i think most of the classical left/right divide comes down to moral attitudes, which is why it's so easy to make a strong case for either system, yet never reach any final agreement on it.
and i suspect people hate centrists such as me because they're not morally committed.
@moffintosh @m0xee i mean, i'd argue that coops are a fairly centrist idea. they're a business that makes money but the profit is shared by the trading participants instead of being handed to shareholders. coops exist but i don't think there are enough of them.
@thor @m0xee I argue that is a natural consequence of a market.
As the prices go down due to competition, margins go down, and eventually to gain competiveness, owners have to exploit their employees, by either making them work for longer or more intensively to produce more (and thus lowering the price due to production of scale) or to produce more valueable stuff. Or else they risk being outcompeted by those who do.
While classic owners don't have too much of a problem with it, cooperatives where the owners and the workers are the same people are more reluctant to do that, and thus end up being outcompeted
I don't think that centrists are those who don't have any opinion, but maybe I'm just preoccupied by concept of radical center. And they aren't those who thing that what we have now is the best solution possible — there is always room for improvement, but choices we need to make, do not necessarily have to clearly align with either left or right.
For me centrism is also deeply grounded in reality: this is what we have now, what can we do to make it better in the foreseeable future? So it doesn't get down to chasing some pipe dream — this might make it look like it's aligning with status quo. Progressives might say: but that is not good enough — and that is often true, it isn't, but that doesn't mean we should start breaking things. Just set a clear goal and always keep it in mind — making baby steps in the right direction is better than making huge leaps in the wrong one.
And of course centrists are not those who are "Let's just all hold hands and go into brighter future": you have to make choices, you have to make sacrifices — some of your choices might alienate one group or the other — you are not strawberry ice cream for everyone to love you. But it still doesn't mean we have to get rid of some group to have all our problems solved — this had never worked and it won't work now. That is the problem with all that "eating the rich" and getting rid of authority — is the world where everyone is poor and has no control over anything really what you want? I think not — but it doesn't mean we should treat those with wealth and power as some sort of demiurges who gave us all the good things — they are not, they, or some of their ancestors might have done some good things, but now they are just using their wealth and power to prevent others from taking their place. Yet, there is no "revolution of proletariat", like John Lennon said in his song: working class hero is something (yet) to be. It'd be just another revolution for one group to replace other group in power using proletariat as a tool. Aristocracy just gets replaced by capitalists or nomenklatura like in USSR — and most people are just getting fucked, again!
What we all want is not world without rich, but world where wealth is more evenly distributed and where more people take part in decision making. Those who do better job should still be rewarded more — I was born in USSR and I've seen what happens when it's not this way: some just do job with dignity, but not doing 400% of plan, a lot of others are just drunk at lunch because they don't fucking care. But of course that doesn't mean that those who can't do better should live in slums. We should also not strive for getting rid of private property, what we want in reality is to prevent few from owning everything and the rest from owning nothing. We should also not try to get rid of social classes — just make it more transparent and make social mobility easier. We shouldn't get rid of nations either — we just have to learn how to co-exist together, and it'd be way easier when people get just live their life instead of constantly struggling to make ends meet.
This is kinda what the left want, but it's also kinda what the right want, and it is a lot like status quo — just way better balanced, this is centrism! So why don't we all just hold hands… 🤣
@m0xee @thor
@m0xee @thor Centrists are just the current status quo imo