@joaopinheiro@mastodon.social I do agree but to play devils advocate how far does that go.

What if the idea you hold is that Others should die if they dont beleive in your god. Should we be just as tolerant for that idea? presuming of course they arent acting on it (in which case there is no need for tolerance anymore as it goes beyond an idea)

@Tayo@fosstodon.org So you think it is acceptable to attack certain religions (the ones you deem as trying to kill you) but not ok to attack the ones you dont classify as such?

Wouldnt that just lead to the muslims being justified in hating the christians and the christians justified in hating the muslims if we use that criteria?

@Tayo@fosstodon.org For simplicity lets say Christian, Muslim and Jewish then.

Should we be equally as critical of dislike or hate towards religious groups as we are against racial groups?

So as some of you may have noticed I have been thinking about the political compass lately and how I can explain the various axis to people, as well as where I feel a lot of America lies on this chart.

Its clear terms like Left, Liberal, Libertarian, conservative are often misused, confused, or to be more generous, have multiple conflicting definitions.

So lets be clear about one point. Language is fluid. People use the terms in conflicting ways, thats ok to a point, but its gotten so bad that it makes communication difficult because you never know what definition someone is really using. So I'm going to use the technical definition here mostly rather than the colloquial ones. Usually the definition of left and right just means Democrat and GOP in america, but I find that really masks a lot of nuance.

So when we talk from a technical angle Left really means "The government should force the more fortunate to help the less fortunate" this tends to mean if your Left you support redistribution of wealth and social programs, if your left to the most extreme then your basically some form of communism where you feel all wealth should be distributed evenly. Right on the other hand tends to mean you support free markets, in its most extreme you would want no financial regulations of any kind, a pure capitalism (no not the USA sort of capitalism, full pure, extreme capitalism). Socialistic countries such as much of Europe would fall about 2/3rds of the way towards the left, more capitalistic countries like the USA would probably fall closer to 1/3rds of the way towards the left, but still left leaning. There are very few countries today that would fall towards the right side of the spectrum

The top to bottom side is much easier to understand. The top most side would represent Authoritative regimes. Basically the farther towards the top you go the bigger the government you have and the less freedom the people have to question the government or collective opinion. The farther to the bottom you go the closer you appeal to the Anarchist mentality of small government with minimal power.

Now whats interesting to me is the DNC in america would fall very close to the top-left corner, about 2/3rds or closer to that top-left corner. The GOP I'd say falls towards the top-right corner, also about 2/3 of the way there. Most people who are consistently independent however seem to fall somewhere near the bottom-middle. I myself am bottom-middle, about as far away from either of these parties as I could be short of being an actual anarchist (im not all the way at the bottom). I'm more than happy about where I wound up.

@muehlfield@social.tchncs.de Alright, as always it was nice chatting with you. Feel free to interject later if you have any thoughts you'd like to share.

I cant decide if a Rectangle is a Recreational Tangle or a Rectified Angle...

@muehlfield@social.tchncs.de I dont like the idea of UBI, feel too much like throwing money at a problem..

I dont really advocate for performance based welfare exactly. Like the amount of welfare you get shouldn't be based on how well you do at school or training programs. The only criteria should be that you are leveraging such programs and pursuing self-improvement. Beyond that trying to quantify performance is just too tricky.

But I do think the amount of help you get should be largely dependent on how much effort you put into getting out of the situation your in.

As someone who has invested most of their life into helping others I realize one important thing. Some people are loss causes (at least until they change their approach).. These people cant be helped with money. Though as I said i think there is hope for these people with therapy in many cases, but even then they need to be willing to seek therapy.

@muehlfield@social.tchncs.de Yup, thats pretty much what I was trying to say at the end. I agree. There is a reason I strongly support programs which are explicitly designed to support peope getting ahead, rather than programs that just dump money in their lap. Because if your poor you DO have a harder time and we should try to ensure anyone who is willing to do the work can make it.

I generally support ideas like this:

1) 100% tax payed education at all levels up to and including PhD

2) incentive based welfare. That is, everyone gets the bare minimum not to starve to death but if you want more than half a room and stale bread for dinner then you need to be commited to job training or education, but if you persue such things (which are free per #1) then welfare should be generous with both housing and food so long as you continue to perform

3) healthcare reform as well, a bit of a tangent but we need better mental health for the poor if they are to get over many of the issues they deal with, not to mention physical health.