
Political polarization may emerge because of conflicting desires, not beliefs - tpatke
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html
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harimau777
It seems to me that part of the solution might be working to develop solutions
that don't prevent the other side from achieving their desires. My ideal
vision of how America works (e.g. the American dream as I see it) is that
everyone is free to live according to their own way of life and society works
for win-win solutions. However, it seems to me that both sides are afraid that
if the other side wins they will try to force their lifestyle on them; and I
think they are probably right.

~~~
vkou
I want to live in such a way where I get to be a feudal lord, presiding over a
large group of tenant farmers/sharecroppers/indentured servants. I want the
freedom to employ the state's prisoners for my own gain, without paying them.
I want the freedom to pollute, without being subjected to the tyranny of the
EPA. In short, I want to be able to exercise power against those weaker,
poorer, or less politically connected then me.

My desires are almost certainly incompatible with yours.

Politics is a process for distributing scarce resources. Brokering how, and
when people can exert power to the detriment of others is an inescapable part
of it. There are many bad actors who seek to do so - not as many as one might
lead to believe, but they consistently find themselves at the top of the
social food chain.

~~~
harimau777
I agree that there are going to be situations where conflict between desires
is unavoidable or where it is not possible to accommodate extreme desires;
however that doesn't mean that finding compatible solutions is not the best
approach in the vast majority of situations.

I'd also point out that those are strategies to achieve desires, not desires
themselves. The associated desires might be something like financial security,
a sense of importance, freedom etc.

~~~
vkou
Compatible solutions that are palatable to both parties - compromise - is very
important.

Sometimes, though, compromise is impossible. If you say that 3+3=6, and I say
that 3+3=10, you'd be a fool to compromise on 8. This is made all the more
obvious when we consider which of us gets to frame the debate. If I really
wanted 3+3 to be 10, I'd just demand that we make 3+3=14, and I'll get exactly
what I want, once we split the difference.

Everyone wants freedom, and everyone wants agency, and everyone wants health
and happiness. There's plenty of all of those things to go around. Many of us
also want power, though, which is more likely to be a zero-sum game.

~~~
frandroid
> I'd just demand that we make 3+3=14, and I'll get exactly what I want, once
> we split the difference.

There's a lot of that happening...

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narrowrail
Madison discusses factionalism in Federalist No. 10, and as I read it,
basically concludes that all these competing desires/interests and/or beliefs
would be best served by a federal republic where locals would be able to solve
their problems in the appropriate way for their constituents. So,
decentralizing power away from Washington D.C. and putting it in the hands
people more directly. Some people cannot accept this and would like to exert
control over people living +1000 miles away. There is just too much diversity
to manage 300M people from a central authority without sacrificing liberty.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and authoritarian ideas of governance must
be vigilantly opposed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10#Madison.27s_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10#Madison.27s_arguments)

~~~
derefr
I feel like this made sense for the 1700s United States because everyone there
was a recent immigrant—which is to say, people with both the desire and the
proven ability to pick up and move to find a place that better suits them.

When you have communities of mostly that type of person, you can just make
each community into its own little experiment, and tell everyone to go on a
Gulliver's Travels-esque journey to find the right community for them, _then_
settle down.

When your communities, on the other hand, are full of "entrenched"
families/clans—groups of people who, for reasons of proximity or tradition,
just _won 't move_ no matter _how_ bad things get where they're currently
living—then the Great Republic Experiment breaks down a little.

Specifically, it breaks because you'll get people who just really don't _fit_
in a place, and would be better suited to some other system of laws available
in some other state or municipality... but want to stay where they are anyway,
despite suffering strong disutilities. You'll get _large numbers_ of such
people, in fact. (See: Detroit.)

A large part of the reason for federalization comes down to helping those
people by guaranteeing certain minimum quality-of-life benefits in _all_ those
communities, whether the majority there support them or not. Which results in
communities that need to share more laws than not, and rapidly lose much of
the benefits of separation.

If everyone had kept the "immigrant mentality"—of being willing to drop your
existing life to find personal liberty somewhere else—then the US wouldn't
much need a federal government (beyond a sort of inverted border-police,
working to ensure that people aren't being _inhibited_ by local laws from
crossing state lines—a "non-underground" railroad.)

But Americans haven't kept that mentality, and I'm not sure there's a way to
re-instill it. It's just, as far as I know, a personality trait—one that
happened to have 100% representation in the 18th century US, but then reverted
to the mean in their descendants.

~~~
throwaway2048
Not just want to say, but have no other real choice but to stay.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
What do you mean? What could prevent someone from moving even though they
really want to?

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zepto
This seems like a weird and hardly surprising piece.

The idea that one of two political ideas is 'right' or that that even matters
is utterly absurd.

The whole point of politics is to find solutions that resolve conflicting
desires.

Polarization happens when the solutions simply don't do that.

