I'm not sure about that. I know some conservatives (which I'd consider myself as well, though leaning libertarian) who are very well off but didn't start that way, and their political ideas remained constant. I know others who aren't particularly wealthy, but hold the same ideas.
Fundamentally, I believe it's more about "what will work?", in essence "if we organized our society along these lines, would it still function, or would it fall apart", and progressives and conservatives have vastly different opinions on that.
For a single issue: conservatives generally believe that "if you pay people to do nothing, that's exactly what they'll do" and thus are opposed to high welfare (because people will stop working, and without people working, nothing gets produced), while progressives believe that people will be freed by not worrying about their income and will voluntarily work and become very productive, which is why they're very much in favor of high welfare (e.g. UBI). It's one side saying "don't change this, you'll break everything" and the other side saying "no, we need to change this, it'll get better".
But it's not about your current status in the system. My political convictions haven't changed much since when I was pretty much poor vs now that I'm doing very well (though they've become calmer, but I'd attribute that mostly to age).
Which is by and large the entire problem. The right is rarely interested in solving problems.
So I could find minor points of agreement -- there's certainly people out there who are a tad too radical for my taste. The problem is that in general though I'm very much in favor of change, and the right isn't.
The right are very interested in solving problems; but they are defined by identifying the plans of the left as the biggest problem. That is basically why they pick up the label "conservative", the right only exists as a political unit to resist threats from the left. Otherwise the right generally favours non-government approaches to problem solving (partially in an attempt to stop empowering leftists who tend to infest bureaucracies). And every faction generally keeps busy dealing with their own perceived problems.
That's not so much problem solving as just obstructionism. Surely there are things to be done that don't depend at all on what the competition is doing.
> Otherwise the right generally favours non-government approaches to problem solving (partially in an attempt to stop empowering leftists who tend to infest bureaucracies).
No, the right favors non-government approaches because they want to pick and choose. They for instance heavily endorse personal charity because you get to pick who you help.
I on the other hand think there should be a floor in society below which nobody is allowed to fall, and that it ideally should be implemented in a fully blind and dispassionate manner, eg, UBI. Everyone gets it automatically no questions asked, without needing to be liked by the local community.
My government have made it very difficult for me to take my own health, retirement savings, home improvement and often financial decisions into my own hands. Typically the way his happens is that some leftist will be responsible although in the case of the financial stuff it tends to be nonpartisan corruption. If I am too effective at savings then there will also be attempts to gain control of the savings and funnel them into causes I usually think are poorly chosen. Ignoring the left is not really an option; they'll identify resources and come for them to fund their own plans. Otherwise the awkward truth is that controlling government wouldn't be such a big deal.
> ...
> If I am too effective at savings then there will also be attempts to gain control of the savings and funnel them into causes I usually think are poorly chosen
Right, that's exactly what I was talking about. We can agree on the surface about some things, but underlying priorities and views aren't really compatible even when things happen to align by accident.
Eg, my desire for having guaranteed social minimums isn't really compatible with your desire to personally control what your tax money gets spent on.
I put it to you that it isn't 'obstructionism', it is plain old disagreement. Or if you prefer, the left is being just as obstructionist in blocking the right from making their own decisions. The only difference is where the obstructions are happening.
There's different things being discussed. I started answering the "If you want to set yourself an interesting challenge, try to figure out why it is you think being on the right wing of politics is incompatible with those opinions" bit.
My answer to that is that there are genuine underlying incompatibilities, and so even if there's a superficial agreement on something once in a while (eg, we both agree some policy goes a tad too far), it still makes no sense for me to switch camps.
The obstructionism is a tangential side point: that the right seems to have no policy other than being anti-left, and so far you've done nothing to convince me otherwise.
One 2019 UK report (https://www.icax.co.uk/pdf/Absolute_Zero_Report.pdf) proposes a timeline that's been circulating on Twitter, involving the closure of all airports and shutting down all international shipping by 2050, while pricing 40% of traffic off the roads and banning beef+lamb. That (along with many more less-drastic but still significant restrictions) is what it would take to reach 'net zero' with current technology.
And that was written in 2019, when people were generally a lot more reasonable than they are in the post-Covid world.
(Do they even realise what they're proposing by 'no international shipping'... Amongst many other things, that means zero microchips for the UK, let alone complete technology products such as phones, TVs, or EVs)
Meanwhile in the real world (here in the UK), we've got a massive cost-of-living crisis, a collapsing healthcare system, a disaster of a property market, and a rising population that we're failing to build infrastructure to cope with. We have a a terribly incompetent government, and an opposition that seems no better. And we're living with the threat of WW3, the tail end of the pandemic, and now a banking crisis too.
> We currently have no non-emitting freight ships, so there is an urgent need for exploration of means to electrify ship power
It seems like you are the one "catastrophising".
What if it is a catastrophe? Should we pretend otherwise?
The word 'catastrophize' implies that the speaker is creating the catastrophe. Climate change sure seems like one to me, whether anyone says it or not.
While I don't want to try and defend every right wing policy, the crowd who think global warming is the biggest challenge we face have been outplayed by the very real disasters and escalations we've been facing since 2020. The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
All the evidence I see is I'm more likely to die in a fire caused by soldiers than power plants.
That's why it will be very difficult for us to find any common ground. Even though I am very much a free market guy and definitely don't agree with every policy on the left. The right down plays, ignores or ridicules global warming. How one can read the IPCC report and doesn't feel any sense of urgency is beyond me. This shouldn't even be a left or right issue.
1. Attacking the left brings them support
2. Their carbon industry supporters.
Your argument is assumptions - that climate change isn't the biggest challenge, that others are bigger.
> The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
What is "official reporting"?
China and Russia feature quite largely in the news. It's hard to imagine them getting more coverage.
What makes you believe we have any control over the climate?
What makes you believe that in a sham democracy, your vote makes any difference?
CO2 has two vibrational modes that are IR active. We release carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere that was previously bound inside the earth's crust. Humans increased the CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 420ppm (pre-industrial -> today). The science is settled. Whether you believe in it or not: Global warming is happening and humans are causing it. I understand that it is something you don't want to be true (and trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong). But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
Well, we'll see. There are predictions of global devastation within the next decade.
> But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
It's not about that. Rather it's about the law of slow-moving disasters.
For example, what if I told you there was a train coming down the tracks that is about to flatten you. Would you be scared? What if I told you it was coming at you at 1cm/year. Would you be scared then?
This is the law of slow-moving disasters. We tend not to notice them in practice. If the weather changes year to year on the time-scale of decades or centuries, the rate of change is so low that buildings will simply be replaced over time. In extreme cases, populations will migrate.
Ancient humans have lived in climates both much warmer, and much cooler than those we currently experience.
> trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong
I think I trust you. You seem like a stand-up guy, but understand that there is a huge amount of power to be distilled out of this. So there are a great number of people who are heavily incentivised to look the other way if there are any unanswered questions.
For a parallel example, see the refusal to acknowledge side effects including mycardiatus from COVID vaccinations.
I never really got this argument: There are even more powerful and even richer people that have incentives that nothing changes: ExxonMobile, Koch Industries, BP, Volkswagen, BMW, GM, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.
We've already 'seen'. The science is, of course, based on an enormous amount of empirical evidence. We can always just say, 'we'll see what happens next', but it's a bizarre argument - on that basis you never act.
Speaking this way breaks the conversation.
The big divide isn't over specific beliefs and policies as much as whether you believe the current system tends to favour you or not.