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Old 01-20-2020, 09:07 AM
 
Location: Philadelphia/South Jersey area
3,677 posts, read 2,540,582 times
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So I think your question should be more descriptive.

The person you mention imo has Extreme views. Whether you call it far right or ultra left, extremism in any form is dangerous.


I have no idea what motivates them.
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Old 01-20-2020, 09:11 AM
 
1,472 posts, read 1,652,268 times
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It's fairly common for people to have beliefs that just don't connect up. They think very strongly of two different things, but they exist in a vacuum from each other in their minds. Like those guys who worship the police and military, while hording guns to protect themselves from the government coming to get them. It's why concepts like the "deep state" were invented - so people can hate the government while simultaneously loving everything done by the party and people in charge of the government - it compartmentalizes things so that the good is the people they like and the bad is the people they don't, even though they are really the same.
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Old 01-20-2020, 11:18 AM
 
21,668 posts, read 9,243,132 times
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I notice that people's political views tend to be shaped by something most likely in their youth. My sister is a big time liberal and she met some hippie guy in a resort town and moved away to Florida with him and left college. My dad went ballistic. She got pregnant, the guy dumped her so she got an abortion.

Most women in this age range (60-80), IMO, grew up with the man hater chip on their back.

I think it is largely the people around you. That's why there are very few conservatives in Hollywood.
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Old 01-20-2020, 11:25 AM
 
Location: Southwest Washington State
30,585 posts, read 24,942,450 times
Reputation: 50789
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
Hopefully this won't end up in P&OC, but may fit either in Economics or Psychology, so I'll try here.

I spent about 14 years working with a guy who had some shall we say contradictory beliefs. Not here to criticize him because he was a great guy and we worked together about 14 years. In that time we had a lot of conversations.

To sum it up, politically he would be an extreme liberal socialist. Believing heavily in the nanny state and the use of government policies to regulate behavior. He regularly railed against big business and corporate profits. Yet at the same time economically he was an extreme libertarian. In his personal life he invested heavily in the same corporations he railed against and followed the stock market on a daily basis. His net worth was a couple million by his mid 30s.

He lived an extremely spartan existence (one of the reasons for his divorce) and believed everyone should live that way. To the extent he believed the government should enforce his chosen lifestyle on everyone. His chosen enforcement mechanism was through tax policy to apply punitive, almost confiscatory, taxes on anything greater than what he considered appropriate. IE property square feet, fuel use, electric, water, etc. For example, he believed there should be a $10 per gallon tax on gas to force people to not own cars. Though interestingly he didn't believe they should tax investments, where he had his money.

At the same time however he believed the government should not build roads. That all roads should be privately built and paid for by tolls. So in one conversation we had on this, when I asked "what about rural areas and farmers? There won't be public transportation out there and what about the impact fuel taxes and lack of transportation would have on farmers?"

His response was, then they'll have to move to the city, whether they want to or not. OK and what about the cost of food? If you put $10 per gallon tax on fuel and force farmers to pay for toll roads to bring food to market, the price of food will go up.

His response to that? Government should institute price controls.

Seriously. Confiscatory taxes, the free market prices, and government price controls all in the same conversation. Self contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. I've always wondered about the psychology behind such a belief system and it confounds me even today.
Possibly there was some underlying logic to his beliefs, even if we would not understand or accept his logic. It was his logic. But, people often do believe contradictory things. He does sound somewhat odd.
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Old 01-20-2020, 11:41 AM
 
8,005 posts, read 7,125,717 times
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I don't think it's that unusual to have conflicting beliefs. I know people who care about protecting the environment, equality for all and are in favor of assistance programs for the needy who still support politicians who advance policies that are in contradiction with all of those beliefs because they believe that those politicians are good for their financial well being.

I think we can all find conflicts between our beliefs and our behavior.
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Old 01-20-2020, 12:39 PM
 
13,011 posts, read 12,965,062 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
That was just one example. Taken together all his beliefs would be, to use your example above which is very eloquent, he simultaneously believed in anarchy AND totalitarianism. That's what I trying to figure out.
I have a friend like that. He strongly advocates for a flat tax, and favors sales taxes over income taxes, because they are based on actual consumption.

