as you get older you'll become more conservative
(midwest.social)
Deceptichum
Memes of ProductionWhat they mean is you'll become more selfish as you get richer.
Generally you would get more conservative as you age as you get more assets like a house, car, savings, a pension maybe some stocks and shares, so you get more risk averse and prefer to maintain the system that got you those assets and keeps them appreciating instead of risking it on new fiscal policies.
But as younger generations own less and less wealth, that doesn't happen. I'm 30 years old, renting and have a few grand in savings, and not much else, I would happily risk all I have on a radical change to a socialist system.
Yep. I'm far more risk adverse now that when I was younger.
However, I'm not projecting my own risk aversion onto my children. I'll explain it to them, but leave them their own agency.
I'm also not blaming the minority non grata du jour for society's ills. I'm also content to 'take a hit' so that the more vulnerable members of society have it better. So I don't consider the "conservative" label apt (for me).
Plus now it's possible to save for retirement without buying stocks and houses.
In Germany the say:
If you're not a communist at fifteen, you don't have a heart. If you're still one at thirty, you don't have a brain.
I don't know bout you, but my socialism does not come from a lack of understanding how politics work.
The quote was authored by liberals, so of course its going to be insulting towards their major rivals.
Of course, leftists have their own sayings. One of my favorites being
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."
Although
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
is a close second.
There's another sentence: "feminist until married, atheist until the plane falls and communist until rich". But if you are like that you were never feminist, atheist or communist.
"There are no atheists in the foxhole." Is suppose to mean that, but it also means a CO will order atheists out to get shot first.
I was a communist at 15, by 30 I was an anarchist.
I used my brain to study history and politics and realised authority would never absolve itself.
Are you me?
Authority has always been so obviously full of shit for my entire life. There has never been a real demonstration of how it aids the common people, but constant demonstrations of how it abuses us.
When I made claims like that when I was younger, I was scoffed at and insulted for not slobbering on my masters schlong like a good little serf.
Based
Since socialism isn't communism the sentence either doesn't apply to you or it REALLY applies to you. 😆
socialism isn’t communism
Bit like saying a rectangle isn't a square. True some of the time.
They're very closely related
This didn't work for me, either. I'm in my 50's, and keep moving leftward.
I think what happens is:
- As people age, they tend to get richer.
- As people get richer, they tend to lose empathy.
- As people lose empathy, they tend to become more conservative.
I suspect it's even simpler than that. If you simply assume that people don't change at all once they grow up, everything can be explained.
People are generally more selfish than we think and people lie more to fit in than we think.
Selfish people like social programs when they are young and might theoretically need help, but don't care about taxes because they earn little.
And they dislike taxes when they are old and have salaries and resources, but don't care about social programs because they don't qualify.
They don't care about politics or political parties because they really only care about themselves. They never really cared.
Others pretend to be left leaning to match their peers when they're young and right leaning to match when they're older. They don't care about politics as much as fitting in.
I'm convinced that public services would be a lot less controversial amongst that segment of the population if the services were utterly universal. Buses? Make em free, the fintech bros might use them on their lunch break. WIC? Give it to everyone, y'all get a free tub of peanut butter every month. Healthcare? You know that big G be paying for it.
Would it magically convert everyone into public service supporters? Nope. Would it move the needle? I can't see how it wouldn't.
as a bonus, it would often be significantly more effective, since you don't need to spend effort on systems to ensure only certain people have access.
Most obviously with public transport, you don't need to maintain ticketing systems and enforcement.
Learning and growth occur towards tribalism all the time. Rich people still freak out when other rich people face consequences. Since they can't relate to the problems of the lower class they lose empathy over time. They turn to other well-off people because they can relate. Under capitalism having less empathy makes it easier to accrue wealth. So that's likely to be more common.
The very plasticity of our brain is susceptible to the disease of wealth. They don't need to always have been bad to explain it. Unexamined maybe but everyone's brain is learning all the time.
Wealth disease.
It starts the second you take more than necessary for comfortable living and future planning.
Stealing this
I have never met anyone who got more conservative as they got older. What happened is they where "socially liberal and financially conservative" and eventually decided to go full shithead.
None of them were ever really socially liberal to begin with, it was always based on selfish desires.
Bernie Sanders is old but still thinking critically
At 14, I was considered naive and too progressive for saying that maybe the US is bad and that gay people deserve rights.
Near 30 now, and all fascists deserve the wall. Borders are bullshit, and mutual aid is the only way forward.
It's just propaganda conservatives use to try and associate liberalism with childish naivete.
Well to be fair Liberalism is inherently a naive and childish ideology, anyone who thinks you can reform capitalism is fundamentally ignorant
I was a free market rightwing conspiracy nut as a teen and now I'm so far left Marx would tell me to calm down
This is me.
I'm 60.
67 years, here, and liberal/socialist as fuck!
