Remarkl
2 min readMar 6, 2022

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The New Deal was a political rectification of the conservative/monarchical/autocratic end point of pure capitalism.

And the Sherman Act was what then? ALL labor laws are similar rectifications. The US has been "rectifying" for almost as long as there has been industrial wealth here. Even the courts, by abandoning caveat emptor as common law doctrine, got in the act. But to be clear, the conservative pitch for "democracy" is for the democratic selection and removal of policymakers, not for the mob making policy. Steering between the Scylla of ochlocracy and the Charibdis of autocracy is what statecraft is all about.

Ronald Reagan was a New Deal Democrat and a conservative. I don't believe that he, or I, however, would be called "Great Society" liberals. My political views are socially liberal, i.e., we should have de jure liberty, but my policy-wonkish views are de facto conservative. I believe that the one-earner, one nurturer nuclear family is in a Darwinian sense a more sustainable societal "business model" than the kids-reared-by-illegal-immigrants model that progressives favor. And I believe that the average 100 IQ individual needs to prepare to be a breadwinner or nurturer from childhood. Childhood gender roles are so stubbornly entrenched because they outcompete any other form of socialization.

I think the planned/wild dichotomy is too crude to be useful. I prefer something like safari park wildness. Government should tilt the playing field, not control the players. The issue is not planning vel non. As the wag said, government regulation comes in two flavors: too much and too little.

I recognize that those doing best under the status quo are going to demand more evidence that it should be changed than those who have nothing to lose. If the former choose to look for reasons to support their position, and they attach a philosophical label to it, they may just be rationalizing their unfair advantages, or they may be right about how things should be. "You're just saying that because..." is not the same as "You are wrong because you are just saying that because...."

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Remarkl
Remarkl

Written by Remarkl

Self-description is not privileged.

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