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Michael Wengler's avatar

The arbitrariness of political identification is underestimated, not mentioned here.  Fans of football teams will fight each other.  Clearly we are evolved to rally under a banner.  To a very large extent, I think political ideology comes to us from more or less the same place as our religious beliefs, from our parents.  

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

It might be worth comparing political ideology to the outcomes of Realpolitik. That is, to the socio-econo-political system in which we actually live. Compared to all the textbook ideologies and 'isms' - Capitalism, Socialism, Welfare Statism, Democracy, etc, what name would best suit our political reality? I would say; Lobbyism.

• Lobbyism implies the dominance of lobby groups, advocacy groups and NGOs, in our political structure and operation. For example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

• Lobbyism implies a government mainly sensitive to at least nominally private* pressure groups, implying an underlying (although somewhat secondary) democratic structure. [* An exception being the IPCC, the first fully public lobby group.]

• Lobbyism implies big government, as lobby groups create a bias toward greater government by holding political influence but being insensitive to the costs of the state sponsored programs they favor, because these costs tend to be spread socially, rather than impacting mainly on the lobby group or the people it represents (or claims to).

• Lobbyism suggests entrenched sectional interests that once formed, are very hard to elliminate, regardless of their negative consequences for society as a whole.

• Lobbyism suggests distorted social and economic outcomes, and these distortions in turn suggest a backlash against the governments that play on these interest groups in the first place.

• Lobbyism suggests other stuff i will think of after clicking Post as...

So what do most people really support - their favorite ideology or the reality of Lobbyism?

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