United States Politics Thread 46

[Torco]

alas, true

[Raphael]

Socialist economics are not inherently counter-intuitive. People are just not used to hearing the arguments,

"There are great arguments for x" and "x is counter-intuitive" are by no means mutually exclusive. Something can be completely true and still be counter-intuitive. To use one example Torco indirectly mentioned a few posts ago, the idea that the world is (more or less) a sphere is pretty counter-intuitive.

To use a more socialism-related example, the idea that we should be internationalist rather than nationalist is pretty central to many forms of socialism, and I completely agree with it, but for most people, it's probably very counter-intuitive, given how central in-group-versus-out-group thinking is to the human psyche.

There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding here in this discussion when some people here took "counter-intuitive" to mean "bad", or "false", or "wrong".

[Torco]

it's correct that counter-intuitive doesn't mean wrong, but it also doesn't mean difficult to swallow, at least how i'm using it. in the case of socialism, "businesses should all be private" is, while easy to swallow given everyone alive and older than 20 has been subject to decades of pro-capitalist indoctrination, is not intuitive. "there is only one god" is also not intuitive, even though it is extremely easy to swallow given the volume of monotheist indoctrination people are generally exposed to in most countries.

[Lērisama]

Socialist ideas were successfully implemented in Western Europe immediately after WWII - in France or Britain there was probably an element of nationalistic pride in there but I believe in the more positive sense of the whole nation coming together.

Not entirely sure how relevant this is, but GCSE¹ history says the reasons for the NHS² being created (although the reason for the Labour landslide in 45 were mentioned as well) were some mixture of

• A feeling that the coalition government after WWI didn't succeed in creating its 'Land fit for Heroes', and a wish to do better this time
• Evacuees³. It turns out forcing poor children in bad health to live with rich people makes the rich people care a lot more about the lives of the poor (who'd have though)
• More immediately, the Beveridge Report of 1942, which identified the 'five giants' in the way of progress. Wikipedia says they were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Sqalor, and Idleness and provided the intellectual foundation for the welfare state (Beveridge was a Liberal, rather than Labour)
• Labour (the party which actually addressed these things) also benefitted from Churchill not being seen as a good was considered as not a good peacetime leader⁴, and once they were in power with a large majority, they took the unprecedented step of actually going through with their manifesto

In short, residual feeling from WWII. Nationalism was a factor, but national embarassment at the status quo was maybe more important. Not that you should trust government approved history of its own country without interrogation. Or other countries for that matter

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¹ I don't know how well known this is outside the UK. They are qualications you take at 16 (except in Scotland) in a relatively wide range of subjects (Michael Gove⁵ wants you to take Maths, English Lang, English Lit, at least two sciences⁶, a language, a humanities subject⁷, Religious Studies, and whatever else you have time for, but I'm pretty sure the only actually compulsory ones are Maths and English Language, although schools have to teach some of the others, even if you don't take the exam in it)
² The specifc course is medicine through time. You can more general British history covering this period, but only if I'd chisen the A-level
³ Children sent away from the South East coast and big cities to places considered safer
⁴ He was never actually voted as leader of the government. Neville Chamberlain won the 1935 election, and Churchil was leader of the National Coalition set up for the war, as not too offensive to anybody, and associated with the military
⁵ I'm not sure if this particular policy is actual Michael Gove, since the Tories went through about 3 million Education Secretaries, but he's the one who's face is on the various reforms they did in the 2010s, which I think this was part of
⁶ Either combined science, which is one grade worth 2 GCSEs, or separate Chemisty, Physics & Biology
⁷ Either History or Geography