This isn't meant to be a flamewar-esque post. Not trying to start shit. We'll see if it ends up there, just PSA. Mods, if not a fan of this post, please take it down.
Hey all,
I am doing research on inherent political lines on a multitude of financial-based forums. The goal of this study is to identify which way a forum "swings", per-say. Honestly, just interested in the results I may get. I've seen a multitude of opinions on this site, and whenever there's a disagreement it's usually one that resolves itself without needing outside intervention. Yes, people may have different political ideas, but this doesn't seem to be some Reddit or 4Chan hellhole, people seem to actually understand that you can think differently politically while not trashing the fuck out of someone else.
For context, I'll be using the "American" scale of political lines, but these generally can fall over a multitude of countries. If you're not an American, I'm confident that the "levels" of each side you swing will match up pretty similarly to the present issues that your home nation faces.
Again -- this isn't meant to get rowdy. I'm not judging either side. Let's just see how it goes. If you're a Republican and you hate all Liberals, try and not lead with that. If you're a Democrat and think that Conservatives should rot in hell, maybe don't bring that up. Understand that everyone has their own inherent biases and I'm just trying to collect research for a project I am working on.
Below is a template w/ some questions that I've tried to develop to make it a tad bit easier for you all.
- What side of the spectrum would you align yourself with primarily?
- (D) (Democrat), (I) (Independent], (R) Republican
- How "traditional" would you consider yourself within a certain party's line?
- Very traditional -- I'm straight up a ticket on either line for everything.
- Traditional -- with a few exceptions, I agree with my party on all decisions they make.
- Flexible -- I think my party is primarily right, however, I don't agree with all of their options.
- Very flexible -- I agree with both parties equally on certain subjects.
- What side matters more to you?
- (E) Economic, or (S) Social, or (O) Other
- Take some time to briefly explain why one of those things matters more than the other!
- Similar to question 2, where would you stand within your party's line? For example, I'll use the American two-party system below.
- Liberal Democrat
- Moderate Democrat
- Independent Democrat
- Independent
- Independent Republican
- Moderate Republican
- Conservative Republican
- Other (comment)
- Picture yourself in front of a 180-degree plane. Directly in front of you, is Independent. 90 degrees to your left, is Liberal Democrat. 90 Degrees to your right is Conservative Republican. If you had to choose an angle, which angle are you walking towards? For example, if you were an independent Republican, you'd walk 30 degrees to the right.
- This next part is yours. Talk about anything related to why you stand behind the policies you stand and anything you'd improve.
Again, I appreciate you all for doing this. I am not trying to start shit, I'm not trying to prove a point, I am simply trying to conduct research and see if I can wrap some demographics for this forum. No matter your political belief, I feel as if WSO is still an excellent informational hub, and all people should continue to use it.
.
Moderate - hate Trump, Biden, Hillary and everything they stand for and represent with a passion
Socially liberal, but not SJW liberal, and fiscally conservative
I feel like this is most people on this forum
Yeah most likely. Then we have the very vocal minority types like Neink who have a raging hate boner for liberals, after a liberal cucked him and stole his girl
Im kinda all over the place tbh. Im pretty libertarian in terms of economics. But im definitely socially liberal and that's been shaped by my childhood and things of that nature. I by no means see myself as a "traditional" person, I don't like church and I fucking love drugs. I generally dislike the whole idea of big government and politicians (at least in todays gov) and just think that there are a ton of better ways to do things that are impossible because of the governments involvement. I would say that the majority of people on this forum would side with this opinion (ish)
Even tho I have some ideas about politics and shit like that, I fucking hate it, everything about politics sucks. This is definitely why I side with the whole libertarian approach somewhat. I think that any extreme of the spectrum is pretty terrible - fuck furrys and fuck white supremacists
Build back better. America needs better infrastructure and to get out of foreign entanglements. Trump promised big and failed big time at both.
Not to make your life difficult or anything, but I think there are quite a few affiliations which aren't adequately represented by this questionnaire. I think we already see that from our Equity Research Associate's and FedReserves' responses.
Anarchism, Authoritarianism, Christian democracy, Communitarianism, Communism, Conservatism, Corporatism, Democracy, Environmentalism, Fascism/Nazism, Liberalism (classical, social, and otherwise), Libertarianism, Nationalism, Populism, Progressivism, Social Democracy, Socialism, Syndicalism, and Transhumanism are all rather well developed ideologies, and users here can take facets from multiple of these.
