What self-professed 'centrists' sound like - eviltoast
  • Jeanschyso@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As a Canadian ACTUAL centrist, fuck Nazis.

    I’m for less policing and more serving for Police. One should be happy, not angry to see the police, and right now in most places this cannot be with who the police are and serve.

    I’m for less government control over what one can do on their plot of land. Minimum parking needs to go. People should be allowed to build appartment buildings on their properties, not just single family homes. The governments in North America are too involved in people’s lives.

    I’m for freedom of choice of vehicle, whether it’s a car, a bicycle or public transit. My love for Public healthcare, mass transit and regulations on companies that destroy their environment and/or abuse their employees is literally the only thing leftist about me.

    Those “centrist” are not centrist. They are just not as far far down into the right wing rabbit hole.

    In my case, I consider right wing to be “less control from government, let corporations do what they will”, and the left wing to be “we pay taxes and get something out of it. The government has the mandate to assert control over people’s lives to attempt to make the whole better.”. I am somewhere in the middle of that.

    • adriaan@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Your views on zoning, transit development, labour regulation, ad health care all sound leftist. Those zoning laws are right wing, not left wing.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Except leftists want to rezone low density housing into high density housing so we can actually have proper urban development and incentivize smarter infrastructure projects rather than suburban sprawl hell everywhere. In what way does it expand property rights from your perspective?

          • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I have the same question. I’m sure there are ways to reform zoning laws that help fix the housing crisis without benefiting corporations and slum housing.

          • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I wouldn’t be so quick to say leftists support rezoning. I used to be active in moderating r/canadahousing back before I switched almost fully to lemmy, and it was infested with left NIMBYs. The most common talking point I saw was that upzoning was a developer ploy to systematically gentrify all the lower-income folks. In practice, I think YIMBY/NIMBY might as well be its own dimension on the n-dimensional political compass.

            In a similar vein, most supposedly small-government + property rights folks I see are also NIMBYs and against upzoning. Despite how obviously hypocritical and inconsistent that is.

            At the end of the day, when it comes to changes in your own neighborhood that impact you personally, all ideology goes out the window for many folks, and it becomes purely about knee-jerk reactions disliking change.

            • adriaan@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Knee jerk reactions against change by definition are anti-progressive and reactionary. People’s views are more right wing when they are negatively affected personally. That doesn’t make it not a right wing view.

              • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                That’s exactly my point. The user I was responding to said this:

                Except leftists want to rezone

                My point was that many people who are ordinarily leftists on other issues do not support upzoning, and they argue against it with left-sounding arguments. I was trying to highlight that people, many leftists included, become hypocritical and inconsistent in their belief system when it comes to things like YIMBY vs NIMBY.

                The fact there are so incredibly many leftists who hold NIMBY views suggests to me that it can’t be boiled down as simply as “leftists want to rezone”, at least without playing the “no true leftist” game.

                I would however support the argument that leftists want to solve the housing crisis, but I wouldn’t at all say leftists all support the exact same policies to achieve that.

    • problematicPanther@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wow, I finally found someone who more or less aligns with my views. Except I allo think workers should own the means of production instead of billionaires.

      • Jeanschyso@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t know how that would work, my knowledge is just lacking on the subject but I don’t think I’m against the concept, so long as people can decide to go in business without too much oversight.