• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    10 months ago

    Yeah that makes sense. I think as an inevitable result of writing a brief online comment, you’ve expressed a quite vague and shallow perspective here, so if you don’t mind I’d like to dig into it a little bit. In particular, I’m curious about what you mean when you say you “believe in small government” and “free market capitalism”.

    What sort of things do you think government should not be doing? Should people not be entitled to live a healthy life without being bankrupted? (I.e., should government not fund healthcare?) Are workers not entitled to fair treatment for their labour? (industrial relations laws and workplace health & safety.) Is public safety and order not important? (Fire departments, police, maybe the defence forces.) How do you feel when governments give subsidies to some businesses, like agriculture, mining, “bailing out the banks”, or private education?

    You’ll note that some of these are things that conservative governments are associated with doing more of, while others are things conservative governments do less of. It’s why I’ve always found the conservative parties’ claims to be “small government” rather misleading. More of a marketing approach they use that doesn’t actually represent what they stand for, and thus not particularly useful in good faith political discourse.