saying it should tell you everything you need to know, but a large part, yes.

The UK has the same problem as the US: it's effectively a two-party system, with a majority of the votes going to the large Tory and Labour block. For example, in the 2019 election 11.5% voted for LibDem, and instead of the 74 seats they'd have gained in a proportionally fair system as the German Bundestag, they got 11 of 650.

> On paper, the UK's Liberal Democratic Party sounds like the perfect place for people alarmed by a creepy, authoritarian state.

They were pro lockdown (even after the basis was undermined in 2021) and gain most of their MPs from local issues such as promising to stop the building of housing estates etc.

They have no political agenda that is in anyway related to their historical basis