If you want to know what tends to prevail here, it's mainline Democrats and Republicans and libertarians of a variety of flavors (with most falling into the bucket of generally accepting of a wide variety of lifestyles and supportive of a relaxed regulatory environment, particularly as it relates to business). For example, I'm probably not your typical user, but I'm a left-of-center libertarian living within the United States who believes in limited business regulations except for environmental externalities (universal carbon tax), workplace democracies through employee stock ownership plans, and a strong path to legal immigration into the United States (I find the current free-for-all illegal immigration approach morally abhorrent because it leaves the US unable to know who is present and leaves immigrants at the mercy of evildoers on their journey here and outside the protection of law once settled). Plenty of people on this site would disagree with me on all of these, but that's fine.
Totally agree with you, thanks for the comment. I could have shaped the question in a clearer path. I appreciate your insight and I do realize there's more than just having a D or an R next to your name. My thought process was this -- most people end up falling in line with a D or R candidate, simply because of their potency and relevance in the mainstream policy. My idea was that whichever specification of political spectrum anyone would be, would have enough similarities to the six or so choices I listed above, with a little wiggle room -- hence why I encouraged those to write about more comprehensive issues in the last part.
I do think you make a great point, however, and comments like this were exactly what I was looking for. I appreciate your analysis!
But that's the thing, if you only needed to know about most people, you would already know that before you asked, so therein is the trouble.
I don't claim to be the typical person, but I don't identify with any of the six buckets. Not in the least. The custom write-up was a good solution on your end, but it perhaps makes things less easy to tabulate on the data side.
Stonks1995 I think your methodology in the third question will be limited by the fallacy of a political spectrum on a line. Regardless, I will answer as best I can.
1. Independent
2. Economic
The economy matters more to me. I do care about social issues, though, especially human rights, liberty, and other aspects of government overreach (surveillance, civil asset forfeiture, qualified immunity).
3. Independent Libertarian. I find that most political platforms are not directly helpful enough for my personal interests. If no Libertarian ran, I would bite the bullet and vote republican but they tend to be far too authoritarian for my tastes. Ten degrees right most likely.
4. The government should be as small as possible. Essentially the State Department, doing diplomacy and citizen services but nothing else. My dominant focus in politics is personal, individual freedom. Most things should be privatized in general. I have supported at various times hoppeanism, austrolibertarianism, minarchism
I agree -- I replied to another user with a similar crituque, and will edit my question sometime today in order to phrase it in a more open way. Thank you for your comment, and I appreciate the great insight you've provided. Cheers!
fuck politics, that's where I fall
I vote for whoever J Powell tells me to.
I would say my general philosophy is I hate greed, economic opportunity and education cures most ills, central power is almost always bad, and live and let live
current democrats get it wrong because of wokeism and playing whack a mole with income/wealth inequality. reverse segregation is not the way to solve racial issues, just like wealth tax doesn't solve inequalities in the education system and disparities in policing that keep disadvantaged kids behind the 8 ball. but, it's immensely easier to do something like banning roth conversions than breaking up every teacher's union in the rust belt (if that's what it takes), starting more charter schools, and disrupting the university education system.
current republicans get it wrong because they'd rather bitch about voting machines than wonder why the hell they lost in the first place. it's because you nominated a blowhard who completely shit on any potentially good policy ideas he had with the worst attitude I've seen since I coached elementary school kids in sports. you forgot about fiscal conservatism and any economic intelligence that got people excited in 2012 (like for fuck's sake, why would you cut taxes during an EXPANSION?!), and you go after the wrong social issues just to continually drive a wedge between people that you consistently complain about. yes obama and biden drove people apart, but to imply that any of the top brass at the GOP is a unifier is about as honest as bill clinton was when he said he didn't have sexual relations. like really, abortion?! in 2021? you're worrying about that?!
I hate 'em all, I'm a political islander, I think they're morally bankrupt, whores for votes and power, corrupted by mega corporations that are simply preserving their interests to meet analyst expectations, and are 100% short term minded instead of interested in the preservation of the union for generations to come.
for an idea of how I'd run things: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/you-are-dictator-of-the-united-s…
This is an excellent analysis and exactly the kind of response I was looking for. I appreciate you taking the time to go in-depth, and understand every point you have made. As for the article you linked, great read!
happy to help. part of the issue is economically, both parties seem to be going more populist with the dems showing shades of outright socialism, and republicans losing all of the fiscal conservatism that people generally associate with "conservatives."
I'm pro 2A, pro free speech, anti abortion, pro legalized weed, pro legalized gay marriage, think America is generally a good country, don't think kids should be bombarded with LGBT propaganda in schools. Up until like 4 years ago this made me a socially moderate libertarian, now it apparently makes me Literally Hitler.
Independent with a conservative Lean
Trump's first 3 years pushed me towards moderate conservative, but the past year and a half has swerved me back to independent with a conservative lean. By definition that makes me flexible with the conservative ideology.
I can give you a few examples to illustrate:
COVID: Against lockdowns, forced shutdowns and for the most part reduced capacity. Where I think Republicans messed up was with masks. I believe the science pointed at the height of the pandemic to a hybrid mask model (masks indoors in places shared with the elderly/at-risk , like grocery stores but masks outdoors at say a beach make no sense). Even now I disagree with the student mask mandate ban that Republican governors are trying to push.
