Whither political leanings?

[Grinning_Colossus]

The elites get cheap services from the new expanded labor market

The elites would prefer everybody had shitloads of money, was happy, and were hailing their wise overlords. So I don't think so. It is not like they couldn't afford services in the past.

There's a normative element as well--they get to do well by doing good. They get to feel good about helping desperate migrants, plus now they can afford a live-in maid.

[Jacob]

The elites get cheap services from the new expanded labor market

The elites would prefer everybody had shitloads of money, was happy, and were hailing their wise overlords. So I don't think so. It is not like they couldn't afford services in the past.

There's a normative element as well--they get to do well by doing good. They get to feel good about helping desperate migrants, plus now they can afford a live-in maid.

Who are the "they" you are talking about?

[Grinning_Colossus]

Top ~5% of the income distribution. Not political elites or wealthy CEOs, per se, but thought-leaders and their extended networks--the politically-engaged lower-upper and upper-middle class.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think we are heading (already in) a period of rapid change and that many of the changes could be very unpleasant. To answer the op, I turn 60 this year and regard the current situation as qualitatively different to earlier politics in western countries; when I was 40, for example, I was quite hopeful that New Labour would make major and lasting improvements to the UK; so I don't think one becomes an utter cynic as soon as youth departs.

[Tonitrus]

I think I am doing it in reverse....

I was a Rush Limbaugh-listening, cynical, conservitard in my teenage years...now I am mostly a tree-hugging, recycling, folk music-listening, vegetarian hippie.

Winston Churchill, eat your heart out. 

Though for actual, on-the-ground politics and politicians...I look down on them all with equal contempt.  Even Bernie. 

[Eddie Teach]

Sounds like Tony doesn't get enough protein.

[Martinus]

I feel you, but I don't think the new left represents anything of the "European liberalism" any more.

From my classes on "history of ideologies" at college, I remember that, broadly speaking, the Western political thought is divided into three camps - liberalism (with John Stuart Mill and John Locke as its "fathers"), conservatism (with Edmund Burke) and collectivism (with Jean Jacques Rousseau).

It used to be that the left was a mix of liberalism and collectivism, but now I think it has moved almost entirely into the collectivist camp, with very little of true liberalism left. It may mean that liberalism has simply won and the other two ideologies describe differences within a liberal paradigm, so to speak, but I cannot help to think that both collectivism and conservatism are trying to erode liberal values, the key of which is freedom of speech.

[Martinus]

So yeah... it's a bit of a mess. Gives me a bit of a before the storm vibe, to be honest.

Yeah. As I say it reminds me of what I've read of the 70s. I think it's potentially a similar breakdown of consensus, 'the old is dead the new cannot yet be born' sort of moment.

What's really difficult is to guess is what comes next?

My personal guess is the new split, at least in the wealthy West, will be between individualism and paternalism. But then libertarians have been saying this for decades and it has not materialised yet.

[Martinus]

I think I am doing it in reverse....

I was a Rush Limbaugh-listening, cynical, conservitard in my teenage years...now I am mostly a tree-hugging, recycling, folk music-listening, vegetarian hippie.

Winston Churchill, eat your heart out. 

Though for actual, on-the-ground politics and politicians...I look down on them all with equal contempt.  Even Bernie.

So, you mean you are both brainless and heartless?

[Gups]

So yeah... it's a bit of a mess. Gives me a bit of a before the storm vibe, to be honest.

Yeah. As I say it reminds me of what I've read of the 70s. I think it's potentially a similar breakdown of consensus, 'the old is dead the new cannot yet be born' sort of moment.

What's really difficult is to guess is what comes next?

Which is what is different from the 70s. The post-war consensus had a clear challenger in monetarism/market economics etc. It was a reasonably coherent approach and had political support by the 1960s (Goldwater, Powell etc). It was only a matter of time before it captured the right in the US and UK.

That's not true right now. The anti-globalisation movement has no unity, no real common purpose and no coherent platform. It is purely oppositional.

[garbon]

What I've taken from this is that Sheilbh is a little too excited about the impact the 70s may have had on the world. And Grinning Colossus is just nuts. Well one of those things, I think we all knew coming in.

[Martinus]

The anti-globalisation movement has no unity, no real common purpose and no coherent platform. It is purely oppositional.

That's right - the idiocy of the Brexit vote is the best example. There are people who voted for Brexit because they felt the EU is too socialist and too immigrant-friendly - and those who voted for Brexit because they felt the UE is not socialist and immigrant-friendly enough.

[Tamas]

I agree with the part that this is probably a byproduct of globalism - not globalism as an idelogy, but globalism as an economic fact of life.

As it was mentioned above, just like industrialisation uprooted the old rural communities, globalism is turning the whole world into a single market.

Objectively, this is hugely beneficial but like any big changes there are short-term losers of it and there is the significant issue of a lot of people being crap at accepting change in general.

The fusion of the world into a single economy is a huge shock, the issues within the Muslim world and Muslim immigrants into the first world (as in, cultural issues for both the migrants and the native populations) are the most prominent ones but I am quite sure there are a whole lot of others going on locally/regionally.

In the first world, I think it isn't that people (the middle class and the poor) are, in absolute terms, worst off than a few decades ago, that is just silly. Just compare the quality of life, the  kind and level of services available etc.
I think that perceptation comes from two things:

1. Quality of living isn't just increased for the "lower classes" - it is increased for everyone, and due to the easy access to information and the way the media works this gap in lifestyle is probably more evident than ever. The poor is having a better lifestyle than their forefathers but apparently it's not a real consolation when the gap between what they have and what others have remained the same size.

And far more importantly:

2. With globalisation and the cultural change it has brought (political liberalism in the sense of more equal right to minorities), the ages-old protections that sheltered the economically not-so-useful parts of the population are fading. Namely, in economic terms, there are far less barriers between your low-to-no-skill job and that guy who is willing to do it for much less. You don't even need immigration for that, the job can just move abroad thanks to technology. Culturally, even if you were a largely worthless individual you were sheltered from the social implications of that due to your inherent status of being white and/or being a male. Simply, no matter what you achieved (or not), in your world you were not part of the lowest class.


To be fair, the economc uncertainty is the bigger factor.
Do not underestimate the negative effects of uncertainty. In Hungary, and I am sure in all other parts of the former Eastern bloc, many people long for the predictable secure blandness of the communist era.
Sure, your quality of life was pretty low (although nostalgia tends to blur that part out), but the little you had was guaranteed, and you could build your life with that certainty. What little was there to build, anyways.



In summary, if we scratch the surface of the problems of our times, if we remove the different ideologies used to mask and justify personal motivations, a very simple explanation remains:
The world is in an era of turbulent change for the better. Those who feel their status threatened by this change (a whole lot of people: unskilled workers, bigotted whites, muslim men used to being the dominant half of their civilisation by birthright, etc.), are more than willing to try and sabotage this rapid betterment of our human civilisation.

[Martinus]

Yeah, in many ways, it's like the industrial revolution uprooting landed gentry. Only now it is happening on a global scale, with classes being replaced, broadly speaking, by nations.

So the Western nations are the equivalent of aristocracy - that is now being forced to compete on a global market.

[Martinus]

Incidentally, and to go back a bit to Hami's original post, I don't think "classic liberalism" was ever truly popular as a political or social ideology. Just look at the incest thread - many people from both "left" and "right" are perfectly happy to deprive others of their freedom in the name of some nebulous "collective good", even when they admit the aforementioned "collective good" has no rational basis.

The path of freedom (especially freedom for people who are not like us to do things we do not like) is always rather lonely.