Yet when it comes to utility bills, he objects to a sewage charge being charged based on water consumed, and objects to gas taxes which are based upon gallons purchased.

He refuses to acknowledge that utility taxes/surcharges/fees are exactly the type of tax he does advocate for.

I suspect his objection is simply to taxation of any type, and he will use any convenient argument to complain about a given tax, and happily change his argument later when discussing a different tax.

Your friend may be similar. He has ideas that he thinks are good, and simply isn’t interested in reconciling them with reality or practicality.
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Old 01-20-2020, 03:01 PM
 
Location: Ohio
24,624 posts, read 19,049,191 times
Reputation: 21733
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
What motivates those with contradictory political and economic beliefs?
Ignorance, mainly.

Not only ignorant educationally in the concepts, but ignorant of, and lacking practical experience in, the concepts as well.

It's real easy for people to scream that workers should be paid a "living wage" (snicker), but put those people in the position of owning and running a business and they'd find out first-hand that it is either impractical or impossible to do that and sustain the business.
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Old 01-20-2020, 03:06 PM
 
Location: East Coast of the United States
27,276 posts, read 28,346,580 times
Reputation: 24801
Quote:
Originally Posted by Transmition View Post
It's fairly common for people to have beliefs that just don't connect up. They think very strongly of two different things, but they exist in a vacuum from each other in their minds. Like those guys who worship the police and military, while hording guns to protect themselves from the government coming to get them.
Also, why some people live in huge mansions and fly everywhere in private jets while telling everybody else that they must reduce their carbon footprint because we are all going to die from climate change.
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Old 01-20-2020, 03:09 PM
 
Location: NJ
31,771 posts, read 40,483,658 times
Reputation: 24590
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
Hopefully this won't end up in P&OC, but may fit either in Economics or Psychology, so I'll try here.

I spent about 14 years working with a guy who had some shall we say contradictory beliefs. Not here to criticize him because he was a great guy and we worked together about 14 years. In that time we had a lot of conversations.

To sum it up, politically he would be an extreme liberal socialist. Believing heavily in the nanny state and the use of government policies to regulate behavior. He regularly railed against big business and corporate profits. Yet at the same time economically he was an extreme libertarian. In his personal life he invested heavily in the same corporations he railed against and followed the stock market on a daily basis. His net worth was a couple million by his mid 30s.

He lived an extremely spartan existence (one of the reasons for his divorce) and believed everyone should live that way. To the extent he believed the government should enforce his chosen lifestyle on everyone. His chosen enforcement mechanism was through tax policy to apply punitive, almost confiscatory, taxes on anything greater than what he considered appropriate. IE property square feet, fuel use, electric, water, etc. For example, he believed there should be a $10 per gallon tax on gas to force people to not own cars. Though interestingly he didn't believe they should tax investments, where he had his money.

At the same time however he believed the government should not build roads. That all roads should be privately built and paid for by tolls. So in one conversation we had on this, when I asked "what about rural areas and farmers? There won't be public transportation out there and what about the impact fuel taxes and lack of transportation would have on farmers?"

His response was, then they'll have to move to the city, whether they want to or not. OK and what about the cost of food? If you put $10 per gallon tax on fuel and force farmers to pay for toll roads to bring food to market, the price of food will go up.

His response to that? Government should institute price controls.

Seriously. Confiscatory taxes, the free market prices, and government price controls all in the same conversation. Self contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. I've always wondered about the psychology behind such a belief system and it confounds me even today.
i have strong political opinions. they are unusual in that only a few agree with all of them and there is a good overlap on important issues with most people also. in person, i always try to focus on the things that we agree on. online, i like to focus on the things i disagree on. its more fun to disagree online than in person.
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Old 01-20-2020, 05:15 PM
 
Location: Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne
17,916 posts, read 24,195,139 times
Reputation: 39026
There are a lot of people out there (all over these forums, for example) that think the right to pursue and accrue weath is fundamental while at the same time approving of policies that create a system that literally locks people out of the ability to pursue or accrue even a basic standard of living, much less accrual of any significant money or assets.
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