Hacker News Reader

left vs right was never a good framework. there are traditional fascists who believe in a state controlled economy and nazi style race laws. libertarians who want gay rights and no social security. socialists can be progressive or conservative on issues like abortion. if you want to collapse it all into one axis you lose all the differences.

View on HN

Of course, collapsing to one axis can only be reductive. Reducing means losing information, simplifications simplify; and the question is if you are losing a meaningful signal, or losing mostly noise.

It is true that "there are ... libertarians who want gay rights and no social security" - they do exist. But are they a significant percentage of the voters, compared to the more regular right wing (e.g. UK Reform / Restore) who get double-digit percentages of the vote? No, they are not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com