Elections: pro Voter ID but strongly against Jan 6, restricted Sunday voting and other clear suppression tactics
Taxes/Regulations: I think corporations should be taxed more and regulated more as well as HNW individuals, however I think that added revenue should come back in tax cuts for the middle and working class as opposed to a bigger government spending package.
For this response, I didn't use the term "Republican" because like thebrofessor I'm frustrated with most career politicans and think they are clowns. I debate a lot against the liberal policies being enacted currently, but at the same time I'm frustrated with Republicans for just playing defensive when they have enough influence to potentially swing moderates and throw something across the floor. Hawley talks about "breaking up big tech" and even wrote a book on it (and made a lot of money) but has done nothing except write "strongly worded letters" to actually break up Big Tech. And that's just one example. I could go on and on. Most of the clown congress people thrive off of the establishment and then just create a circus of "division" without actually doing the right thing.
I'm a libertarian and would vote Libertarian if I was American. Against most regulation and laws.
The traditional political compass needs to be paired with Carlo Cipolla's one on stupidity. Thus you have liberals overlapping with the quadrants of the stupid or evil. Under that reasoning, my political stance is decisively anti-liberal.
Buen dicho caballero
Ahora podemos hablar fácilmente en el nuestro idioma secreto, el Castellano. Los tontos gringos liberales que hablan de latinx no saben que tampoco se puede pronunciar
Aware that I'm oversimplifying.. I'm sharing how I tend to think about US politics from a high level and welcome any counterpoints.
As a disclaimer, I'm hoping to progress from libtard to libertarian Koch brother status asap, plz help.
To answer your questions currently:
democrat
flexible
Social issues
Independent
I try to reconcile the two-party dynamic in the US as one where the young and indebted lean left and favor redistributive policies and the overworked but asset rich old lean right and favor conservatism- in attempt to protect their keep/way of life.
Of course, there are exceptions too. People on this forum earning 200k+ at 23 will find a lot to like in something espousing low taxes; if you work 100+ hours a week… harder than the vast majority of lazy fat Americans, why wouldn't you curse at uncle Sam for taking half and spending it on the latest Lockheed Martin F-35, which might fly over a football stadium once or twice (consider veteran wellbeing instead?) Or, perhaps you're older and for numerous reasons you have no retirement savings, or your pension's at 30% funded because GS blew smoke up your arse and plugged it with AAA mbs in '07. Is it not in your interest to vote for a steep, progressive tax scheme and elect politicians who promise a strong social spending program?
At least In my opinion.. this is how I expect people to behave politically: acting in their own self interest and in a capitalist society… with their wallets in mind.
Rich and morally onerous, if I wanted to convince the generic consumer that the same policies were advantageous for the both of us, I might tell them to read Ayn Rand, or purposefully conflate social and economic issues, knowing people won't question how a vote affects their wallet if I can trigger a large enough emotional response on the social side (read religion, race, abortion, environment, etc..)
Does it appear to anyone else that Americans are bamboozled into voting against their own self-interest? There's no doubt that the political spectrum has shifted to the right over the last 50 years.. a moderate then would be ostracized as a leftist now.. did the population not adapt or did everyone realize conservatism is better?
I lean left because of social issues. Financially, I'm an aspiring libertarian. However, if I decide to leave this rat race and search for moral redemption at the roulette table, I'll be looking for government handouts at the expense of your firm's bottom-line.
Monkey see monkey do: I'll argue for a bailout when I'm down and a tax cut when I'm up.
Agree with a lot of what you said, though I'd argue that "Americans bamboozled into voting against their own-self interest" would primarily apply only to poor Republicans, who get distracted by those wedge social issues, and vote to cut their own healthcare and their bosses' tax rates. Trump ran as the president for the forgotten working man, and in his first week in office, signed a bill to once again allow West Virginia coal companies to dump waste into their local town water streams.
Poor Democrats vote to give themselves more benefits (self-interest) while wealthy Democrats are pretty clear-eyed that they are voting to raise their own taxes. There was an entire book written on this class of Republicans called "What's the Matter With Kansas"
I'd also argue the country has moved left, despite the Republicans insistence to call anything left of Ayn Rand as "socialist". The overwhelming Republican party leader and favorite for 2024 just completed a populist term favoring gay marriage, tariffs, anti-war, restrictive trade, antitrust and government intervention into private enterprise. These were all left wing positions not too long ago. There is (whether you like/agree with it) a growing socialist-adjacent movement in the U.S. The traditional Bush/Cheney Republican pro-free trade/business/supply-side economics constituency is as small as it's ever been in my lifetime.
marxist
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