The problem should not be framed as 'how to get people to change their desires
and beliefs' to match a political ideology. The challenge is to come up with
some new ways of looking at things that resolve the differences.

~~~
gnode
What exactly do you mean by 'resolve'? If you mean to harmonize or reconcile
the desires, that's not how politics usually works. Often resolution happens
by means of one side marginalising the other.

~~~
zepto
Politics used to work by kings beheading nobles deemed traitorous.

More recently, as you say, it often works by having 'sides' that marginalize
each other.

I'm assuming that it's not going to be like that for the rest of human
history, and suggesting that the polarization might not be a necessary outcome
of people's desires, but rather an artifact of a politicians who don't know
how to resolve them.

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jhpriestley
Two thousand years ago people were at each other's throats over "homoousion".
One thousand years ago over "filioque". Four hundred years ago it was
predestination. The idea that large-scale conflict over ideology is some kind
of aberration to be explained by "biases" is just a figment of the modern
ideology of "rationality". In five hundred years they will study this time
period and ask, how could they have been so worked up over these minor and
obscure points, hardly even comprehensible any more, that they tore their
society apart? And the answer will be the same as always - human nature:
superstitious, tribal, dogmatic, and violent.

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kilroy123
So what is the solution? I feel like the US is currently on a very
unsustainable path right now with the political polarization.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
One idea is to do everything we can to support minor political parties,
because they bring diversity to political discourse that doesn't necessarily
fit into a two-party system.

Probably the most important change along these lines would be to replace
first-past-the-post voting with a system that allows people to express more
complex preferences, such as approval voting, ranked choice voting, or range
voting.

Other ideas include publicly funded elections, mixed-member proportional
representation, redistricting via the shortest splitline algorithm, and
compulsory voting.

~~~
tomjen3
Far be it from me to suggest we should not support small parties (I lean
heavily libertarian) but be very careful what you wish for: Donald Trump was
likely as close to a political outside the US will see as a leader for many
years.

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randyrand
I remember seeing an animated graphic of survey results over time (Past ~20
years) that showed the left has been getting lefter at ~5x the rate that the
right is getting righter.

I'm curious what would explain this.

~~~
WaxProlix
Do you remember where this was? I'm interested because it feels like the exact
opposite to me. We've got weakened labor unions and strengthened centralized
control over resources, we've got stronger centralized government power over
individuals (PATRIOT act et al), basically no world powers with an even
nominally leftist government, yadda yadda.

In the wake of the financial crisis, a lot of Golden Dawn-esque nationalist
parties have crept up and are finding more success than I'd initially
expected.

It feels like we're moving more authoritarian right to me.

~~~
voidz
I think this is actually totalitarian left - the right is more about personal
liberties etc.

Not trolling – I might be wrong –people more knowledgeable about the
left/right dichotomy are welcome to shed some light onto this.

~~~
TheGirondin
>I think this is actually totalitarian left

You're absolutely right. There is only one side organizing at grassroots level
(indicating that these are not isolated occurrences, but rather are coming
from the groups shared ideals) across the country to shut down the political
speech of the other, violently in many cases, and that is the left.

~~~
WaxProlix
Sure thing buddy.

[http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/05/15/white-supremacist-
ric...](http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/05/15/white-supremacist-richard-
spencer-leads-march-charlottesville-va-reminiscent-kkk-gathering/)

~~~
TheGirondin
Thanks for posting, as this one event by the far, far right with a couple
dozen people stands in sharp contrast to dozens and dozens of examples
involving as many as hundreds of people from the left, and really shows how
unequatable they are.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
This is just the most high profile example in recent memory.

~~~
TheGirondin
Which doesn't change the reality of what I've said.

I even linked to an left-wing incident that happened over the weekend, with an
order of magnitude more people.

[http://college.usatoday.com/2017/05/30/protests-erupt-
over-r...](http://college.usatoday.com/2017/05/30/protests-erupt-over-racism-
at-evergreen-state-college/)

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Sorry, I was wrong. The stabbing on the bus in Oregon is probably the most
high profile example of a xenophobia-motivated killing:

[http://ktla.com/2017/05/30/portland-man-accused-of-
stabbing-...](http://ktla.com/2017/05/30/portland-man-accused-of-stabbing-
killing-2-men-yells-in-court-you-call-it-terrorism-i-call-it-patriotism/)

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sharemywin
That's depressing. No matter how right I am I'll never be able to convince
others.

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mlinksva
> Participants indicated who they desired to win, and who they believed would
> win, the election.

Would be more interesting if conducted around desires and beliefs about deeper
outcomes than who wins an election.

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ryanmarsh
Wait so you're saying political polarization isn't because all southerners are
racist idiots? You mean they might actually have reasonable desires of their
own? Mind blown. /s

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maxxxxx
Don't forget that this extreme polarization is an American thing. At least
Germany doesn't have it to that degree. The parties have differences but they
don't demonize each other.

~~~
ryanmarsh
No they were only attempting eugenics and genocide a few decades ago.

~~~
maxxxxx
Thanks for the insightful comment.

