DockOfTheBay
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User ID: 1968
DockOfTheBay
1yr ago
I don’t think your personal, temporal constraints on conservatism are widely held.
One aspect of anti-colonialism is that it takes a dim view of physical resource extraction. Its proponents would argue, even if granting that comparative advantage is efficient, it does not sufficiently benefit the average person whose country is colonized. And further, in practice, foreign powers are exceedingly likely to enable kleptocracies, as the leaders of those types of states are given incentive to prioritize the concerns of foreign imperialists over those of their own countrymen. It’s all top-down. E.g. colonial Britain much preferred that Arabs from the Sahel fill the top ranks of the government in Nigeria, because it is easy to bribe leaders at the top of a comparatively-hierarchical society, than it was to try and influence the comparatively-educated and democratic Igbo.
What would an apt parallel to immigration be, for the above?
DockOfTheBay
1yr ago
Perhaps the pseudonymous and polyonymous nature of the Internet has just made this a more practically implementable tendency, increasing its behavioral potency.
I think this is key. Absent any physical reality, the need for others to validate one’s identity/perceived reality online is significantly heightened, and makes social contagion more prevalent.
Whenever interest rates are lower than the rate of inflation or monetary dilution, the incentive will always be to load up on debt and purchase assets that can appreciate – whether that be Brooklyn brownstones or Dogecoin.
Yes, but even if the value of the brownstone decreases, you still have a brownstone. Where as crypto markets are speculation absent any underlying asset. And it’s even a bit unfair to call it currency speculation at present, given how few transactions are conducted with it.
What U.S. currency and the regulated banking system has behind it is the U.S. state. Whereas crypto has hopes, dreams, and Bahamian bucket shops.
DockOfTheBay
1yr ago
Depends on how you define conservatism and who gets to qualify as within it. William F. Buckley, Jr. got a lot of physical hate mail when he pushed back against Bircher claims that Eisenhower was a secret communist. Buckley was actively interested in gate keeping the capital-C Conservative movement, which is why he wanted to exclude Birchers, antisemites, etc. But if the definition of conservative is wanting to preserve America and its traditions, the Birchers would tell you that’s exactly what they wanted.
You seem to have backed into a progressive criticism of conservatism: it’s about having reverence for an imagined past.
E.g. reverence for Eisenhower after nearly everyone who was a conservative and politically engaged during his presidency has died off. The view that the Republican Party was too liberal in the Eisenhower era was a motivating factor behind the launch of National Review, and Buckley’s lifelong quest to build an network of conservative intellectuals, that culminated in the Reagan revolution. The literal conservative movement that began by running Conservative Party candidates against Republicans to hammer home to the liberal, Rockefeller wing o the party that they could no longer take the conservatives for granted and remain electorally viable.
I don’t think Buckley would agree with you that conservatism is standing athwart history and yelling, “Stop!”, where prehistory is defined by each individual and based on their parents’ dates of birth.
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