You ask, I answer: Political Edition!

[teaberryblue]

In the spirit of Election Day, I thought this would be fun.

Ask me a question about my political beliefs. I will do my best to answer them. They can be on anything from big stuff like civil rights to little things like state tax issues to personal things like political moments that shaped my views.

This is not a place for debate or disagreement. I am going to be completely honest and that might mean that my views might piss someone off. I will ask you to contain your pissed-offedness and not debate in this post. Post your own post if you want to discuss. I usually like to debate but I don't want this idea to turn into that, not because I want to silence anybody, but because I want to keep it on the original subject.

Comments

[negativeneve.livejournal.com]

Which do you prefer: socialism or capitalism?

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

Here's a line you probably don't hear very often: I don't think they are mutually exclusive, and I believe that each model works better for different types of things.

I think that capitalism works better for industries that require a lot of innovation and ingenuity. Individuals are more likely to work hard for individual compensation, rather than for a nice feeling of helping the public good. Competition in a free market makes people race to out-innovate in a way that I don't think would be possible without a free market.

However, I think socialism works better for services that everyone needs, and for equalizing the availability of services. Socialized health care, education, police and fire services, and so on, are better at making sure that everyone who requires service gets service, and privatizing those services opens them up to a huge number of inequities based on class (and as a result, based on race, gender, etc.) In the US, our social services aren't perfect and do have a lot of inequities, but in many cases, the inequities are caused by the fact that the programs aren't entirely socialized (eg, people have a choice to send their children to private schools, which forces the creation of a class structure in our school system which would not exist if wealthy people were more invested in our public schools).