y'all are NUTS... this is so miscalibrated

Seems wrong to me that this is decisively left at the moment. Liberalism means private property, market economy, rule of law (which we've already established is right wing, even if I tried to argue it), economic freedom, individual freedom.

It's diametrically opposed to state ownership, it doesn't recognise classes, it doesn't allow for revolution, it's opposed to collectivisation of means of production or even viewing things in a collective lens in the first place.

I think there would be a reasonable argument for putting it in the centre if that was an option, but unless you're living in the 18th century (or, like, present day Saudi Arabia), it's hard to put it on the left.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

@Fion a word means what people use it to mean.

@Bruno I don't really go for that level of nihilism. Words have non-transitory, contextual meanings. How some segment of the population feels about a word at any point is often recorded as a footnote.

@Fion to @Bruno's point, plotting words on a one dimensional line is the basis of making the kinds of emotional arguments used by religion and pundit media. Binary reductionism is a requirement of the emotional argument. This market isn't really interested in a nuanced debate. It's a mock divorce settlement where one side gets to keep the cat and the other side gets the red meat and the guns.

@becauseyoudo the arbitrariness of sign (including words) is the very most basic fundamental of the study of language.

@Bruno you're referring to "transitory" meaning but we live in a world with almost perfect memory. Historical and cultural context can be extracted and applied at some point in the future by some other civilization that maintained a copy of the definition of liberalism from Wikipedia on May 6th 2024. Do you think they will reference the Wikipedia definition of "liberalism" or the right wing reductionist idea "liberalism is bad" or both?

@becauseyoudo I never said the word "transitory".

Historical and cultural context can be extracted and applied at some point in the future by some other civilization that maintained a copy of the definition of liberalism from Wikipedia on May 6th 2024.

My degree in history is shitty. But one thing I think it gives me is an appreciation for how different things are over time.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "historical and cultural context being extracted and applied", but I know liberalism most likely already means something different in today's America than it did even like 15 years ago. Computers do have perfect memory, but they don't use language (or have started only a year or so ago). Humans do use language and don't have perfect memory or precessing power or standardized enough education; so word meanings change, as they've always done. More quickly, perhaps, since communication is more intense today in three relevant aspects - it's faster, it's easier to reach a wide audience, and it's also easier to reach a much more targeted and culturally-connected niche where meanings can morph.

(Edit: also the world changes faster, so the referent of words changes faster)

Hell, current American society cannot properly grasp historical and cultural context of present-day Mexico, let alone somewhere more distant in time or space.

@BrunoParga yeah, in USA, the terms "liberal" and "left wing" have a fair bit of overlap. Less so in the rest of the Anglosphere

@BrunoParga Sure, meaning adapts to the changing cultural context but this market is really exploring the markedness of signs and the absence of semiotic dominance. Some people in the US understand the unmarked academic wikipedia definition of "liberalisum" and others do not. When European or Mexican academics look at the dilution of American liberalism, now or in the future, they see it as a function of these competing definitions and explore how the values of liberalism that were universally accepted by most Americans were lost to political reductionism and division. Regardless of the outcome to Americans, the word will continue to have a broader meaning and value to others.

@becauseyoudo it still sounds to me as if you're claiming words have some sort of immanent meaning above and beyond their actual use by actual speakers of languages.

If that is the case, I definitely disagree.

@Fion Liberalism has a number of different definitions, the most commonly used of which (in American politics) are "left-wing" or "center-left" (generally people on the right will use the former definition and refer to the entire left as liberals, while those on the far left will use the latter definition and reject the label of "liberal").

The definition you gave there is, of course, also a common definition of liberalism (probably the most common in political science). But most of those things are only opposed to far left beliefs, not to the left in general. And some of them are opposed to right-wing beliefs (e.g., the right is much more likely to oppose individual freedom when it comes to gender roles and sexuality).

Also, we only "established" that the rule of law is right wing because the majority of people who voted on the option don't even know what "the rule of law" means. I don't know of any left-wing politician in the U.S. who rejects the rule of law, but the most prominent right-wing politician in the country has explicitly rejected it on many occasions, and is currently arguing a lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court against it.

@PlasmaBallin Oh, and how could I forget the most famous rejection of the rule of law in American history? Nixon's, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." Once again from a right-wing politician.

@PlasmaBallin You make a good point, but I think the BLM "defund the police" protests are more salient in most people's minds.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 That's "law and order", not the rule of law. They mean completely different things. that's what I was referring to when I said that most people voting on the option don't know what "the rule of law" means. They think it means something like law and order because it sounds similar, but it's actually a concept in political science that refers to the idea that the law applies to everyone, including the ones making and enforcing the laws. So an argument that the president by definition can't break the law, as Nixon claimed, or that the president has absolute immunity for crimes he committed in office, as Trump does, are the purest possible violations of the rule of law. BLM may have violated law and order, but they never opposed the rule of law.

@PlasmaBallin That confusion, and that people have completely ignored the earlier clarification, is ridiculous.

As a current Microsoft employee, I'm baffled that anyone would call us right wing. Like most major tech companies, Microsoft has consistently supported left-wing political causes.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Support of OpenAI and their black box methods is probably influencing it. As well as Windows being in opposition to Linux, which is seen as more libertarian/left. Also supposedly Microsoft News has a right wing slant.

@ShadowyZephyr Hmm, I can see how Linux would be libertarian, but to me that doesn't really fit on the typical left-right spectrum.

I still don't see how the black box methods that OpenAI uses are right wing.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 I agree, I think it's more an authoritarian/libertarian than left/right issue as well, i'm just providing reasons for why others might think Microsoft is right wing.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Microsoft's business model is based on right-wing anticompetitive practices.

(Fortunately, due to the Gates foundation.)

@BrunoParga I see, I think Microsoft's anti-competitive bent was more pronounced in the 90s, though that's still partly true today.

I don't see what makes that particularly right-wing either, though.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 The conservatives/right wing are more lax on antitrust laws. I think this is still more libertarian/authoritarian, but there is some left/right divide too. Microsoft business practices could be seen as right wing but not to that much of an extent.

Hard to say, mosquitoes have both a right wing and a left wing.

@PlasmaBallin two of each.

how's right wing when the general secretary is classic laborist ?

@ed And democrats think it’s so important for Ukraine to join NATO and that Trump criticizing NATO is so bad…

@ed Boutros Boutros-Ghali was a Copt, therefore the UN was Coptic Christian during his term as Secretary-General